Fiji to host World Hindi Conference for first time in 2023

The three-day conference is meant to promote Hindi globally

Fiji will host the prestigious World Hindi Conference for the first time next year to make the country a new launching pad to popularise Hindi as a global language, according to Indian High Commissioner to the South Pacific nation P S Kartigeyan.

The decision to host the World Hindi Conference in Fiji was jointly taken by the Indian and the Fijian government, The Fiji Times reported.

The three-day conference, which would be held in the Fijian city of Nadi and envisaged to promote Hindi globally, would see the participation of over 1,000 experts of the Indian language, including scholars, writers and laureates, the newspaper quoted Kartigeyan as saying.

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"Fiji will host the prestigious World Hindi Conference for the first time next year. I’m not at liberty to announce the dates though it has been finalised by both the governments. We hope that it will be formally announced very soon," he said.

Kartigeyan, who took over as the High Commissioner of the archipelago nation in January, 2021, said the event would be co-hosted by both the Indian and the Fijian governments.

"I can broadly indicate it’s going to happen sometime in the first quarter of next year and it’s being planned in Nadi and this event will be co-hosted by both the Government of India and Government of Fiji," he said.

Talking about the agenda of the event, he said that about 1,000 delegates from around the world will participate in the event. He said this included a good number of participants from Fiji but also from major Hindi speaking countries around the globe.

“It’s going to be a major event and this is the first time it’s happening in Fiji and the Southern Hemisphere," he said.

Hindi has a very special place in Fiji. It is one of the three official languages and Fiji-Hindi itself has a very unique history thanks to the girmit brothers and sisters who came here 130 years back. Karthigeyan also acknowledged the contribution of Fijian scholars in developing Hindi not just in Fiji, but across the world through the Fiji diaspora.

“It is a unique opportunity to celebrate this relationship and the cultural link that we have with Fiji so we are excited and happy to host this prestigious event and we look forward to a successful event,” he said.

According to the United Nations (2020), Fiji has a population of more than 896,000 and out of which over 30 per cent is of Indian-origin. Many Indians arrived in Fiji as indentured labour in the 19th century.