NEW DELHI, June 25 (Xinhua) -- A senior Indian minister has courted a major controversy by calling the widely spoken Hindi the national language of the country.
"Hindi is our national language, our identity and we should be proud of it. It is very unfortunate that everyone is bent upon learning English because it guarantees employment," Indian Information and Broadcasting Minister Venkaiah Naidu said in the western state of Gujarat Saturday.
"I want the nation to discuss, promote and learn our mother languages more and at the same time learn Hindi as well," he added.
However, opposition parties have slammed the minister for his comments, alleging that the Constitution of India does not designate any language as "national" but has assigned the status of official languages to both Hindi and English.
"Hindi is not our national language. it is India's most widely-spoken language and useful to know," India's main opposition Congress party's leader Shashi Tharoor tweeted.
Hindi is one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and the lingua franca of the so-called Hindi belt in the country -- the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, the central states of Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, and the eastern states of Bihar and Jharkhand.
