• The Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) has envisaged a special project called ‘The Language Friendship Bridge’, which plans to train five to 10 people in the official languages of Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Uzbekistan, Indonesia.
• Objective
  • To expand its cultural footprint in nations with which it has historical ties.
  • To facilitate better people-to-people exchanges.
• As of now, the ICCR has zeroed in on 10 languages: Kazakh, Uzbek, Bhutanese, Ghoti (spoken in Tibet), Burmese, Khmer (spoken in Cambodia), Thai, Sinhalese and Bahasa (spoken in both Indonesia and Malaysia).
• Implementation- ICCR has discussed two possibilities for implementing this project
  • One is to institute tie-ups wherein teachers from these countries come and teach courses in India.
  • The second approach is ICCR offering scholarships to Indian students to go and study these languages in the countries where they are spoken.

About ICCR

• The Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR), is an autonomous organisation under the administrative control of Ministry of External Affairs.
• It is involved in India’s global cultural relations, through cultural exchange with other countries and their people.
• It was founded on 9 April 1950 by Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, the first Education Minister of independent India.
• Headquarters- New Delhi.
• The council also operates missions internationally.