Central govt. sites start using Hindi Web addresses

• Union government websites are adopting Hindi Web addresses due to Universal Acceptance (UA), a movement advocating for more internet accessibility in languages other than English.

• The Ministry of Home Affairs uses a Hindi URL with both Hindi and English versions available under this address.

• The addresses replace India’s.in country code top-level domain with an Indian language equivalent.

• The challenge lies in the historical limitations of internationalised Web and email addresses, which are limited to American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII).

• Most Web browsers and commercial email services support IDNs, but non-Latin URLs are processed as a “Punycode” shorthand.

• The Union government has tried to encourage adoption of.bharat IDNs, which include 22 regional languages aside from Hindi, but private adoption has been scarce.

• The Centre’s own websites, such as the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and the National Internet Exchange of India, have adopted Hindi Web addresses for the Hindi version of their pages.