Brussels, March 6, EuAsiaNews — The European Union and India, both with over 20 official languages, signed in Brussels Friday a Joint Declaration on multilingualism to reinforce their cooperation and dialogue on linguistic diversity and intercultural dialogue .
Daggubati Purandeswari, Indian Minister of State for Human Resource Development, speaking after the signing ceremony said “we need to send a clear message that all our languages are equally important and that we are bound to respect all of them in respect of their official status.”
India, she noted, ” is essentially a multilingual country, where linguistic diversity is a part of our historical, cultural inheritage, and an integral feature of its nation building philosophy. This provides a challenge and an opportunity for the education planners who want to treat societal multilingualism as a dynamic resource shared across numerous interacting communities.”
“Our culture has always understood the importance of language studies,” she said.
On his part, EU Commissioner in charge of multilingualism Leonard Orban said the Declaration renews our commitment in closer cooperation in the field of multilingualism, and the promotion of language skills and will allow us to engage in deeper exchanges in this area.
“It will allow us to learn from each other. I can tell you we have to learn a lot from your experience. I know that we can learn a lot. Your experience in coping with linguistic diversity is unique in the world,” stressed Orban.
The Declaration also aims to reinforce EU-India cooperation on impact of languages on employability, and social cohesion; lifelong language learning; new technologies for language learning; and terminology.
The Declaration is a follow-up to the EU-India Summit in Marseille, France on 29 September 2008, where EU and Indian leaders committed themselves to developing a dialogue on the promotion of languages,intercultural dialogue and multilingualism.
A first step towards this dialogue was achieved in December 2008 with the conference on “Multilingualism and Cultural Dialogue in Globalisation” that took place in New Delhi, India, in the context of the 2008 European Year of Intercultural Dialogue.
Orban said the Declaration will lead to regular exchanges of best practice and expertise. Secondly, mutual learning through seminars and conferences. Thirdly, the building of administrative links between the European Commission and the ministry for human resource development, as well as other Indian authorities.
With a population of approximately 1.1 billion people, India represents a unique example of ethnic, socio-cultural and religious diversity that brings with it a very rich linguistic diversity, noted a statement released here by the European Commission.
According to the 2001 Census Report, there are 29 languages spoken in India by more than a million native speakers, 122 languages with at least 10,000 speakers and another 234 languages spoken by a smaller number.
The Indian Constitution declares Hindi to be the official language of the union. English may be used for official purposes and the country has 22 official regional languages.
This rich linguistic diversity has been a fact of life throughout India’s history and it is considered locally to be quite natural.
This similarity in the linguistic landscape with the European Union makes India a privileged interlocutor for Europe in the field of multilingualism, noted the statement.