UGC ask Universities and Colleges to observe 11 December as ‘Bharatiya Bhasha Diwas’

Tags: National

The Higher education sector regulator University Grants Commission (UGC) has asked all Universities and colleges in India to  observe a Bharatiya Bhasha Divas on 11 December  every year to create “language harmony” and develop a conducive environment for learning Indian languages.

This order of the UGC comes after a committee set up by the Union Education ministry to promote the Indian language proposed to observe December 11 as Bharatiya Bhasha Diwas or Bharatiya Bhasha Utsav on the birth anniversary of poet Subramania Bharati.

Subramania Bharati is considered to be a pioneer of modern Tamil poetry who penned songs to kindle patriotism during the Independence movement. 

The UGC said that there is a need to create ‘language harmony’, to develop a conducive environment for learning more and more Indian languages apart from mastering one’s own mother tongue. Commonalities in Indian languages have been one of the primary unifying factors of Indians,” 

University Grant Commission 

University Grant Commission was set up on the recommendation of the University Education Commission, which was set up in 1948 under the Chairmanship of Dr. S Radhakrishnan.

 The University Grants Commission (UGC) was formally inaugurated by the late  Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, the then Minister of Education, Natural Resources and Scientific Research on 28 December 1953.

The UGC, however, was formally established only in November 1956 as a statutory body of the Government of India through an Act of Parliament.

It comes under the Department of Higher Education, Union Ministry of Education.

Functions 

It has mainly two functions 

• It is responsible for the coordination, determination and maintenance of standards of university education in India.
• It provides fund to  the Central Universities and other Universities and Institutions of higher learning

Headquarters and Regional Centers

The headquarters of the UGC is in New Delhi 

The six regional centers of UGC are at Pune, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Bhopal, Guwahati and Bangalore.

Chairman: Professor M. Jagadesh Kumar.