Hindi at Large

While,the page has writers,poets,story-tellers,teachers and professionals logging in,the idea,the team tells us,is to expand the horizon of Hindi language and disseminate information about it all around the world. “It’s through this portal that we have invited guests from Israel to learn the language and know about researches being carried on the subject in European and American countries. We have also identified a few students,who are studying Hindi in countries like Italy,Hungary,Poland and Germany,” says Sehgal,who adds that Hindi is taught in over 150 universities across the world and the PU team would want to pool in resources,minds and studies from all of these. The team is also undertaking a research at the department,which will zero in on foreigners,who are conversant with the language and people of Indian origin,settled abroad.

While,this initiative has taken off smoothly,the department is also working on a separate portal to promote Hindi authors and create content for Wikipedia,in order to enrich the online Hindi encyclopedia. “We are mostly contributing on facts from the region,” says Kumar,who was surprised to know about the dynamics of Hindi updates on Wikipedia at a recent conference in Mumbai. “The reports stated that the world’s largest free online encyclopedia has over three million contributors when it comes to English language,while Hindi,which has approximately 280 million speakers,has very few hands to give inputs. It’s then that we decided to pitch in,” says Kumar,who with his team of eight is busy working on a language,which he feels,will also spread awareness about Indian culture,art,its locale and people.