Sat Apr 12 06:51:51 UTC 2025: ## India Pushes for Multilingual Internet: Government Leads the Way with Hindi Web Addresses

**New Delhi, April 12, 2025** – The Indian government is spearheading a drive to make the internet more accessible in regional languages, with numerous Union government websites now using Hindi web addresses. This follows years of advocacy by the Universal Acceptance (UA) movement, which promotes wider internet availability in languages beyond English.

The initiative focuses on internationalized domain names (IDNs) and email addresses. The Ministry of Home Affairs, for example, now primarily uses a Hindi URL (गृहमंत्रालय.सरकार.भारत), mirroring its existing English URL (mha.gov.in). This utilizes India’s country code top-level domain in Hindi.

Historically, the challenge has been technical limitations of the domain name system (DNS), which initially only supported ASCII characters (primarily English). While most browsers now support IDNs, often through a “Punycode” workaround, widespread adoption remains low. Despite a push for .bharat IDNs in 22 regional languages, including Tamil (.இந்தியா), uptake by private entities has been minimal.

Several other ministries, including Electronics and IT, and the National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI), have also adopted Hindi web addresses, often aided by Bhashanet, a government portal designed to assist with IDN implementation. However, private sector adoption across all Indian languages remains extremely limited.

Ajay Data, a technology CEO and long-time UA advocate, highlights the need for a clear benefit to incentivize website adoption of regional language addresses. While technical hurdles have largely been overcome, the challenge now lies in persuading organizations to shift from the English default and embrace multilingual web addresses.

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