Hindi department remains under used

A year and a half ago, yoga guru Baba Ramdev’s letter in Hindi had put the Union cabinet committee on political affairs (CCPA) in a deep embarrassment as none of its members could read Hindi, the official language of the country.

None of the then CCPA members —  prime minister Manmohan Singh, Pranab Mukherjee, P  Chidambaram, AK Antony or SM Krishna — could read the Baba’s response to the government’s attempt to dissuade him from going on a fast in June 2011.

The CCPA called in Kapil Sibal to read the contents of Baba’s letter. Two months later, Congress president Sonia Gandhi constituted a separate Hindi Vibhag (department) in the AICC and made senior leader Anil Shastri, till then editor of the party mouthpiece Sandesh, to hone linguistic skills of the leaders.

Even after 18 months, Shastri is still grappling to find either an office or resources for the department. With several states in the Hindi belt going to polls in 2013 followed by the Lok Sabha elections in 2014, the Hindi department is still not able to find its utility except for  putting together talking points for leaders before they go to address rallies in the Hindi heartland.

However, Shastri defended the utility of the department and told DNA that the decision to set up a Hindi department has come after a serious thought. “It was a decision directly by the Congress president  Sonia Gandhi. And she must have given a deep thought while taking this decision,” he said.

He finds more role for the department in the wake of the coming elections, where he would be at the centre of making and translating election material.