For the first time Regional Hindi Conference was held in Fiji and the first three speakers spoke in support of Fiji Hindi.

This despite opposition to the decision by commercial radio station Mirchi FM to start using Fiji Hindi from the beginning of this year.

Fiji Hindi is spoken and understood by all Indo Fijians on a daily basis

One of the speakers at the regional conference and a former journalist, Ashok Lingam says formal Hindi has been getting very difficult for Indo-Fijians to understand for many decades now.

“For Fiji Hindi, I would say that it is a very good conversational language. It is our language, it is based on our soil, it is based in our hearts so for a conversation that we use between us, between the i-taukei person and between India, it is very fine but when you start looking at formal situations than you have to have standard Hindi. Standard Hindi can be simplified. It does not have to have huge words so that people do not understand.”

Hindi Scholar and Teacher Nemani Bainivalu also agreed with the use of Fiji Hindi.

“Fiji Hindi should be taught in all i-taukei schools, i-taukei run schools or the schools that have majority i-taukei students and pure Hindi should be taught in all Indo Fijian or Indian schools.”

Hindi Language Academic, Manisha Ramrakha also shared similar sentiments.

“It’s very very important to keep alive this Fiji Hindi in Fiji but at a conversational level and understand each other and talk to get their feelings but my point was this that at the study level we should maintain the recognized Hindi.”

Some speakers have also proposed that those who support formal Hindi should ensure that their children learn the language through religious and educational institutions.