World Hindi Day on January 10
World Hindi Day 2020: every year on January 10. Its objective is to create a suitable environment for the promotion of Hindi worldwide and to present Hindi as the prevalent language of the world.
The Indian Embassies located in other countries outside India celebrates World Hindi Day by organizing special programs. Various government and non-government institutions organise unique programs for the promotion of Hindi.
Origin of 'Hindi'
The word ‘Hindi’ is believed to be transformed from the original Sanskrit word ‘Sindhu’. There was a river called Sindh and the area around this river was known as 'Sindhu'. This ‘Sindhu’ word became 'Hindu' when Iranian’s entered in India. Later, it became ‘Hindi’ and then called 'Hind'. Today, Hindi is spoken by about 43 crore people in the world. It is believed that Hindi has derived from Sanskrit and written in the Devanagari script.
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About World Hindi Day
• The first World Hindi Conference was held in Nagpur on January 10, 1975, where 122 delegates from 30 countries participated in the program.
• Former Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh announced to celebrate World Hindi Day on January 10 every year in 2006.
• Hindi is the fifth most spoken language among the total languages spoken in the world.
• Hindi is spoken in many countries including Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, USA, UK, Germany, New Zealand, United Arab Emirates, Uganda, Guyana, Suriname, Trinidad, Mauritius, and South Africa.
• Oxford Dictionary included words like 'Bada Din', (big day) 'Acha', (Good) 'Bacha' (Child) and 'Surya Namaskar' in 2017. It represents the importance and acceptance of Hindi.
National Hindi Day
'National Hindi Day' is celebrated on September 14 every year. The Constituent Assembly gave Hindi the status of official language on September 14, 1949, since then Hindi Day is celebrated on September14. The first Prime Minister of the country, Jawaharlal Nehru, decided to celebrate Hindi Day on September 14. There were many writers like Kaka Kalelkar, Maithili Sharan Gupta, Hazari Prasad Dwivedi, Seth Govindadas made important contributions to make Hindi a national language.