LANGUAGES
The activities and programmes undertaken in the field of Languages can be broadly grouped as under :
A. Promotion of Hindi (as envisaged under Article 351 of the Constitution).
B. Promotion of Modern Indian Languages (as provided in the National Policy on Education, 1968).
C. Promotion of English and other Foreign Languages (as pro- vided in the Education Commission's Report).
D. Promotion of Sanskrit and other Classical Languages such as Arabic and Persian.
Apart from the schemes directly executed by the Ministry, the following institutions/organisations set up by the Ministry pursued the implementation if the various programmes in the field of languages
1. Central Hindi Directorate, New Delhi.
2. Commission for Scientific and Technical Terminology, New Delhi
3. Kendriya Hindi Sansthan, Agra.
4. Central Institute of Indian Languages, Mysore.
5. Central Institute of English and Foreign Languages, Hyderabad.
6. Bureau for Promotion of Urdu, New Delhi.
A. PROMOTION OF HINDI The Ministry continued to provide facilities for the teaching of Hindi in Non-Hindi speaking states by (i) Providing financial assistance to non- Hindi speaking states for appointment of Hindi teachers in their schools; (ii) providing assistance for establishing Hindi teachers' training colleges; (iii) award of scholarships to students belonging to non-Hindi speaking states for the study of Hindi beyond the matric stage; (iv) providing financial assistance to voluntary organisations to enable them to hold Hindi teaching classes, maintaining libraries and reading rooms; (v) conducting and expanding the programmes of organising correspondence courses for teaching of Hindi; (vi) providing Hindi books to various organisations; aid (vii) organising research on methodology of teaching Hindi, through Kendriya Hindi Shikshan Mandal, Agra.
Appointment of Hindi Teachers in Non-Hindi Speaking States/Union
Territories This scheme envisages Central aid on a fifty per cent sharing basis to the State Governments/Union Territories for appointment of Hindi Teachers in Non-Hindi speaking States/Union Territories for development and pro- pagation of Hindi, for the current financial year i.e. 1981-82. A Plan provision of Rs. 33 lakhs has been made and an amount of Rs. 18,25,750/- has been sanctioned up-to-date to various States Governments under this scheme. Till the duration of the current financial year, a few more lakhs of rupees are expected to be released as Central assistance under this scheme.
Opening of Hindi Teachers' Training Colleges in Non-Hindi Speaking
states/Union Territories Under the Central scheme for opening of Hindi Teachers' Training Colleges in Non-Hindi Speaking States/Union Territories the Central
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Government provides 100 per cent assistance to the States/Union Terri-
tories for opening Hindi Teachers' Training Colleges. This assistance
would continue till the duration of 6th Five Year Plan. A provision of
Rs. 10 lakhs (Plan) has been made for implementation of this scheme.
A grant of Rs. 69051/- has been released under this Scheme up-to-date.
Financial Assistance to Voluntary Hindi Organisations
Over the years the number of organisations seeking financial assistance
under the scheme is progressively increasing. With the Government assis-
tance, some of these organisations have grown into gigantic institutions
operating simultaneously in more than one State. While in the earlier
years, grants were generally sought for running Hindi classes, conducting
courses in Hindi typing and shorthand, establishment of libraries and
reading rooms etc., quite, a number of organisations are now coming up
with requests for grants for training of teachers, publication of Hindi journals,
conducting Hindi examinations, instituting prizes as well as for advance
work in Hindi. Hindi is thus catching, up well in the non-Hindi speaking.
regions.
During the year 1981-82 financial assistance to the extent of Rs. 27
lakhs has been rendered to over 97 organisations.
Central Hindi Directorate To facilitate the changeover of the media of instruction in the field
of higher, scientific and technical education and for promotion and deve-
lopment of Hindi as a National Link Language, the Central Hindi
Directorate has been implementing a number of schemes. The functional
roles assigned to it are as under :--
(i) to, promote and popularise the use of Hindi;
(ii) to undertake basic research in Hindi language and its script;
and
(iii) to prepare bilingual, trilingual and multilingual dictionaries/
glossaries, conversational guides covering Hindi and other
Indian languages.
The progress of the schemes during 1981-82 is as under :
Correspondence Courses for Teaching Hindi
Five courses viz. Pravesh, Parishaya, Prabodh, Praveen and Pragya
through the media of English, Tamil, Malayalam and Bengali for teaching
Hindi to non-Hindi speaking Indians including foreigners in the country and
abroad and a certain category of Central Government employees, employees
of statutory bodies and public, undertakings and teachers of Kendriya Vidya-
layas were continued during the year. A total number of 10,400 students
including foreign-based ones were admitted in these courses. A fee of
Rs. 30/- is charged from the Indian students and Rs. 416.50 from the
foreign students per year. In order to supplement the lessons and to
compensate the absence of oral-teaching and direct contact with the
students, Personal Contact rogrammes at 16 centres were arranged in
different parts of the country during the year under review.
Manuscripts of the four bilingual conversational Guides and three Self-
Taught books are under print. Besides, 200 lingua records in Tamil
Malayalam and Bengali languages have been prepared so far.
Extension Programmes
These programmes are implemented for the promotion of Hindi in the
non-Hindi speaking areas. During the year tinder report, 18 workshops
of Neo-Hindi writers of non-Hindi areas were held. By December. 1981,
34 Hindi students of non-Hindi speaking areas participated in the Con-
ducted Tours and similar number of students were expected to participate
by the end of March, 1982. 20 stipends of Rs. 350/- each were recom-
mended to be given to post-graduate-Hindi research students of non-Hindi
speaking areas and lecture tours of Hindi professors were expected to
be completed by the end of 1981-82.
