‘India, not Hindia’: DMK’s MK Stalin responds to Amit Shah on Hindi Diwas remark
At an event to commemorate Hindi Diwas, Amit Shah said Hindi was the friend of all Indian languages and it “unites the whole nation in a thread of unity” as an official language
CHENNAI: Tamil Nadu chief minister MK Stalin said the Centre should treat all languages in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution as official languages and start observing September 14 as “Indian Languages Day” instead of “Hindi Diwas” to strengthen the country’s culture and history.
In a statement released by the state’s ruling Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) in response to Union home minister Amit Shah’s remarks on Hindi Diwas, Stalin said if the Union home minister was concerned about local languages, he should allot funds for them on par with Hindi and Sanskrit. “But, the Union Government is bent on imposing Hindi through the National Education Policy,” Stalin, who heads the DMK, said.
On Wednesday, Amit Shah at an event to commemorate Hindi Diwas said Hindi was the friend of all Indian languages and it “unites the whole nation in a thread of unity” as an official language.
“Some people are spreading disinformation that Hindi and Gujarati, Hindi and Tamil, Hindi and Marathi are competitors. Hindi cannot be a competitor to any other language in the country. You must understand that Hindi is the friend of all the languages of the country,” Shah said at the All India Official Language Conference in Surat.
Hindi Diwas is celebrated on September 14 every year to mark the day the Constituent Assembly adopted the language as an official language.
Stain said all scheduled languages should be recognised as the government’s official language and
Stalin demanded that Hindi Diwas celebrated on September 14 be renamed “Indian Languages Day” after declaring the 22 scheduled languages as the official language of the country.
He added that there should not be any attempt to turn the country into “Hindia”, a reference to the DMK’s oft-repeated complaint accusing the Centre of imposing Hindi on non-Hindi speaking states.
“It is India. Not Hindia. Indian languages including Tamil should be declared as official languages of the Union Government,” the DMK statement said.
Stalin said this shows the “dominant” attitude of those in power in Delhi to project Hindi as the “national language” by pushing away Tamil and other languages which are rich in literature and culture. Stalin also said several languages such as Maithili and Bhojpuri, which were spoken in northern India, are almost facing extinction due to the domination of Hindi.
“To say that one should learn Hindi to understand the culture and history (of India) is against the unity in diversity principle of India, which consists of people who speak different languages,” Stalin said. “India’s culture and history aren’t hidden in Hindi. Historians have pointed out that the Dravidian language family led by Tamil had spread across today’s India and beyond”.
