World Hindi Day 2024: Date, History, Significance And More

Hindi is the third most spoken language in the world after Mandarin Chinese and English. A few reports suggest there are over 600 million Hindi speakers worldwide.

World Hindi Day, also known as Vishwa Hindi Diwas, aims to raise awareness about the language, promote its use and to celebrate the contributions of scholars and writers in this language.

This day is observed every year on January 10. It is especially celebrated by Indian embassies abroad to spread awareness about Hindi. Several events are also held across the country to commemorate this day.

The first World Hindi Conference was held in Nagpur, Maharashtra, in 1975, which was inaugurated by then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. The event saw participation from 30 countries. Since its inception, the conference has been held every three years. Till now, 11 such conferences have been organised in different parts of the world.

In 2006, Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh declared January 10 would be observed as World Hindi Day.

Often, World Hindi Day is confused with National Hindi Diwas. While World Hindi Day marks the first World Hindi Conference, National Hindi Diwas is celebrated in India on September 14. The latter marks the adoption of Hindi as one of the official languages by the Constituent Assembly of India in 1949, besides English.