In addition to Marathi, Bengali, Pali, Prakrit and Assamese were also given a classical status
Representational Pic/File/iStock
Union Cabinet has approved the decision conferring status of classical language to Marathi, an official statement said on Thursday.
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The decision just before the Maharashtra Assembly elections 2024, is also politically significant considering the Marathi pride.
In addition to Marathi, Bengali, Pali, Prakrit and Assamese were also given a classical status. With this cabinet decision, the number of languages that have the status will be 11. Earlier, only six language - Tamil, Sanskrit, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam and Odia had the classical language tag.
An official statement said that the Union Cabinet chaired by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi has approved to confer the status of classical language to Marathi.
Classical languages serve as a custodian of Bharat’s profound and ancient cultural heritage, embodying the essence of each community’s historical and cultural milestone, it said.
The statement said that a proposal from the Maharashtra Government in 2013 was received in the Ministry requesting Classical Language status to Marathi, which was forwarded to the Linguistics Experts Committee (LEC).
The LEC recommended Marathi for classical language and during the inter-ministerial consultations on the draft note for cabinet in 2017 for conferring classical status to the Marathi language, MHA advised to revise the criteria and make it stricter. The PMO vide its comment stated that the Ministry may conduct an exercise to find out how many other languages are likely to become eligible.
It further said that in the meantime, proposal from Bihar, Assam, West Bengal was also received for conferring status of Classical Language to Pali, Prakrit, Assamese and Bengali.
Accordingly, Linguistics Experts Committee (under Sahitya Akademi) in a meeting on 25.07.2024, unanimously revised the criteria as below. Sahitya Akademi has been appointed as nodal agency for the LEC.
The Government of India had decided to create a new category of languages as "Classical Languages" on October 12, 2004 declaring Tamil as a classical language and setting following as criteria for the status of classical language, it said.
A Linguistic Experts Committee (LEC) was constituted by the Ministry of Culture under Sahitya Akademi in Nov 2004 to examine the proposed languages for the status of classical language, it said.
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