From Japan to US to Russia, Modi will speak in Hindi

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is likely to choose Hindi over English when he speaks to world leaders over the next few months and addresses the United Nations General Assembly at the end of September.

Updated on: Jul 31, 2014, 01:31:47 IST

Hindustan Times | By Shishir Gupta, New Delhi

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi is likely to choose Hindi over English when he speaks to world leaders over the next few months and addresses the United Nations General Assembly at the end of September.

According to South Block sources, Modi wants to speak in Hindi because he feels he can then better use idiom and nuance as well as calibrate the flow of the conversation.

“The prime minister is seized of the fact that a considerable number of Indian diplomats would like him to speak in English. (But) while the PM speaks English fluently, he conveys his thoughts better in Hindi,” said a senior official.

Many of his core supporters in the Bharatiya Janata Party are in favour of “Modi being Modi” and speaking in Hindi, the official added.

The Indian Prime Minister is slated to travel to Nepal in early August, Japan and the United States in September, and then host the presidents of China and Russia for summit level talks before the end of the year.

“Backing his likely adoption of Hindi as his language of diplomatic communication, officials say Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe speaks English fluently but only speaks in Japanese in official diplomatic engagements. Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang is also comfortable in English but prefers to speak in Chinese with world leaders.

“Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks German fluently, but talks in Russian to Chancellor Angela Merkel during bilateral talks,” said the official.

While speaking in Hindi will not be an issue during the August 3-4 visit to Nepal, it is likely to be the subject of some debate during the Japan and US visits. Modi is due to meet President Barack Obama on September 30 and address the UN General Assembly around that time.

Atal Behari Vajpayee addressed the UN assembly in Hindi when he was foreign minister in the Morarji Desai-led Janata Dal government in the late 1970s.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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