Hindi is a little child in diapers' in family of languages: Kamal Haasan

Chennai: Actor-turned-politician Kamal Haasan on Thursday said that Hindi is a ‘little child in diapers’, being the youngest among the family of languages in India, reported news agency ANI. This is the latest remark in the row over linguistic preferences in the country.

In Chennai, Haasan said: "Hindi is a little child in diapers. Compared to Tamil, Sanskrit and Telugu, Hindi is still a young language. It is not with derision that I say this. I say with compassion that we have to take care of the language but it should not be imposed or stuffed down our necks.

Earlier, Haasan said this month that any imposition of Hindi would lead to a battle that will be "exponentially bigger" than the ''jallikattu'' protest. The comment came as a rebuttal to Union Home Minister's call for "unifying India" with the country's most widely-spoken language, Hindi.

On September 14, Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Hindi Divas made a call to culturally unify India with Hindi as its national language. It triggered a huge row, prompting him to issue a clarification that he had never asked for the imposition of Hindi over regional languages.