Intensifying its protests against the recommendation of making Hindi the medium of instruction in Central institutes by a Parliamentary panel, the ruling Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) on Saturday asserted that it would continue to oppose “Hindi imposition” in any form and asked the Union Government to respect all languages.
Udhayanidhi, the DMK youth wing secretary and son of Chief Minister M K Stalin, also said the party will never compromise on its “anti-Hindi imposition” stand and would protest every time the Union Government tries to impose Hindi on non-Hindi speaking states. He also claimed that the people of Tamil Nadu will defeat BJP once again in 2024 polls just like they did in the 2019 elections.
Leading a protest against the recommendations of the panel headed by Union Home Minister Amit Shah, Udhayanidhi said the party will not hesitate to organise protests in New Delhi if the BJP Government at the Centre doesn’t mend its way on the issue.
The Chepauk-Thiruvallikeni MLA said he would like to remind Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Amit Shah that it was the anti-Hindi agitation in the 1960s that catapulted the DMK to power and that voicing against Hindi imposition is one of the core principles of the party.
“The people at the helm of the Union Government shouldn’t think Tamil Nadu is still ruled by Edappadi K Palaniswami or O Panneerselvam. They (BJP) get angry if we use the word Union. The Chief Minister now is Muthuvel Karunanidhi Stalin,” Udhayanidhi told Modi and Shah, implying that the DMK won’t support the BJP like the AIADMK did.
DMK, has been at the forefront of opposing imposition of Hindi since the 1960s and had led vociferous protests for years together in Tamil Nadu on this issue. It backed off only after the then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru had in 1962 promised to continue with English as a “link language.”
The protest by DMK comes days after Stalin termed as “divisive in nature” the recommendations of the committee proposing Hindi as the medium of instruction in Central institutes and asked the Union Government not to “force another language war” by imposing Hindi.
“We will continue to oppose the imposition of Hindi. We will never budge from our stand on the issues of Hindi and state rights because the DMK government follows the footsteps of E V R Periyar, C N Annadurai, and M Karunanidhi. The only answer from us to those who plan to impose Hindi on us is ‘Hindi theriyadhu poda’ (We don’t know Hindi, go away),” he said.
Udhayanidhi also said that DMK will not limit its protests to Chennai or Tamil Nadu but would extend it to Delhi if the BJP government continues to “impose” Hindi in one way or the other.
In his reaction, Tamil Nadu BJP chief K Annamalai said the DMK will resort to “language politics” whenever it realises that the people of the state are not happy with its government to “divert attention from real issues.”