Bhubaneswar, Sep 29 : Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday heaped praises on Odisha youth Ramjeet Tudu for his unique campaign to preserve the Santhali language and Ol Chiki lipi.

Tudu, a resident of Mayurbhanj district, is currently working as an Assistant Revenue Inspector in Keonjhar district of the state.

During the 114th episode of his weekly Man ki Baat address, PM Modi that a child learns his mother tongue easily and quickly, adding that India has almost 20,000 languages and dialects and each one of them is surely the mother tongue of someone or the other

'There are some languages which are used by very few people, but you will be happy to know that today, unique efforts are being made to preserve those languages. One such language is our 'Santhali' language. A campaign has been started to give a new identity to Santhali with the help of digital innovation. 'Santhali' is spoken by the people of the Santhal tribal community residing in many states of our country,' stated PM Modi.

The Prime Minister further noted that many tribal communities, apart from India, in neighbouring Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan speak in Santhali.

'Shriman Ramjeet Tudu, a resident of Mayurbhanj, Odisha is running a campaign to create an online identity of the Santhali language. Ramjeet ji has prepared a digital platform where literature related to the Santhali language can be read and written in the Santhali language. Actually, a few years ago when Ramjit ji started using the mobile phone, he was saddened by the fact that he could not send messages in his mother tongue,' added PM Modi.

'After that, he started exploring the possibilities of typing 'Ol Chiki', a script of the Santhali language. With the help of some of his friends, he developed the technique of typing in 'Ol Chiki'. Today, due to his efforts, articles written in the Santhali language are reaching millions of people,' said the PM.

Speaking to media persons, an elated Tudu said that he is happy and feels proud that the Prime Minister of India has praised his small effort on his programme.

'I started work on the digital platform for the Santhali Language in 2015 and the digitisation work is continuing till date. Initially, no tools were supporting the Ol Chiki dialect but now they are available on the internet. However, there is a lack of enough content in the Santhali language and to address that problem, we have been writing on Wikimedia's project Wikipedia. This apart, we have launched a website 'Birmali' which is the first Santhali eMagazine where we publish the works of various writers. We are providing the Santhali language and literature to the people accessing the internet,' said Tudu.

He urged the youths that many languages in the world have completely gone extinct. He stated that if we continue our efforts then a language and its heritage can be preserved.

/IANS