Professor Biman Prasad has urged Parliament to make formal Hindi and iTaukei (Vosa Vakaviti) compulsory subjects in Fijian primary schools up to Year 8, arguing the change would deepen cultural understanding and strengthen national unity. Prasad, leader of the National Federation Party, put forward the proposal during a hearing of the Standing Committee on Justice, Law and Human Rights on the Education Bill on Thursday.
Prasad said pupils should still have the option of studying one of the two languages as a vernacular subject, and that many young Fijians were eager to learn the languages of other communities. He told the committee that cultural and religious organisations — naming groups such as TISI Sangam, the Fiji Muslim League and Chinese and Gujarati community bodies — should be supported by government to hire teachers to offer other mother tongues, including Tamil, Urdu, Mandarin and Gujarati, for students who wish to learn them in addition to either formal Hindi or iTaukei.
“This is the ideal and most logical way to start a national wave of understanding each other’s language, culture, tradition and custom, and the best platform to inculcate genuine unity in our multi-ethnic, multi-religious and multi-racial nation,” Prasad said, framing the proposal as a vehicle for social cohesion rather than solely a curriculum change.
A central point of contention in the committee debate has been which form of Hindi should be taught. Prasad strongly criticised efforts to promote Fiji Hindi — the local colloquial variety spoken widely in Indo‑Fijian communities — over formal Hindi. He told MPs that Hindi scriptures and many religious texts are written in formal Hindi and not in Fiji Hindi, and that privileging the latter risks undermining Indo‑Fijian cultural and religious heritage.
Prasad also expressed displeasure with provisions in the 2013 Constitution that, he said, enshrine “conversational and contemporary Hindi and iTaukei” as compulsory subjects in all primary schools. “Those who insist on promoting Fiji Hindi and the 2013 Constitution that states conversational and contemporary Hindi and iTaukei be taught as compulsory subjects at all primary schools are totally unacceptable,” he said during the hearing, signalling his view that constitutional language should not pre-determine the register of Hindi taught in classrooms.
The proposal put to the committee combines a push for a standardised core curriculum in the two dominant languages with a decentralised approach to preserving other mother tongues through faith- and community-based institutions. If taken forward, it would require curriculum adjustments, new teacher recruitment or retraining, and likely funding arrangements to enable community organisations to hire language instructors.
The committee hearing marks the latest development in an ongoing debate about language policy in Fiji’s education system, where questions over which dialects and registers to teach intersect with identity, religion and cultural preservation. Prasad’s submission frames the choice not as a technical linguistic matter but as central to safeguarding cultural practices and scripture access for Indo‑Fijian communities, while also promoting wider intercommunal understanding through expanded language learning opportunities.
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