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  India   All India  15 Sep 2019  Shah’s Hindi push sparks outrage among TN ministers

Shah’s Hindi push sparks outrage among TN ministers

THE ASIAN AGE. | J V SIVA PRASANNA KUMAR
Published : Sep 15, 2019, 2:52 am IST
Updated : Sep 15, 2019, 2:52 am IST

Attempts to force Hindi upon the non-Hindi people would in fact, pose a threat to national unity, the DMK chief warned.

DMK president M.K. Stalin (Photo: ANI)
 DMK president M.K. Stalin (Photo: ANI)

Chennai: Political leaders in Tamil Nadu responded with expected anger to home minister Amit Shah’s proclamation that Hindi alone is capable of uniting the country, as it is the most spoken language. Both the ruling AIADMK and the DMK, dismissed Mr Shah’s Hindi advocacy of being no relevance to the Dravidian state with DMK president M.K. Stalin even announcing that his party’s executive committee would meet here on Monday to discuss the future course of action to oppose the imposition of Hindi upon the non-Hindi-speaking states.

Attempts to force Hindi upon the non-Hindi people would in fact, pose a threat to national unity, the DMK chief warned.

He demanded that Mr Shah take back his words in support of Hindi becoming the national language.

Speaking on behalf of the ruling AIADMK and its government in the state, senior minister D. Jayakumar said the party’s policy on languages remained constant — there would be “no deviation from the two-language policy prescribed by Anna and practised by Puratchi Thalaivar MGR and Amma”.

His colleague ‘Mafoi’ K. Pandiarajan, whose portfolio includes promotion of Tamil culture and language, has warned that if the Centre tries to impose Hindi, “there will only be Opposition and no support, not just in Tamil Nadu, but also in states like West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka”.

Brushing aside all this ‘Dravidian’ slamming of Mr Shah, BJP state secretary K.T. Raghavan said much ado was being made about the Hindi advocacy by home minister, who is also in charge of promoting the official languages.

In fact, Congress senior P. Chidambaram during his tenure as home minister had stoutly proposed strong measures to spread the knowledge of Hindi across the country.

And the DMK at its executive meeting on Monday, should first oppose the practice in the school run by Mr Stalin’s family to punish students speaking in Tamil within the campus, said Mr Raghavan, pointing out that Mr Shah’s mother-tongue “is not Hindi, it’s Gujarati”.

The home minister had not advocated the use and promotion of Hindi at the cost of one’s mother tongue, said Mr Raghavan, pointing out that the BJP stand has been to spread the use of Hindi as a language, linking all the people of India rather than continuing to have a foreign language (English) perform that task. BJP had always insisted on the importance of mother tongue, he said.

Hindi Divas, observed this day every year, commemorates the decision of the constituent Assembly on September 14, 1949, to accord official language status to Hindi. The Divas was observed first in 1953.

Tags: amit shah, mk stalin, hindi
Location: India, Tamil Nadu, Chennai (Madras)