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The mother language activists in India today asked the Central Government to ensure parity among all national languages.In a Press Meet here on the occasion of the International Mother Language Day, Deepak Dholakiya, Spokesperson for several language activists from various states of India, said the attempts to reduce the status of the national languages to the local languages in India would be opposed vehemently.''We demand that the Union Government extend the official status to the languages fighting for the constitutional recognition. People will also be made aware of the imminent threat to their languages,'' he said, adding that a national group, Bharatiya Bhasha Samooh, has been created to raise such issues in the country. Mr Dholakiya said there were 22 major Indian languages, constitutionally recognised as national languages, but they were being downgraded and removed from the national scene by pushing them back to particular regional boundaries. He charged that these languages were being relegated to the secondary status in the Indian Universities and the budget structures for the linguistic studies were just meagre. Anil Chamadia, another activist of the Bharatiya Bhasha Samooh, said the Prasar Bharati has taken the decision to shift its language news broadcasts from the national capital to different regions of the country. ''The argument is that the news bulletins in particular languages are listened to only in particular regions. However, this shows that the Government thinks that these national languages are, but local languages,'' he said, adding that the reason for shifting national languages to the regional centres of Prasar Bharati was to be found in the Government''s design to have only one national language for the entire nation.Mr Chamadia said it was Sardar Patel, who had launched six national language bulletins from Delhi as the first I&B Minister, but ''his admirers'' were making an about turn today by shifting the news bulletins in several national languages to the regional centres. ''This situation is bad for the ideal of Unity in Diversity,'' he added.UNI SNU RJ 2338 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0329-1160344.Xml
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