Aligarh: It is vitally important to educate children in their mother tongue, experts said at a seminar where other speakers called on the government to promote Urdu.

Aligarh Muslim University's (AMU) T.B. Chakrborty pointed out that experts and linguistics feel that the mother tongue was the best medium for educating children.

Jasim Mohammad, editor of The Aligarh Movement magazine, said official apathy had badly wounded Urdu. "It has become almost impossible to educate our children in that language."

He said while the freedom struggle was fought on the Urdu slogan 'Inquilab Zindabad', today communal groups have erected a wall between Urdu and Hindi "when both are Indian Languages".

Millat Bedari Muhim Committee (MBMC) president Razaullah Khan complained that regional languages were not getting due attention in the media and in the government.

Shaikh Mastan, chairman of Modern Indian Languages at AMU, called for the use of mother tongue at primary levels of education. IANS