Amit Shah urges people to speak in Hindi: ‘Time has come to take pride…’

As he addressed the Akhil Bharatiya Rajbhasha Sammelan on the second and last day of his visit to Varanasi in poll-bound Uttar Pradesh, Union home minister Amit Shah said that people should take pleasure in speaking Hindi. Shah, who would go to Azamgarh from Varanasi, also hailed right-wing ideologue Vinayak Damodar Savarkar for his “efforts to promote the language,” as he put it.

“Time has come to take pride in speaking Hindi, ” the Union home minister said, adding that parents should converse with their children in their local tongue because “original thoughts come from our language.” The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader went on to say that the ‘inferiority complex’ about Hindi that arose during British rule should be abolished.