Paras Ra­moutar

The High Com­mis­sion of In­dia is an im­por­tant agency to fos­ter in­ter­est to­wards Hin­di in Trinidad, ac­cord­ing to Suni­ta Pahu­ja, sec­ond sec­re­tary, Hin­di and Cul­ture. Un­der its var­i­ous schemes for pro­mot­ing Hin­di, the High Com­mis­sion has been run­ning Hin­di teach­ing class­es for the past 20 years, and dur­ing this pe­ri­od more than 10,000 peo­ple of var­i­ous eth­nic and cul­tur­al back­grounds have be­come grad­u­ates who can now speak, un­der­stand, read and write Hin­di. Two new cen­tres will be opened in Sep­tem­ber as well. They are the Kabir Up­desh Ashram in Freeport, and Bharat Se­va Sangh Ashram in Fe­lic­i­ty, Pahu­ja said.

At present, the High Com­mis­sion of In­dia is run­ning sev­en cen­tres across Trinidad. These are in Port-of-Spain, Ca­roni, Di­vali Na­gar, San Fer­nan­do, San­gre Grande, Val­sayn and Debe. Two more cen­tres are like­ly to open this year-at Kabir Up­de­shashram, Freeport, and Bharat Se­wa Sangh Ashram, Fe­lic­i­ty. Class­es are held in the evening to fa­cil­i­tate the work­ing peo­ple who as­pire to learn Hin­di, Pahu­ja added. Teach­ers at these cen­tres have been im­part­ed train­ing at the High Com­mis­sion of In­dia over the past years by the Hin­di pro­fes­sors spon­sored by IC­CR, In­dia, and these teach­ers have been teach­ing for ap­prox­i­mate­ly 20 years now. Some In­dia-based teach­ers al­so ren­der their ser­vices vol­un­tar­i­ly for strength­en­ing the con­ver­sa­tion as­pect in the class­es, Pahu­ja re­vealed.

The High Com­mis­sion of In­dia pro­vides re­source ma­te­r­i­al for these class­es such as Hin­di books, CDs, on­line pro­grammes, etc. Com­pe­ti­tions for var­i­ous ac­tiv­i­ties to pro­mote Hin­di learn­ing are al­so or­gan­ised and prizes are dis­trib­uted on Hin­di Day (Sep­tem­ber every year) and World Hin­di Day (Jan­u­ary every year). The cer­tifi­cates for these ex­ams are giv­en away at a grand cel­e­bra­tion at In­dia House on Hin­di Day. The best three stu­dents are al­so award­ed cash prizes by Bank of Bar­o­da. Stu­dents of these class­es al­so get an op­por­tu­ni­ty to show­case their Hin­di singing, speak­ing and com­pre­hen­sion abil­i­ties dur­ing these cel­e­bra­tions. Pahu­ja said: "Hin­di class­es are con­duct­ed at three lev­els, Be­gin­ners, In­ter­me­di­ate and Ad­vanced. Those com­plet­ing the Ad­vanced lev­el be­come el­i­gi­ble to ap­ply for a schol­ar­ship course of Hin­di study in In­dia for which in­ter­na­tion­al fares are borne by Gov­ern­ment of In­dia."

Two stu­dents-Al­isha Khan and Va­sudev Seer­am-have availed this schol­ar­ship and com­plet­ed their Hin­di study suc­cess­ful­ly in the year 2010-11. Four can­di­dates have been se­lect­ed for the year 2011-12 un­der the scheme of "Prop­a­ga­tion of Hin­di Abroad." The scheme is ad­min­is­tered by the Kendriya Hin­di Sansthan, Agra, un­der the Min­istry of Hu­man Re­source De­vel­op­ment, Gov­ern­ment of In­dia. Stu­dents can al­so ap­ply for cor­re­spon­dence cours­es from Cen­tral Hin­di Di­rec­torate, In­dia. which are of­fered at four lev­els: cer­tifi­cate, diplo­ma, ad­vanced diplo­ma and post ad­vanced diplo­ma.