Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury on Friday wrote to PM Narendra Modi urging him to make Bengali a classical language in the government's New Education Policy.
Wanting to know why Bengali was not considered as a classical language, he said, "I wish to draw your attention to the following. Today is the 79th death anniversary of Kobiguru Rabindra Nath Tagore, who was the first non- European poet to receive the Nobel prize, in 1913. It is my simple question why the Bengali language has not been recognised as a classical language in the New Education Policy."
"What are the attributes needed for enlisting a language in the pantheon of classical languages? While Bengali is the fifth most spoken language in the world, it also has a an original literary tradition. Anthropological and archaeological evidence suggests that Bengali speaking people are a conglomerate of several racial elements welded together by the Bengali language," he said.
( With inputs from ANI )