Hindi Diwas 2020: In a bid to consolidate Hindu votes, TMC ramps up Hindi Cell

The Trinamool Congress(TMC) on Monday appointed Dinesh Trivedi as the Chairman and Vivek Gupta as the President of the West Bengal Trinamool Congress Hindi Cell.

This comes after the West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, on the occasion of ‘Hindi Diwas’ urged the central government to include Bengali as a classical language under the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020.

“We believe this would ensure greater representation to people from the Hindi community within the party, provide a platform to make suggestions, address their grievances and make them active stakeholders in Smt Mamata Banerjee’s cause for furthering all-round development in Bengal. The Hindi Cell would actively strive towards strengthening Hindi Education, Culture and overall welfare of the community in Bengal. We believe the work that began in 2011, will only get greater impetus through this reconstituted Hindi Cell.” Read the press release.

It also mentions that Mamata was the first Chief Minister in West Bengal to give Hindi the status of an official language in West Bengal in 2012. Hindi was then made an official language in districts and at the sub-divisional and block levels, with over 10% of Hindi-speaking population.

The TMC in its statement also mentioned that In September 2019, the West Bengal Government passed the Hindi University Bill, paving the way for the establishment of a Hindi university in Howrah for the benefit of Hindi speaking people. Hindi medium colleges came up in 2018 in the state.

Meanwhile, in a tweet on the same day, the West Bengal Chief Minister’s also requested the BJP led government is that the Centre should take a cue from what her state has done and include Bengali in the NEP.

Mamata urged the Centre that if the West Bengal government has included and recognized multiple languages in the state keeping in mind people from various cultural backgrounds living in the state.

“Warm wishes on #HindiDiwas. Bengal is a land of inclusivity and through our persistent efforts we have proudly inculcated Tagore’s values of ‘Unity in Diversity’. GoWB has taken various initiatives to strengthen Hindi Education, Culture and Welfare of the community in Bengal (sic),” Said Mamata Banerjee in her tweet.

The second part of the tweet reads, “GoWB has constantly persevered to undertake inclusive development for all by giving recognition to Hindi, Urdu, Gurmukhi, Ol Chiki, Rajbanshi, Kamtapuri, Kurukh languages. I urge the Centre to follow suit by also including Bengali as a classical language in NEP 2020 (sic).”

Mamata has been targetted by the BJP for being biased towards the minority community and allowing illegal infiltration from Bangladesh, a charge that the Trinamool Congress (TMC) supremo blatantly refutes. West Bengal, being seen as the main gateway of Eastern India, has a sizeable Bihari and Oriya population apart from the Bengali community.

In a bid to be seen as a Chief Minister who looks at the welfare of all communities in her state and consolidate her Hindu votes too ahead of the 2021 Assembly elections, Mamata is leaving no stone unturned on Hindi Diwas. The TMC supremo wants to send a strong message across to the BJP and minimize division of Hindu votes which is the saffron party’s primary target.

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