World Hindi Day 2023: Date, history, significance of celebrating third most spoken language globally

Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini once said, “A different language is a different vision of life” and being an Indian, we can’t agree more as according to the Census of India of 2001, our country has 122 major languages and 1599 other languages but Hindi in Devanagari script is the official language of the central government in India (and also of the Union as per the Article 343 of the Constitution of India). It is an Indo-Aryan language but contrary to popular belief, it is not the national language of India since the Constitution of India does not give any language the status of national language.

After English and Mandarin Chinese, Hindi is the most spoken language globally, which is spoken by 600 million people across the world. Here’s all you need to know about the date, history and significance of celebrating World Hindi Day 2023.

Date:

January 10 is celebrated annually as World Hindi Day to spread awareness about Hindi as an international language across the world. The day is especially observed by Indian embassies abroad.

History:

In the year 1975, the first-ever World Hindi Conference took place in Maharashtra’s Nagpur on January 10, which was inaugurated by then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and saw participation from a total of 30 countries. In 2006, former Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh declared that January 10 will be observed as World Hindi Day every year and this was also the first time that the ministry of external affairs started celebrating the day abroad.

Significance:

Besides spreading awareness about Hindi as an international language, the World Hindi Day also emphasises creating a passion for the language. Often people confuse World Hindi Day with the National Hindi Diwas, which is celebrated on September 14 every year to commemorate the adoption of Hindi as one of the official languages by the Constituent Assembly of India in 1949, English being the second official language.