More govt websites now available through Hindi web addresses

This move follows years of effort under the Universal Acceptance (UA) initiative, which aims to make the internet accessible in languages other than English. A key part of this initiative includes the use of Internationalised Domain Names (IDNs), which allow website addresses and email IDs to be created in regional languages.

For example, the Ministry of Home Affairs now uses the Hindi web address गृहमंत्रालय.सरकार.भारत. This URL is a Hindi version of the ministry’s older English website address, mha.gov.in. Both the English and Hindi versions of the website can now be accessed from this new address. The Hindi address replaces the standard English country code domain “.in” with a Hindi-language version “.भारत”. Other Indian language equivalents, such as .இந்தியா for Tamil, are also available under this system.

For a long time, the domain name system (DNS) could only handle English characters due to early computer coding standards based on ASCII, which is mainly limited to English letters. This made it difficult to create websites or email addresses in other languages. But since the 1980s, researchers have been working on ways to support non-English characters online.

Today, most web browsers and email services do support IDNs, although they rely on a system called ‘Punycode’ to make it work behind the scenes. This means the browser reads a converted, code-like version of the address, but the user sees the name in their language. However, while many websites in India are available in local languages, their web addresses still use English letters.

The Indian government has been trying to promote the use of domain names like .भारत in multiple Indian languages. Several government bodies have taken the lead in this area. Ministries like the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, the Ministry of Minority Affairs, and the National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI) have added Hindi versions of their web addresses. NIXI, which manages the .in domain and other Indian language domains, also runs a platform called Bhashanet to help government agencies adopt IDNs.