In order to boost the cultural, literary and linguistic connections between Iran and India, the External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar announced that the Government of India has decided to include Farsi (Persian) as one of the classical languages in India under the New Education Policy.

Background

• It is the official language of Iran, and two varieties of Persian known as Dari and Tajik are official languages in Afghanistan and Tajikistan, respectively.
• It has about 62 million native speakers, ranking it among the world’s 20 most widely spoken first languages.
• Significant populations of Farsi speakers can be found in other Persian Gulf countries (Bahrain, Iraq, Oman, Yemen, and the United Arab Emirates), as well as large communities in the US.

About Farsi Language

• Farsi, also known as Persian Language, is the most widely spoken member of the Iranian branch of the Indo-Iranian languages, a subfamily of the Indo-European languages.
• Farsi in Iran is written in a variety of the Arabic script called Perso-Arabic, which has some innovations to account for Persian phonological differences.
• This script came into use in Persia after the Islamic conquest in the seventh century.
• Its relatives are the languages of northern India and, more distantly, the major European languages including English.

Classical Languages in India

• The Classical Languages in India are listed in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution. 
• The Ministry of Culture provides guidelines to be fulfilled to be categorized as a classical language in India.
• Currently, six languages ‘Classical’ status: Tamil (declared in 2004), Sanskrit (2005), Kannada (2008), Telugu (2008), Malayalam (2013), and Odia (2014).