During a press conference held on Wednesday at FESOK’s office, Naorem Leikai Girls Primary School, Kakwa, its president Ningthoujam Romesh said that there are as many as 7,000 languages in the world. Out of these, just around 100 languages have their script and Manipuri language is one of them. Instead of announcing policies and programme to promote this language, resolving to impose Hindi language in Manipur as well is very unfortunate, Romesh said.

He further said that in India around 56 per cent of the states don’t speak Hindi as their mother language. However, the government of India excluded other non-Hindi speaking states in their recent decision except Northeast states. In this regard many other states of Northeast had already declared their stand but sadly, government of Manipur still remain mum, he lamented.

Romesh further said that after a long fight for almost 14 years by people of state, Manipuri language got 8th schedule. Now people of state are demanding to enlist Manipuri as classical language. All this initiative was taken up to preserve the Manipuri language and as such, the decision to impose Hindi language in the state is totally contradictory with the interest of people of state, he added.

Though movement have been launched from various section of the society to preserve Manipuri language, the initiative taken up by state government in this regard is not satisfactory, Romesh said. Many old Manipuri books scripted in Bengali are yet to be translated in Meetei Mayek script though later script was introduced in the state since 2006. No training programmes are conducted properly to educate Meetei Mayek, he added while appealing to formulate language policy.

He further said that they would ban anything related to Hindi language in the state if it is imposed as a compulsory subject till class X.