Hindi Row Escalates in Tamil Nadu
The poem that the Chief Minister posted on X addressed the ‘Hindi language in the pleasant land of Dravidam’ and said that it would be a compulsion to annihilate it if feeding it was made compulsory to the mouths that open to consume the ‘Amirtham’ (elixir) of Tamil.
Chennai: The anger that erupted after Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradan said that adopting the three-language formula was a prerequisite for the State to get funds continued to rage on Wednesday with Chief Minister M K Stalin posting a Tamil poem written by poet Bharathidasan that terms Hindi as a harbinger of trouble and women in a Chennai suburb drawing kolams (patterns) decrying Hindi imposition in a public street.
The entire road in Ayapakkam, a part of Maduravoyal, had a variety of slogans and patterns drawn on the road in front of the over 100 houses of the middle class locality opposing 'Hindi imposition in Tamil Nadu by the Union Government.' Right from the early hours of the day, women of all ages were seen drawing the kolams.
The poem that the Chief Minister posted on X addressed the ‘Hindi language in the pleasant land of Dravidam’ and said that it would be a compulsion to annihilate it if feeding it was made compulsory to the mouths that open to consume the ‘Amirtham’ (elixir) of Tamil.The scheming of Hindi would not work out in Tamil Nadu, the poem said.
Similar sentiments were expressed in social media by common people who hit out at the bid to impose Hindi through the three-language formula. Students of the Presidency College in Chennai boycotted classes and raised slogans urging the Union Government to not deprive them of their educational rights.
The students vowed not to accept the New Education Policy at any cost. Similar protests were also organized by other groups of students like the All India Students Federation (AISF) at various places in the State.
The Congress party in the State, too, vehemently opposed the ‘Hindi imposition’ and said that it went against the promise given to the people of Tamil Nadu by former Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. TNCC president K Selvaperunthogai, in a statement, said that the Constitution recognized both Hindi and English as official languages.
Nehru had assured that Hindi would not be made compulsory in Tamil Nadu till the people of the State wanted it, he said and recalled the incident that happened in 1960 when the DMK had called for a black flag agitation during the visit of the then President Rajendra Prasad to the State.
Calling up the two DMK members of Parliament, Nehru handed over a letter to one of them, E V K Sampath, assuring that Hindi would not be imposed, leading to C N Annadurai calling off the agitation, Selvaperunthogai said.
Replying to BJP State president K Annamalai’s claim that the students of the private schools learnt Hindi in Tamil Nadu and that only the students of government schools were deprived of that privilege, the Congress leader said that Hindi was compulsory for only 3.16 per cent of the students in the State.
The Union Government’s present move would force 43 lakh students of government Schools, now following the 2-language system confirmed in 1968, to learn Hindi as a compulsory subject, which would be an additional burden on them.