Mumbai (Maharashtra) [India], October 4 : Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Thursday expressed his heartfelt gratitude to Prime Minister Narendra Modi after the Union Cabinet approved the conferral of classical language status to Marathi and other languages.
Deputy CM Fadnavis stated that this had been a longstanding demand.
The Union Cabinet, on Thursday, approved the conferral of classical language status to Marathi, Pali, Prakrit, Assamese, and Bengali.
In a video message, Deputy CM Fadnavis said, "I express my gratitude to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the entire Union Cabinet for accepting our longstanding demand that the Marathi language should be given classical language status."
He recalled pursuing the issue during his tenure as the state's Chief Minister and noted how the current Eknath Shinde-led NDA government in Maharashtra had made significant efforts in this regard.
"From today, our Marathi language will be recognised as an elite language. This is a day to be written in golden letters. Prime Minister Modi Ji, thank you very much. Even when I was the Chief Minister, and now under the leadership of Chief Minister Shinde Ji, the Maharashtra Government consistently followed up on this issue, provided ample evidence, and today all that evidence has been accepted. Marathi has now achieved classical language status," the Deputy CM added.
"On behalf of the 12 crore people of Maharashtra and Marathi-speaking communities across the world, I extend my wholehearted gratitude to Prime Minister Modi," the Deputy CM concluded.
The Government of India introduced the "classical language" category on October 12, 2004, first declaring Tamil as a classical language.
The government set criteria for the status, requiring that the language must have high antiquity with early texts or recorded history over a thousand years old, a body of ancient literature or texts considered a valuable heritage, and an original literary tradition not borrowed from another speech community.
A Linguistic Experts Committee (LEC) was established by the Ministry of Culture under Sahitya Akademi in November 2004 to examine proposed languages for classical status.
The criteria were revised in November 2005, and Sanskrit was subsequently declared a classical language.
The Government of India has conferred classical language status to Tamil (2004), Sanskrit (2005), Telugu (2008), Kannada (2008), Malayalam (2013), and Odia (2014).