Hindi professors have written to PM Narendra Modi requesting not to add dialects of Hindi such as Bhojpuri and Rajasthani in the 8th schedule as full fledged Indian languages.
Rajasthani would be added to 8th schedule, according to an announcement by Union Minister Arjun Ram Meghwal.
In December 2016, Bihar CM Nitish Kumar raised a similar demand for Bhojpuri.
Eighth schedule means independence in the identity of the language. Hindi's prime strength is its large number of speakers.
Dialects being recognised as separate languages will lessen the force of Hindi. In fact, there will be no Hindi language if key dialects are recognised as separate languages.
About the 8th Schedule- This lists the official languages recognised by the Constitution
- Contains a list of 22 Scheduled languages.
- Initially, there were 14 languages only; 8 were added by amendments.
- These include:
1. Sindhi: Added by 21st AA 1967
2. Konkani, Manipuri, Nepali: Added by 71st AA 1992
3. Bodo, Dogri, Maithili, Santhal: Added by 92nd AA 2003
- Apart from these, the languages include:
1. Assamese
2. Bengali
3. Hindi
4. Gujarati
5. Kannada
6. Kashmiri
7. Malayalam
8. Marathi
9. Punjabi
10. Odia
11. Sanskrit
12. Tamil
13. Urdu
14. Telugu
