The Union Cabinet on Thursday approved conferring the status of classical language to Marathi, Pali, Prakrit, Assamese and Bengali languages.
The decision was taken at a meeting of the Union Cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
"This is a historical decision and this decision goes very well with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the NDA government's philosophy of taking ride in our culture, taking pride in our heritage and taking pride in all the Indian languages and the rich heritage that we have," Information and Broadcasting Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said at a cabinet briefing.
The classical languages serve as a custodian of Bharat's profound and ancient cultural heritage, embodying the essence of each community's historical and cultural milestone, the government said.
The government of India decided to create a new category of languages as "classical languages" on October 12, 2004 declaring Tamil as classical language and thereafter Sanskrit, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam and Odia languages were given classical language status.
A government statement said that a proposal from the Maharashtra government in 2013 was received in the ministry requesting classical language status to Marathi, which was forwarded to the Linguistics Experts Committee.
The LEC recommended Marathi for classical language. -- PTI