President wants Govt to teach Hindi

President George Maxwell Richards wants the Government to administer the teaching of Hindi in schools, he told the Hindi Nidhi (Hindi Foundation) annual awards ceremony and dinner at the Centre of Excellence, Macoya, on Friday night. The event honoured four eminent persons — retired appeal court judge Justice Jean Permanand, urologist Dr Lall Sawh, businessman/ impresario Ajeet Praim-singh and Mastana Bahar producer Khayal Mohammed.

The President urged the Government to take over the running of a Hindi teaching pilot project currently underway in 25 primary and secondary schools. Recalling his own support of Hindi Nidhi formerly as principal of University of the West Indies (UWI), St Augustine, President Richards hoped that the Foundations’s call would now lead the UWI Language Learning Centre to respond to demands for the teaching of Hindi and of other non-European languages.

Dubbing Hindi as a “medium of remembrance” for many of our population, he said its study allowed people to tap into a rich heritage of Indian thought including culture which went beyond dance and music, into areas like architecture, painting, sculpture and textiles. He said the modern burgeoning of science and technology in India was based on a tradition of enquiry dating back 3,000 years BC and which involved the invention of the mathematical concepts of zero and pi. “This interest has now culminated in space exploration and the use of solar and nuclear energy.” He said the ancient Hindu scriptural Vedas had mentioned the link between agriculture and civilisation, which in India had now progressed through to modern biotechnology.

President Richards said that over the decades, Hindi Nidhi’s search for roots via language had drawn unjustified criticism that such an endeavour could create divisiveness in this country, and that India was too far away from us for cultural and commercial exchanges. But quoting former President of the Senate Michael J Williams, President Richards said citizens of Trinidad and Tobago had the right to search for their ancestral roots without being accused of disloyalty to this country.