PM Modi says, 'Loss to country' if we forget Hindi

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday, stressed on the need for concerted efforts to promote and enrich Hindi and said that the language, along with English and Chinese, "will be influential in the digital world in the coming days".

Stating that, "if we forget Hindi, it will be a loss to the country", Modi also called for steps to be taken to preserve endangered languages, as he pointed at concerns among language scholars that 90 per cent of the 6,000 languages world-over would faced the risk of becoming relics from the past.

Addressing the World Hindi Conference here, the Prime Minister also recalled his days as a tea seller in Gujarat and said that that had helped him learn to "speak Hindi well".

Modi also spoke about how he has witnessed the growing prominence of Hindi in the countries, he has visited and acknowledged the role of Hindi movies in promoting the language overseas.

"Three languages will be influential in digital world in the coming days -- English, Chinese and Hindi," he said.

The Prime Minister said that the focus should not be only on promoting Hindi but the other endangered languages as well.

"If we don't take note of the warning of the language scholars, these languages will be relegated to history. If there is no language, how can literature survive," he said.

Modi also pointed to how leaders such as the US President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin were uttering 'sabka saath, sabka vikas' in Hindi and said that even Isreali Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had conveyed his greetings in Hindi for a festival.