CHENNAI: The DMK, continuing with its anti-BJP tirade, on Friday resolved to conduct seminars in all the districts of the state against the Centre’s efforts to ‘impose Hindi and convert Tamil into a secondary language in the state’. One of the resolutions passed at the party’s district secretaries meeting vowed to take the centre’s designs to the youth and students and create an awakening among them. Recalling the anti-Hindi agitations led by DK founder EVR Periyar, DMK founder CN Annadurai and DMK president M. Karunanidhi, the resolution said ‘The fire lit by those leaders against Hindi could not be extinguished”.
Recalling former Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s assurance that English would remain as the link language as long as the people of non-Hindi states wish, the DMK charged the BJP government with continuous efforts to impose Hindi and Sanskrit. It said Teachers Day had been converted to ‘Guru Utsav’ and the new education policy draft gives priority to Sanskrit. The words in signage boards along the national highways were written in Hindi and added that the President’s approval to the Parliament panel’s recommendation that Union ministers knowing Hindi should speak only in that language and compulsory Hindi in CBSE and Kendriya Vidyalaya are the latest attempts. Though the Centre had stated that they are only suggestions and not orders, but its urgency to impose Hindi had been exposed, the resolution said.
On the Cauvery issue, the DMK said despite the Supreme Court order to form the Cauvery Management Board, the Centre had interfered to deny the rights of Tamil Nadu farmers. It demanded the setting up of the Cauvery Management Board and Cauvery Water Regulation Committee. Another resolution opposed NEET and urged the Centre to get the President’s nod for the state government bills exempting Tamil Nadu from NEET. Another resolution demanded the introduction of total prohibition in the State, while the party wanted measures on a war footing to solve the drinking water crisis. The party also hailed its president Karunanidhi on the diamond jubilee of his entry into the state Assembly.
