Uttarakhand is all set to retire Urdu signboards at its railway stations and pave way for Sanskrit.
Bengaluru: Next time, when you travel on a train and deboard it in a Uttarakhand station, you might be pleasantly surprised to see the name of the railway station in Sanskrit, apart from Hindi and English.
The move comes in the wake of the railway manual which specifies that the second language of the state has to be used along with Hindi and English. So with Sanskrit as the second language of the state, this decision has been taken.
It might be recalled that the second language status was given to Sanskrit in the year 2010.
This also means that all Urdu signboards will be retired, ‘Sanskritizing’ the entire process.
As per a Times of India report, Deepak Kumar, chief public relations officer, Northern Railway, said, “As per the railway manuals, the names of railway stations are to be written on signboards in the state’s second language other than Hindi and English.”
But why Urdu was being used?
“Earlier, Urdu was used on signboards since Uttarakhand was part of UP where Urdu is the second language. We are now making the change after someone pointed this out,” he adds.
Times of India also added that the second language issue was pointed out only recently. Rekha Sharma, senior divisional commercial manager (DCM), said, “It was pointed out to us recently that
Sanskrit is the second language of Uttarakhand. Hence, names of railway stations should be in Sanskrit too. However, it is a daunting task for us to know how the names of cities will be written in Sanskrit.”
SK Agarwal from the commerce and tax department at Dehradun railways said, “We have written to all the district magistrates of Uttarakhand where railway stations exist to give us the right spellings of their railway stations in Hindi, English and Sanskrit. We are awaiting their replies.”
However, since the scrips used by both the languages are the same, there won’t be much difference.
Read Exclusive COVID-19 Coronavirus News updates, at MyNation.