Vice president M Venkaiah Naidu on Thursday advised the Union and the State governments to link employment opportunities with the knowledge of Indian languages so that people learn their mother tongue, seeing a future in it.

While addressing an event organised by the HRD ministry on the eve of the International Mother Language Day, he also made a strong pitch for making mother tongue a compulsory medium of instruction in schools, at least upto primary level, to preserve and promote Indian languages.

“It is not because of fascination people are running behind English medium schools. They feel their future will be better if they learn English. Britishers linked employment with English. We must also link employment with language at certain level. You (governments) must assure their future is bright if they learn their mother tongue. Everybody will then learn (Indian languages),” he said.

He said that his suggestion for linking employment opportunities, particularly in the States, with the respective Indian languages should not be seen as “radical.”

“We must think of making the knowledge of Indian languages compulsory for recruitment to State government jobs. There has to be a link between language and employment,” he added.

He said making mandatory use of mother tongue as medium of instruction in schools was the need of the hour, not just to preserve and protect the Indian languages and the knowledge associated with them, but to also improve the learning outcome of the students.

“A number of studies conducted all over the world by different expert groups have established the fact that teaching of mother tongue at the initial stages of education gives impetus to the growth of mind and thought and makes children more creative and logical,” he said.

Along with mother tongue, students must also be encouraged to learn multiple languages in order to widen their horizons, he said.