JEDDAH — Hindi Divas was celebrated at Indian Consulate General premises on Monday with fervor, with three members of the Indian community feted for their efforts in writing in Hindi with flair. The Head of Chancery and Consul Education Mohd. Raghib Qureshi was the chief guest on this occasion. Qureshi, in his address, stressed on the importance of reading, writing and speaking Hindi as it is one of the official languages of India. He also highlighted the history of Hindi Divas. An essay writing competition was organized for the day with the participants asked to write on any of the three topics — Smart Cities, India's Foreign Policy and Make in India. Competition was keen and the essays submitted were interesting and intuitive. The top three awards were won by Mahesh (first prize), Sandeep Kumar (second prize) and Sanjay Gupta (third prize) in that order. The winners also spoke passionately about their essays, while highlighting the key points that made the difference in them winning awards for the day. Also called Hindi Diwas (or Hindi Day), it is an annual literary day marked on Sept .14 in Hindi speaking regions of India and other countries where Hindi-speaking population is there. The day is marked in order to propagate the Hindi language and its cultural heritage and values. The celebration includes feasts, events, competitions and other services held on this day. The event also serves as a patriotic reminder to Hindi-speaking populations of their common roots and unity. Hindi is the second largest language in the world and also one of the official languages of the government of India. Hindi is spoken as a native language by 258 million people. The event is celebrated on Sept. 14 because on this day in 1949, the Constituent Assembly of India had adopted Hindi, written in Devanagari script, as the official language of India. The decision of using Hindi as the official language was ratified by the Constitution of India that came into effect on Jan. 26 1950. There are 22 scheduled languages in India. There are two official languages: Hindi and English.
