PTI

New York, Jul 10: Coming as a good news to all Hindi lovers, writers, poets and intellectuals, the 8th World Hindi Conference will begin here this week to take stock of and give a new direction to propagation of the language across the globe.

The three-day conference starting July 13, will focus on strengthening the heritage of Hindi besides providing a forum to more than 1000 scholars and supporters of the language to present their ideas about what needs to be done to systematically advance its cause.

Indian Minister of State for External Affairs Anand Sharma will inaugurate the conference, the first timer in the United States, at the United Nations headquarters.

An academic session on "Hindi in the United Nations" will be held at the UN base while the rest of the sessions and the closing ceremony will take place at a different venue in downtown Manhattan.

The conference is expected to adopt a series of resolutions.

"The fact that the inauguration is being held at the United Nations is highly significant as it would give fillip to the demand that Hindi be made one of the official languages of the world body," Indian Consul-General Neelam Deo told reporters here.

At present, English, French, Russian, Chinese and Arabic are recognised as the official languages of the UN.

There will be overall nine sessions at the meet to discuss various aspects, including roles of information technology, translation and movies in the propagation of Hindi.