Hindi Diwas 2022: Hindi Diwas is observed every year on September 14 to commemorate the adoption of Hindi as the official language of India.

Key Points:

• On the occasion of Hindi Diwas, Home Minister Amit Shah inaugurated second All India Rajbhasha Sammelan.
• On September 14, 1949, the Indian Constituent Assembly declared Hindi to be the national language of India.
• Article 343 of the Indian Constitution recognizes Hindi in Devanagari script as the official language.
• The provisions related to the Hindi language are regulated by the Central Hindi Directorate, Government of India.
• Hindi, written in the Devanagari script, is one of the two official languages of the Government of India, along with English.
• It is one of the 22 official languages of the Indian Republic.
• On the occasion of Hindi Diwas, a number of cultural festivals are held to honour and celebrate Hindi literature as well as to raise awareness of the language's significance.

Significance:

• The day honours the occasion when Hindi was adopted as one of India’s official languages.
• Hindi was acknowledged as one of the two official languages thanks to the efforts of Beohar Rajendra Simha and a few others, including Kaka Kalelkar, Maithili Sharan Gupt, Hazari Prasad Dwivedi and Seth Govind Das.
• The Indian government set standards for grammar and orthography using the Devanagari script after gaining independence in order to give the mother tongue of the nation an idealized appearance.
• Following this, on September 14, 1949, the Constituent Assembly declared Hindi to be India’s official language.
• This date is also the birth anniversary of Beohar Rajendra Simha who devoted his life to establishing Hindi as India’s official language, was born on September 14.

History of Hindi Diwas:

• India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru decided to create the Hindi Diwas on September 14.
• Mahatma Gandhi was the first to advocate for making Hindi the national language of India in Hindi Sahitya Sammelan in 1918.
• Hindi Diwas was celebrated for the first time in 1953.

History of Hindi:

Hindi is an Indo-Aryan language.

• It is spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India.
• It is written in Devnagri script.
• Hindi is a direct descendant of an early form of Vedic Sanskrit, through Sauraseni Prakrit and Åšauraseni Apabhraṃśa (from Sanskrit apabhraṃśa "corrupt"), which emerged in the 7th century CE.
• The term HindÄ« originally was used to refer to inhabitants of the Indo-Gangetic Plain.
• The terms "Hindi" and "Hindu" trace back to Old Persian which derived these names from the Sanskrit name Sindhu (सिन्धु ), referring to the river Indus.
• The Greek cognates of the same terms are "Indus" (for the river) and "India" (for the land of the river).

Some Interesting facts about the Hindi language:

• Amir Khusro wrote and published the first poem in Hindi.
• In 1900, Chintamani Ghosh founded the first Hindi magazine named Saraswati, It was a monthly magazine.
• The first newspaper produced in Hindi in India was called 'Udant Martand' meaning 'The Rising Sun'. Pt. Jugal Kishore Shukla published it on a weekly basis.
• French author “Grasim the Taisi” wrote the first works on the history of the Hindi language.
• Dadasaheb Phalke made Raja Harishchandra in 1913 which is the first Hindi full-length feature film in India
• The first Hindi television drama was aired in 1984-85 as Hum Log.
• Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the former Indian prime minister, gave a speech in Hindi at the UN in 1977.
• Devanagari script is used to write Hindi, a language connected to Sanskrit.
• Surya Namaskar and Jugaad,” which are commonly used Hindi words are also a part of the Oxford Dictionary.
• Many English words have also been borrowed from Hindi, including Avatar, Jungle, Guru, Karma, Mantra, Yoga, Guru, Bungalow, Loot, Pajamas, Shampoo, Thug, and many more.
• The Persian word Hind, which means "Land of the Indus River," is the source of the name Hindi.
• In 1881, Bihar accepted Hindi as its sole official language, replacing Urdu, and thus became the first state of India to adopt Hindi.
• Following this, Hindi also became the official language of other states, including Uttar Pradesh, Haryana & Rajasthan among others.
• The most widely spoken language in India is Hindi with more than 70% of the population able to speak and understand.
• The Hindi language is also widely spoken outside of India, including in Nepal, Guyana, Trinidad & Tobago, Suriname, Fiji, and Mauritius.
• When the first Hindi web portal was created in 2000, Hindi began to leave its mark on the Internet, a trend that has since gained traction.
• One of the seven Indian languages used to construct a web address is Hindi (URL).
• As of 2022, Hindi is the third most spoken language in the world, with about 602.2 million people speaking the language.

Akhil Bharatiya Rajbhasha Sammelan:

The first Akhil Bharatiya Rajbhasha Sammelan (All India Official Language Conference) took place in 2021.

• The two-day conference will be organized by State Language Department of the Ministry of Home Affairs.
• Discussions will be held on the importance of Hindi during this conference.

World Hindi Day:

• While the National Hindi Diwas is celebrated on September 14, the World Hindi Day (Vishwa Hindi Diwas) is celebrated on January 10 every year.
• World Hindi conferences were started with the aim of developing and disseminating Hindi in the world.
• The first World Hindi Conference was held in Nagpur on January 10, 1975, since then this day is celebrated as ‘World Hindi Day’.