INTERNATIONAL MOTHER TONGUE DAY

• Recently, the Ministry of Education has launched a 100 days reading campaign ‘Padhe Bharat’ (1st January to 10th April 2022).
• 21st February, which is celebrated as International Mother Tongue Day, has also been integrated with this campaign in a view to promote the local language and culture of our society.

Important points:

• The Campaign is in alignment with the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, which emphasises on promotion of joyful reading culture for children by ensuring availability of age appropriate reading books for children in local/mother tongue/regional/tribal Language.
• The NEP 2020 aims at making “India a global knowledge superpower”.
• The NEP is only the third major revamp of the framework of education in India since independence. The two earlier education policies were brought in 1968 and 1986.
• It will focus on children studying in Balvatika to Grade 8.
• This campaign has also been aligned with the vision and goals of the Foundational Literacy and Numeracy Mission.
• It aims to have the participation of all stakeholders at the national and state level including children, teachers, parents, community, educational administrators etc.

International Mother Tongue Day:

• UNESCO declared 21st February as International Mother Language Day in 1999 and the World has been celebrating the same since 2000. The day also commemorates a long struggle by Bangladesh to protect its mother language Bangla.
• The resolution to mark 21st February as the International Mother Language Day was suggested by Rafiqul Islam, a Bangladeshi living in Canada. He proposed the said date to commemorate the 1952 killings in Dhaka during the Bangla Language Movement.
• The initiative is aimed at preserving and promoting mother languages. The aim is to protect the diverse culture and intellectual heritage of different regions of the world.

SOURCE: THE HINDU,THE ECONOMIC TIMES,MINT