World Hindi Day

The Indian Cultural Centre, Colombo celebrated the World Hindi Day January 10 with colourful cultural performances and a special conference on the subject "The influence of Hindi in Sri Lanka".

P. Kumaran, Deputy High Commissioner of India was the chief guest. Prof. Indra Dassanayake, a well-known Hindi literary personality and former Professor of Hindi, University of Kelaniya, Prof. Lakshman Senevirathna, well-known Hindi Professor at University of Kelaniya and Mrs. Nilanthi Rajapakse, Lecturer in Hindi at University of Sri Jayewardenepura participated in the conference and made presentations on the influence of Hindi in Sri Lanka as well as elucidated the emergence of Hindi as a world language.

Prof. Indra Dissanayake recalled her experiences while participating in the World Hindi Conference at Nagpur in 1975 where Mrs. Indira Gandhi, former Prime Minister of India announced the decision of making January 10 as the World Hindi Day. She underlined the need for teaching Hindi and providing accessibility to more books in Hindi in the field of humanities and culture in Sri Lanka as well as the necessity of more and more translation of literary works from Hindi to Sinhala.

Prof. Lakshman Senevirathna illustrated the need of corrective measures to be taken while teaching Hindi to Sri Lankan students giving examples from the phonetic systems of both the languages.

He also exemplified the errors that commonly occur to Sri Lankans when they speak Hindi. In his presentation he stressed the necessity of teaching Manak (standard) Hindi so that the standardisation of Hindi as living language in various parts of the world can happen.

Mrs. Nilanthi Rajapaksa outlined the age-long cultural relationship of Sri Lanka with India and the development of teaching Hindi in Sri Lanka since 1965. She spoke about the influence of Hindi through Bollywood films and music. She highlighted the need of commencing post-graduate classes in Hindi in Sri Lankan universities so that the relationship between the countries will become more cordial.

Listening to the points raised by the scholars in Hindi P. Kumaran, Deputy High Commissioner of India said that the Indian Cultural Centre will soon launch its Language Lab and the students of Hindi can make use of this new facility in the Cultural Centre to develop their skills in correct pronunciation of Hindi.

The students of the centre made presentations of Hindi songs, dances and skits. Two hundred and ninety seven students received certificates and prizes for their participation in the Hindi examination conducted by the centre and for the competitions held as part of the Hindi Diwas 2012. The centre conducted competitions such as poetry, essay, poetry recital and reading, Hindi speech and singing.