The Minister of State for Education, Dr. Sukanta Majumdar, inaugurated the one-day workshop for the Vice Chancellors on Writing of Textbooks in Bharatiya Bhasha for Higher Education in New Delhi today. The workshop was jointly organised by the University Grants Commission (UGC) and the Bharatiya Bhasha Samiti (BBS).

Secretary, Department of Higher Education, Ministry of Education, Shri K. Sanjay Murthy; Chairman, Bharatiya Bhasha Samiti, Prof. Chamu Krishna Shastry; Chairman, UGC, Prof. M. Jagadesh Kumar; Vice Chancellors of over 150 Universities, eminent academicians and other dignitaries were also present at the event.

Dr. Sukanta Majumdar, at the inaugural session of the workshop, highlighted the importance of preparing study material in Indian languages for various higher education courses. The education system must reflect the vast linguistic diversity of the country and ensure that the students have access to knowledge in their mother tongues, he added. He expressed his gratitude to Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi for providing his visionary leadership in fulfilling the objective of ‘Viksit Bharat’. Dr. Majumdar also said that the National Education Policy 2020 lays the ground for inspiring the youth of the country to participate in nation-building. He expressed his gratitude to Shri Dharmendra Pradhan for spearheading the implementation of NEP 2020.

Dr. Majumdar also said that Indian languages are a testament to the ancient history of the nation and the wisdom that has been passed down through generations. The young generations must be nurtured and their belief in the rich cultural and linguistic heritage must be strengthened, he added.

During the session, Prof. Chamu Krishna Shastri emphasized the need to develop a Bharatiya Bhasha Ecosystem and Shri M. Jagdish Kumar shared some valuable insights.

Shri K. Sanjay Murthy launched three significant projects during the valedictory session. These were ASMITA (Augmenting Study Materials in Indian languages through Translation and Academic writing); Bahubhasha Shabdkosh; and Real-time Translation Architecture. Addressing the audience, Shri Murthy said that the major role in shaping all these projects will be technology, and NETF and BBS will have a huge role in these.

ASMITA, led by UGC in collaboration with Bharatiya Bhasha Samiti, aims to produce 22000 books in the next five years in 22 scheduled languages. Bahubhasha Shabdkosh, led by the Central Institute of Indian Languages (CIIL) in collaboration with Bharatiya Bhasha Samiti is an extensive initiative to create a grand repository of multilingual dictionaries. Real-time Translation Architecture, led by the National Education Technology Forum (NEFT) in collaboration with Bharatiya Bhasha Samiti, will facilitate the creation of a technological framework to enhance real-time translation capabilities in Bharatiya Bhasha.

More than 150 Vice Chancellors from across the country participated in the workshop. The Vice Chancellors were grouped into 12 Manthan Satra, each dedicated to planning and developing textbooks in 12 regional languages. The initial focus languages included Punjabi, Hindi, Sanskrit, Bengali, Urdu, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, and Odia. The groups were chaired by the respective VCs of the nodal universities, and their deliberations yielded valuable outcomes.

Key takeaways from the discussions included defining the creation of new textbooks in Bharatiya Bhasha, establishing standard vocabularies in 22 Bharatiya Bhasha for the books, and identifying potential improvements for current textbooks, emphasizing Indian Knowledge Systems (IKS) as one of the components, adding practical and theoretical knowledge. A Q-A session was organized, during which queries were addressed by the panel.

 

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