Eminent linguist and folklorist Mahendra Kumar Mishra from Odisha has been nominated for UNESCO’s International Mother Language Award 2023 for his lifetime service for promotion of mother language in India.

In a communiqué to Mishra, Director general of International Mother Tongue Institute (IMLI), Dhaka, Prof Hakim Arif, has invited him to the awards ceremony.

Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina will formally award the medal to Mishra at the institute on February 21.

February 21 is celebrated as the International Mother Language Day, as declared by the United Nations in 2000.

Language Movement Day, also called Language Martyrs' Day, is observed in Bangladesh on February 21 for commemorating the language martyrs of East Pakistan who fought imposition of Urdu and established Bangla as their official language nearly two decades before Bangladesh became an independent country.

Mishra was the state coordinator for Multilingual Education (1996- 2010) and was a pioneer in adopting mother tongue based multilingual education in primary schools.

He was also instrumental in promoting endangered languages in school education and his trial in using folklore in school curriculum has been widely applied in the elementary schools of Odisha and Chhattisgarh.

The linguist had received the Odisha Sahitya Akademi Award in 1999. He was also the receipient of Veer Shankar Shah Raghunath Award, instituted by the government of Madhya Pradesh, in 2009.

He was also awarded by the Kalevala Institute, Turku, Finland for translation of Finnish epic- Kalevala- into Odia in 2001.

Mishra is a member of the Language Development Board of Central Sahitya Akademi.

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