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Distribution and Exhibition of Hindi Books
Hindi books on Indian History, Culture and Literature were popularised
through free-distribution and periodic exhibitions at different places in
India and abroad. Books costing about four lakhs were purchased and
distributed during this year.
Production of Dictionaries and Conversational Guides
The project of production of bilingual, trilingual, multilingual and
definitional dictionaries and preparation of Readings on the encyclopaedic
pattern in the subjects of Humanities continued. Nine bilingual dictionaries
were ready for print and the manuscripts of 10 trilingual dictionaries were
received in the Directorate. The work on the remaining 12 definitional
dictionaries in humanities continued. The work of preparation of Bhartiya
Bhasha Kosh, a project of multi-lingual dictionary containing equi-
valents of 5000 Hindi entries and 2500 expressions in 13 Indian languages
in Devanagari script was completed. To cater to the requirements of the
University level students and research scholars, 5 Readings on the ency-
clopaedic pattern in the subjects of humanities were published and the
manuscripts of 6 more such readings are proposed to be completed by
1984-85.
The work on German-Hindi and Hindi-German dictionaries continued.
Out of 45,000 entries, 42,000 were prepared and 13,000 finalised. For
the Hindi-German Dictionary, all entries were sent to concerned experts
in German, and the exchange of delegations of experts engage in the above
mentioned project 'between India add the G.D.R. took place during the
year under report. So far as the dictionaries of Hindi-Czech and Czech-
Hindi are concerned, out of 15,000 entries, 14,000 were translated by the
end of 1981-82.
A noticeable progress was made in the preparation of Hindi-Russian,
Hindi-Czech, Hindi-Hungarian and respective vice versa Conversational
Guides.
Publications
Under the Publishers' Collaboration Scheme. 6 manuscripts were pre-
pared and 2 Definitional Dictionaries were published. Thirty publications
including 4 issues of "Bhasha" Quarterly, 1 issue of "Varshiki" for the
year 1978, 12 issues of 'UNESCO DOOT' the Hindi translation of 'Courier'
were published.
Production of Standard Literature in Sindhi
Started in 1975, the objective of the, scheme is to bring out educative
books in Sindhi for the benefit of Sindhi students. The activities of holding
of Sindhi Advisory Committee meetings, organising Workshops for the Neo-
Sindhi writers; award of prizes for literary work and purchase of selected
meritorious books and their free-distribution are undertaken for promotion
of Sindhi language and literature. Under this Scheme, 2 books were pub-
lished and 7 books were allotted for printing and manuscripts of 12 more
books were made press-ready.
Commission for Scientific and Since November 6, 1980 the Commission for scientific and Technical
Technical Terminology Terminology has been separated from the Central Hindi Directorate
on the recommendations of. the High Level Committee. The functional roles
assigned to the Commission for Scientific and Technical Terminology are as
follows :
The Commission will evolve scientific and technical terminology in
Indian languages; prepare, reference material in Indian languages survey,
review and collect the available terminology in Indian languages and evolve
Pan-Indian terminology; foster the setting up of language bodies at regional
levels; and prepare and publish definitional dictionaries, glossaries and
Lexicons.
The on-going programmes with their achievements are as follows :
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Definitional Dictionaries
After the terminology in the various disciplines had been evolved it was experienced that, to make the concepts comprehensible it was, necessary to explain them through definitions. Accordingly, the work of preparing definitional dictionaries in various subjects of Basic Sciences, Social Sciences, Humanities, Medical Sciences, Pharmacy, Agriculture and Civil, Electrical, Mechanical Branches of Engineering continued. Co-ordination and consoli- dation of definitions pertaining to various basic sciences dictionaries was also taken up.
Production of University Level Books
The programme of producing books in the subjects of Agriculture, En- gineering (including Polytechnic), Veterinary Sciences, Forestry, Medical Sciences (including Nursing and Para-Medical) and Pharmaceutical sciences continued. At present production of books in the above mentioned sub- jects is directly handled by the Commission, while in the various subjects under basic sciences, humanities and social sciences, the production of books is being undertaken through the Granth Academics and University Cells. Seven titles were published and 64 were sent for publication. The titles include both translation as well as original writing.
Procurement of Copyrights
For translating foreign books in Hindi and other Indian languages, translation rights of about 20 titles are under negotiation and the copyright period of about 12 books was not extended.
Terminology
In the work of residual terminology Hindi Equivalents of terms were evolved only in those branches which had not been done so far, such as veterinary sciences, space sciences etc.
With the lapse of time, it is necessary to consolidate. co-ordinate and simplify the entire terminology so that it could be-published as a single volume. Efforts have been made to achieve this objective.
Hindi-English Glossary
Side-by-side with the publication of Hindi equivalents of English terms, as more and more people use them, it became necessary to prepare the coun- terpart Hindi-English Glossaries also. one such Hindi-English Glossary relating to Basic Sciences has been published. Hindi-English Glossaries in Humanities and Social Sciences and in Applied Sciences are also under pub- lication and preparation respectively.
Pan-Indian Terminology
The task before the Commission for Scientific and Technical Termino- logy now is also to compare and coordinate the terminology of Hindi with the terms prepared in the various regional languages in India with a view to coordinating and exploring the possibility of preparing a terminology, which could be uniformly used throughout the country, as a standard Pan- Indian terminology. Co-operation of State Textbook Boards was sought. The terminology prepared in the various regional languages is being collected and documented by the various subject-units and processed in the seminars convened in the non-Hindi speaking areas of the country. In the initial stage, lists of the basic terms pertaining to various subjects are prepared and regional equivalents are collected for the purpose. In this connection. Meetings and all-India Seminars were held at Trivandrum, Mysore and Calcutta, terms were discussed and Pan-Indian terminology relating to Com- merce, Economics, Mathematics and Medical Sciences was identified.