Lok Sabha expands translation services to six more languages, including Sanskrit

Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla on Tuesday announced that translation services in Parliament have been expanded to include six additional languages: Bodo, Dogri, Maithili, Manipuri, Urdu, and Sanskrit.

While addressing the House, Birla noted that previously, translation services were available in 10 languages—Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Odia, Punjabi, Tamil, and Telugu—along with Hindi and English.

"Now, we have also included six more languages—Bodo, Dogri, Maithili, Manipuri, Urdu, and Sanskrit. Along with this, for the additional 16 languages, as human resources become available, we are making efforts to provide simultaneous translations in those as well," he said.

Highlighting India's commitment to linguistic diversity, Birla emphasized that the country's parliamentary system is a democratic framework offering translation services in multiple languages.

"When I discussed at the global level that we are making this effort in 22 languages in India, everyone on the international platforms praised it. Our effort is that, for the 22 languages that are officially recognized, we aim to include them in the future as well," he stated.

However, the announcement faced opposition from DMK MP Dayanidhi Maran, who questioned the necessity of including Sanskrit in the simultaneous translation services. Maran argued that Sanskrit is spoken by only a small fraction of the population and questioned the expenditure of public funds on it.

"It is not communicable in any of the states in India. Nobody is speaking that. 2011 population survey said that only 73,000 people are supposed to be speaking. Why should the taxpayer's money be wasted because of your RSS ideologies?" Maran remarked.

Responding to the criticism, Speaker Om Birla strongly defended the decision, questioning Maran’s objection to Sanskrit’s inclusion. "This is India, whose 'Mool Bhasha' has been Sanskrit. That's why we mentioned 22 languages, not just Sanskrit. Why did you have an issue with Sanskrit?" Birla asked.