Simplify Hindi news to reach masses: Ambika Soni

NEW DELHI - The Hindi media should use simpler words to reach out to the non-Hindi speaking population, Information and Broadcasting Minister Ambika Soni said Tuesday.

“Some papers use very difficult Hindi words which cannot be understood by those who don’t have Hindi as their mother tongue,” Soni said while participating in a seminar on the Hindi media on the occasion of ‘Hindi Divas’.

Union Public Service Comission (UPSC) board member Purushottam Agarwal, CNN-IBN chief editor Rajdeep Sardesai, writer Namwar Singh, Hindi expert of Spanish origin Oscar Pujol, poet Ashok Chakradhar and editor and publisher of Hindi newspaper Dainik Bhaskar Ramesh Chandra Agarwal, among others, participated in the event.

While Namwar Singh expressed apprehensions about the increased mix of languages used in the media, Pujol found colonialism the reason for continuing supremacy of English. Purushottam Agarwal, meanwhile, stressed on increasing knowledge literature in the language.

Hindi Divas is celebrated Sep 14 to mark the day in 1949 the Constituent Assembly adopted Hindi as the national language.