Tatsat Chronicle Magazine

Jaishankar To Visit Fiji For World Hindi Conference

February 14, 2023
Hindi

External Affairs Minister (EAM) Dr. S. Jaishankar will visit Fiji to inaugurate the 12th World Hindi Conference that will be co-hosted by the Governments of India and Fiji from February, 15-17 in Nadi, Fiji.

This would be EAM’s first visit to Fiji. The visit, first by an incoming ministerial delegation after the formation of the new Government in Fiji in December 2022, would include bilateral meetings with the new leadership of Fiji.

The visit comes close on the heels of the first high-level visit to India by Deputy Prime Minister Prof. Biman Prasad on February 5-10, 2023, the Ministry of External Affairs said in a statement.

EAM will visit Sydney, Australia on February, 18. This would be his third visit to Australia since February 2022 when he first visited Australia as EAM. He would have meetings with the leadership of Australia in Sydney. EAM would also attend the Raisina@Sydney Conference to be held in Australia for the first time.

A 270 member delegation from India will visit Fiji for the event and representatives from 50 countries are expected to participate in it. Fiji is an archipelago of more than 300 islands in the South Pacific.

The event will be inaugurated by Jaishankar and Fiji’s Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka.

Union Minister of State for External Affairs V Muraleedharan and Minister of State in Ministry of Home Affairs Ajay Kumar Mishra will also be present during the event.

The decision to hold the event in Fiji was taken during the World Hindi Conference in Mauritius last year, according to MEA officials.

“The Prime Minister always uses Hindi and has given various speeches in the language in India as well as abroad. This has increased the language’s value and more people have been motivated to use it,” the officials said.

“The theme for the event is ‘Hindi – Traditional Knowledge to Artificial Intelligence’ where on one side we are respecting our traditional knowledge and on the other side, showing that Hindi has been successful in walking along with the technological advancements,” officials said.

Till now there have been 11 editions of the conference in different countries with three being hosted in India. Rashtra bhasha Prachar Samiti, Wardha, hosted the first such event in 1975 at Nagpur.

“Hindi has made limited progress in the United Nations. U.N. press releases are now available in Hindi. We are trying to get Hindi its rightful place at the U.N.” said Saurabh Kumar, Secretary (East), MEA. In 1950, Hindi was made the official language of the Union of India. The official language of India is designated as Hindi in Devanagari script in Article 343 of the Indian Constitution.