Hindi opposed in North East also

Besides Tamilnadu and South Indian states, Hindi is being opposed in North Eastern states also.Every North East State has a group of languages and they feel that Hindi would hinder the growth of their regional language. Against this backdrop, Amit Shah the Home Minister, speaking at the 37th. meeting of the Parliamentary  Committee on Official Language said that the spoken language of the nine tribal communities in North Eastern states have adopted the Devanagri script and 8 states have agreed to make learning of Hindi compulsory in schools up to standard 10.

The Roman Script for Kokborok Choba (RSKC), a body of several indigenous organisations has opposed this. Amit Shah’s speech triggered protests in North East regions. A federation of 56 tribal organisations conducted protests over the idea of adopting Hindi script for Kokborok the language spoken by several tribal groups in Tripura.

Every North East Indian state has several groups of languages connected with Indo-Aryan to Tibeto-Burma and Austro-Asiatic language families. Kokborok was recognized as the authorized official language in 1979. Currently Bengali and Roman scripts are used in 22 colleges and Central University of Tripura. A majority of the tribal people does not want to do away with this and are opposed to introduction of  Hindi by force.
 Mizo or Mizo Tang language spoken in Mizoram has its origins in Sino-Tibetan language family. The people of the state firmly say that they have been using the language for long and would not accept Hindi script. The Manipuri script is 2000 years old and is recognized by the Government of Manipur state. There also the people oppose imposition of Hindi. Racially different languages are spoken in Himachal Pradesh. Hindi is opposed in Assam too.

As in Tamilnadu, the people in the North East Indian states are also prepared to pose stiff opposition to Hindi. As no more Hindi would be accepted by any state, the Union Government must stop forcing it on the people. The people of the state should be free to chose the language they are comfortable with. Let Hindi be learnt by those who want while others can be left to their own choices.Let all languages grow and be enriched in India where unity in diversity is respected.