Hindi in Texas school district welcomed by Indo-Americans

Written by Phil Cerroni

Indo-Americans have welcomed introduction of Hindi, official language of India, in Hurst-Euless-Bedford Independent School District (HEBISD) headquartered in Bedford and urged it to offer other languages of India also.

Indo-American statesman Rajan Zed commended HEBISD for offering Hindi and urged school districts around the country to offer Indian languages like Hindi, Bengali, Telugu, Marathi, Tamil, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Punjabi, etc., in their schools.

Rajan Zed, who is Chairperson of Indo-American Leadership Confederation, further said that besides learning the rich languages and culture of India, it would also make a good business sense to open-up the American children to these as India was on track to become a global power. Moreover, USA being a culturally diverse society, introducing languages of India would bring more cohesiveness and harmony in the communities. In addition, American children of India-descent would be able to keep their languages, traditions and culture alive and intact.

“Today, China and India are powerful players in the global economy…Students in HEB ISD can get the competitive advantage by enrolling in Hindi or Mandarin Chinese classes”, a district website states and lists Hindi among languages “essential to success in a global marketplace”.

Seventh, eighth and ninth graders are able to take these classes. These courses are part of the district’s International Business Initiative, which will set students on a course to success in college and in the workforce, HEBISD states.

Hindustani is reportedly the fourth highly spoken language in the world after Chinese, Spanish and English and has more speakers than Arabic, Portuguese, Russian, Japanese, German, French, Italian, Dutch, etc.