Hindi cannot be made compulsory in Meghalaya; Ampareen Lyngdoh

During the 37th Parliamentary Official Language Committee meeting, Union Home Minister Amit Shah urged that people speak to each other in Hindi rather than English. He also suggested that Hindi, rather than local languages, should be accepted as an alternative to English.  Shah further claimed that nine indigenous communities in the Northeast had switched to Devanagari script.

Meanwhile, suspended Congress politician Ampareen Lyngdoh chastised the Centre on Friday for imposing Hindi on the Northeast, claiming that Meghalaya has a framework in place to prevent the Centre from making the language compulsory in schools.

"In our state, we have sufficient defense to prevent the Indian government from imposing its will." We can't allow it because the state's two main languages are Khasi and Garo," she explained.

On Thursday, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, who is also the Chairman of the Parliamentary Official Language Committee, announced that 22,000 Hindi instructors had been hired across the Northeast's eight states, and that all of them had agreed to make Hindi obligatory up to Class X.

Lyngdoh asserted that Meghalaya is a Sixth Schedule state, and that any diktat from the Indian government would be ineffective in the state.

"It will be extremely harmful if my children are unable to learn my language." "It's very conceivable that my language will vanish and become extinct," she said.