Shillong (Meghalaya), April 16: Hours after the Meghalaya Cabinet cleared Khasi and Garo as official languages alongside English, Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma summoned the Khasi Authors Society to the table, declaring the decision a first line, not a full stop, in the state’s linguistic turn.
Meeting Wednesday with Deputy Chief Ministers Prestone Tynsong and Sniawbhalang Dhar present, Sangma said the move answers a years-long public demand and backs the Assembly’s resolution seeking Eighth Schedule status for both tongues. It is, he argued, a message to the Centre and to citizens that local languages belong at every level of governance.
The rollout will be phased. Official communications, files, and exams will migrate in stages, but the Cabinet nod rewires the system to accept Khasi and Garo as standard, not exception. Sangma set a marker for the Autumn Session, envisioning debates in both languages inside the new assembly building as a fitting debut for the policy.
He asked the authors to help frame the rules, calling their scholarship vital to make the shift land with precision and purpose. Thanking the Khasi Authors Society and A’chik Literature Society for “relentless” advocacy, he said their work strengthened Meghalaya’s case before New Delhi. For the writers who turned protest into prose, Wednesday was proof that policy can finally speak the mother tongue.
