The West Bengal government today decided to recognise six languages other than Bengali as those spoken by linguistic minorities in the state.
"We have taken a decision today to notify Urdu, Hindi, Nepali, Oriya, Santhali and Gurmukhi as the language of the linguistic minorities so that work can be done in these languages wherever there is scope," chief minister Mamata Banerjee told reporters.
She said Urdu will be treated as the second language in districts where its speakers comprised at least 10 per cent of the population. More than 30% of the population in some districts spoke Hindi.
Banerjee said though the previous Left Front government recognised religious minorities, they had not done anything to recognise the linguistic minorities.
The chief minister said she chose this day to announce the welfare schemes for minorities as it happened to be the 112th birth anniversary of Bengal's famous poet Kazi Nazrul Islam.
Not much research had been done on the life and works of Nazrul Islam, Banerjee said, adding a decision had been taken to set up a Nazrul Acedemy to encourage better research on him.
"The academy will conduct research into Nazrul's writings and music so that the coming generations can know of his contributions," she said.
Comments