As someone with a doctorate in Hindi, lyricist-poet Irshad Kamil loves the language. On Hindi Diwas today, the 54-year-old talks about the presence of Hindi in films and how it can be ameliorated.

Today, every music creator is making music for a pan-India audience. In this scenario, there are some languages that can help you communicate with a wider audience — Hindi, English and Punjabi. So, in today’s Hindi film music, the presence of Hindi is major, but it coexists with English, Punjabi and Bhojpuri.

Punjabi music is beat based, and the entertainment industry needs that kind of vibrancy to compel you to dance. Punjab has given so much talent to the film industry. Music directors like Gulam Haider, Hansraj Behl, Madan Mohan and O P Nayyar, and lyricists like Sahir Ludhianvi, Gulshan Bawra, Anand Bakshi, Gulzar and I belong to Punjab. When a person travels, their language travels, too.

Steps have been taken to better the presence of Hindi in our films. Now, film titles and credits are in Hindi too. I feel directors can create more situations where only Hindi can be used for lyrics and dialogues. Also, scriptwriters can come up with more interesting stories of interior parts of India. We can also make more original Indian music, rather than aping western beats. I wish that someday, we create music free from the burden of Reels, Shorts or TikTok, etc.

I feel Hindi films and music should be the torchbearer and take the initiative to connect them with the language. Hindi film and non-film music is fairly playing this part. There are so many youngsters who learn new Hindi words through film music.