Tharoor at it again! Favours Modi's language challenge

Congress leader and MP Shashi Tharoor on Friday supported PM Narendra Modi's initiative of suggesting every citizen to learn one word a day in any Indian language. The move apparently aims to highlight India's 'Unity in Diversity'.

READ: Tharoor's language learning goes wrong in Malayalam

In the 2011 census, as in the previous censuses, the mother tongue as returned by each individual was collected through question number 10 of Household Schedule, which was canvassed for the entire population of the country. An inventory of classified mother tongues returned by 10,000 or more speakers are grouped under appropriate languages at the all India level, wherever possible, has been prepared for the final presentation of the 2011 mother tongue data. The total number of languages arrived at is 121. The number of Scheduled languages are 22 and Non-Scheduled languages are 99. Of the total population of India, 96.71 percent have one of the Scheduled languages as their mother tongue, the remaining 3.29 percent is accounted for by other languages.

Congress leader Shashi Tharoor tweeted that it is a welcome move from 'Hindi dominance' and said he would take up the #LanguageChallenge. He also tweeted three different variations of the word 'pluralism': In English, Hindi, and Malayalam.

Recently, Tharoor came under criticism from several senior party colleagues in Kerala for his comments that Modi should be praised for doing the right things but the Congress MP had remained unfazed, saying there was nothing wrong in his stand. While K Muraleedharan, Kerala MP, had said those who wanted to praise Modi should join BJP, another party MP, Benny Behanan, said glorifying the Prime Minister was not the job of Congressmen. Tharoor later clarified that he has been a strong critic of Modi and urged fellow Congressmen to respect his approach even when they don't agree with it.