Chennai: The DMK on Sunday said Tamil Naidu has historically opposed to the attempts to impose Hindi on the people of the state and warned the Union government against making similar attempts again.
The ruling party’s reaction has come as response to the call by Union home minister Amit Shah last week that Hindi be accepted as an alternative to English and not to local languages.
“Tamil people still remember the anti-Hindi agitation by late party patriarch M. Karunanidhi,” the DMK mouthpiece Murasoli said in its latest edition published on Sunday.
Referring to a well-known slogan of Karunanidhi, father of Chief Minister and DMK president M.K. Stalin, against foisting Hindi on people, the article called on people to staunchly oppose the Union government’s move. It told the government that the people of the state are no cowards for it to impose Hindi on them.
The article said Karunanidhi as a 14-year old student marched on the streets of his native Tiruvarur in 1938 along with other students raising this slogan to oppose Hindi imposition. “Do not forget it.”
Stalin had said that the Union government’s move will wreck the nation’s integrity.
Presiding over the 37th meeting of the Parliamentary Official Language Committee in Delhi, Shah had said Prime Minister Narendra Modi decided that the medium of running the government is in the official language and this would definitely increase the importance of Hindi.
