By Parveen Chopra, IANS
New York : United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon praised Hindi as a “language of understanding and harmony” at the inaugural function of the eighth World Hindi Conference held at the UN headquarters here.
“Hindi is a language of understanding and harmony. It unites the vast Indian diaspora, building bridges between different countries,” he said Friday, accepting Hindi’s growing importance in the world.
Mentioning that his first diplomatic posting was in India when he tried to pick up some Hindi, the secretary-general from South Korea spoke a few sentences in Hindi, drawing applause from the audience that included the ambassadors of 50 countries.
Ban Ki-moon’s appearance at the conference assumed importance in the light of India’s stated objective to get the official language status for Hindi at the UN.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, in his video message screened at the inaugural function, said that the Indian government was working towards achieving that objective. “It is already a world language. Statistics show that Hindi is the second most spoken language in the world,” he said.
Anand Sharma, India’s minister of state for external affairs who headed the steering committee of the conference, said that the theme of the conference, ‘Hindi on World Stage’, “has already been realized with the inaugural and first session taking place at UN premises”. He pointed out that the venue was well chosen.
The venue for the rest of the three-day conference is the Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan. Over 1,000 Hindi lovers, writers, poets and scholars, are attending the conference.
At a press briefing later in the day, Sharma said that getting UN status for Hindi was a matter of right for India, an emerging superpower.
“There are numerous formalities and requirements, also much expense,” he conceded but insisted that “the Indian government is committed to accomplish the objective.”
Sharma told the press that India would start a worldwide campaign to secure the support of two-thirds of the UN members for adding Hindi to the list of six UN languages (English, French, Chinese, Russian, Spanish and Arabic).
The minister said that the World Hindi Conference would conclude with a declaration.
Eminent scholar and statesman Karan Singh, the prime minister’s emissary at the conference, is scheduled to chair the concluding session.