Congress Lok Sabha MP and party leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury on Friday wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi urging him to include Bengali in the list of classical languages in the National Education Policy 2020 (NEP).
The MP from Murshidabad district asked why Bengali has been sidelined in the NEP. Anthropological and archaeological evidence, he said, suggested that Bengali-speaking people were a conglomerate of several racial elements welded together by the language.
He said the NEP stated that “in addition to Sanskrit, other classical languages and literatures of India, including Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Odia, Pali, Persian, and Prakrit, will also be widely available in schools as options for students.”
Mr. Chowdhury said, “Therefore, I would urge upon you to include Bengali language in the list of classical languages in the New Education Policy of India after delving deep into the entire gamut of qualifications to determine the list of classical languages in the country.”