Spat over Hindi as official language at UN 

Spat over Hindi as official language at UN 

Context

External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and Congress leader Shashi Tharoor on Wednesday engaged in a war of words in the Lok Sabha over making Hindi one of the official languages at the United Nations.

Sushma cries procedure as the biggest hurdle; Tharoor says it is not the national language

While Mr. Tharoor questioned the proposed move of the government, the Minister called his statement that Hindi was mainly spoken in India as ‘ignorant.’

Member nations have to share the financial costs too

Atleast, 129 member countries will have to agree to share the cost.

The Minister explained that as per rules, two-thirds of the 193 members of UNwill not only have to vote for Hindi as official language but also share the financial cost incurred to do so

‘Working on it’

The problem comes when apart from voting, the burden of the amount also falls on them. Economically weaker countries that support us shy away from this. We are working on it, we are making attempts to get support of countries like Fiji, Mauritius, Surinam… where people of Indian origin are there

The Question

Mr. Tharoor, who was a high-ranking official in the UN, asked what was the need to push for Hindi when it was not even the national language of India.

Officials from the South

The question is what purpose is being served by this. If indeed we have a PM or Foreign Minister who prefers to speak in Hindi, they can do so and we can pay to get that speech translated. Why should we put our future Foreign Ministers and Prime Ministers who may be from T.N. in a difficult position