Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Monday, 14 September 2026 delivered a sweeping address on the unifying power of Hindi at the 6th Akhil Bharatiya Rajbhasha Sammelan in Navi Mumbai, coinciding with Hindi Diwas. Shah paid tribute to V.D. Savarkar and Bal Gangadhar Tilak, praised Maharashtra's multilingual heritage, and launched fresh training initiatives for Hindi language resources, shorthand, and typing.

Shah's Personal Account: A Gujarati Who Found His Voice in Hindi

Drawing on his own journey, Shah made a candid disclosure: Gujarat, his home state, is predominantly a Gujarati-speaking region, not a Hindi-speaking one. Yet, he said, this was never a handicap. 'I come from Gujarat, where Hindi is not spoken; Gujarati is spoken. However, when my party assigned me responsibilities at the national level, I faced no difficulty working across the country because I could understand and speak Hindi. The official language provided me with an immense opportunity to serve nationwide,' he said.

The statement, delivered in a city that is itself a mosaic of languages, underscored Shah's central argument: that Hindi functions as a bridge rather than a barrier, enabling citizens from non-Hindi-speaking states to participate fully in national public life.

Maharashtra, Savarkar, and the Linguistic Legacy

Shah described Maharashtra as the 'land of Savarkar', calling Vinayak Damodar Savarkar not just a freedom fighter and social reformer but 'one of the most learned linguists of his time.' He noted that the Ministry of Home Affairs had honoured Savarkar's linguistic contributions through the 'Shabd Sindhu' initiative, which seeks to enrich Hindi vocabulary by drawing on his coinage of words that were previously absent in Indian languages.

Shah also built on Bal Gangadhar Tilak's call for the purification of Marathi, noting that Tilak had coined numerous terms that found natural acceptance across Marathi and other Indian languages. He credited Tilak further for mobilising cultural nationalism by launching Ganesh Utsav in 1893 and the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Jayanti celebrations to forge national unity.

Multilingual Maharashtra and Classical Status for Marathi

Shah asserted that no Indian state is as linguistically diverse as Maharashtra, where Marathi, Konkani, Gujarati, Hindi, Sindhi, and Warli co-exist and flourish together. He said Marathi deserves 'immense respect' and noted that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had granted classical language status (Abhijat Bhasha) to Marathi — a recognition advocates of the language had sought for years.

He also remembered Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj for expanding the concept of Swarajya (self-rule) to include Swadharma (duty/faith) and Swabhasha (native language) as its core pillars, and for promoting Marathi in administration centuries before the modern language movement.

Vinoba Bhave, Vande Mataram, and the NEP Connection

Citing freedom fighter Vinoba Bhave, Shah recalled how Hindi enabled Bhave to carry the message of the Bhoodan and Gramdan movements to every village across Kashmir, Assam, and Kerala — regions with vastly different mother tongues. He also highlighted the historical role of Vande Mataram in awakening national consciousness during colonial rule.

Shah pointed to the National Education Policy (NEP), introduced under Prime Minister Modi, as a structural step in the right direction, noting its emphasis on primary education in a child's mother tongue — a principle he argued complements rather than competes with Hindi's role as the official language.

Awards, Training, and What Comes Next

During the event, Shah launched training programmes covering Hindi language resources, shorthand, and typing, and felicitated the winners of the Rajbhasha Kirti and Rajbhasha Gaurav awards. The sammelan, held on the occasion of Ganesh Utsav, also drew Shah's greetings to the nation, with the Home Minister noting that Lord Ganesha, the 'Vighnaharta (remover of obstacles)', would clear any hurdles in the path of developing Indian languages.

The event signals that the Centre's push to promote Hindi as a unifying national language — while formally protecting mother tongues under NEP — will continue to be a prominent theme in official policy discourse.