JD(U) renews demand for Maithili to be recognised as a classical language

On Monday, 7 October, the JD (U), an ally of the ruling NDA at the Centre, again demanded that classical language status be accorded to Maithili.

The demand comes days after the BJP-led central government decided to accord classical language status to Marathi, Bengali, Pali, Prakrit and Assamese.

Janata Dal (United) national working president Sanjay Kumar Jha said he would soon meet union minister Dharmendra Pradhan to press for the demand.

In a post on X, Jha wrote, ‘I will soon meet union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan ji for a classical language status to Maithili. Conservation and promotion of the Maithili language have been my top priority right from the beginning. I had prepared the basis for the inclusion of Maithili in the category of classical language in 2018.’

Due to his efforts, an expert committee of Maithili scholars, constituted by the central government, had made 11 recommendations in its report on 31 August 2018, the JD(U) leader claimed.

‘The first recommendation was that the Maithili language is about 1,300 years old and its literature has developed independently and continuously. Therefore, it should be placed in the category of classical language. But it has not been able to get such a status,’ he said.

Besides Marathi, Bengali, Pali, Prakrit and Assamese, six languages — Tamil, Sanskrit, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam and Odia — were earlier included on the list of classical languages.

Jha also wrote, ‘I am confident that the NDA government at the Centre will also accord classical language status to Maithili in accordance with the recommendations of the expert committee.’

There is ‘no doubt that the NDA governments, both in Bihar state and at the Centre, have done all works for the preservation and promotion’ of the Maithili language, he said.

‘Chief Minister Nitish Kumar ji had taken an initiative and former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee ji had included the Maithili language in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution, fulfilling the decades-long demand of people of the Mithila region,’ Jha said.

When the government was formed in Bihar in 2005 under the leadership of Nitish Kumar, he included Maithili in the syllabus of the Bihar Public Service Commission (BPSC), which was ‘removed from the syllabus by the previous Congress and RJD coalition government’, Jha said.

‘It’s a well-known fact that on March 19, 2018, I met then Human Resource Development Minister Prakash Javadekar in his office in Delhi and handed over a memorandum, urging him to form an expert committee for the preservation, promotion and development of Maithili script and allocation of funds for it.

‘Javadekar ji had accepted my memorandum and issued instructions for the constitution of an expert committee by inviting Maithil scholars for the preservation, promotion and development of Maithili script and entrusted me with the responsibility of suggesting names for it,’ Jha wrote on the microblogging site.

After thorough deliberations, the committee finalised its report and submitted it to the minister, he added.