Best German learners are in India: Steiner

He said, “I am deeply confident that after the meeting of our leaders —Prime Minister Modi and German Chancellor Angela Merkel — and also the talks here in India, I am deeply confident that India will find a tactical solution in accordance with the Indian law which will allow two things — to preserve the cultural identity and to continue our successful German learning programme.”

Drawing a comparison between India and Germany, Steiner said both countries had followed similar paths in certain respects.

“In Germany, the most important river is the father Rhine and in India it’s mother Ganga. It has taken some time, but I must tell you, father Rhine, 30 years ago, was absolutely toxic. You couldn’t swim or fish. Today, you can swim and fish again. And here in India, you have this huge programme to clean river Ganga and that is one field where we can cooperate. If we take the ingenuity of India and our experience together, I think this wonder we have seen in Germany with our magic river can be repeated here.”

Steiner also stressed on the importance of choosing a foreign language. In his concluding remarks, he said, “There are very good reasons…to learn German. But in the end, it’s not so important that you all have chosen German. You could have chosen also French, Spanish, or Mandarin. What is really important is that you have chosen a foreign language because language is the tool to the globalised world, it’s the tool to global confidence.”