CHENNAI: BJP senior Narayanan Thirupathy accused the DMK of playing language politics in the State and claimed that the Dravidian party wants to create unrest in Tamil Nadu.
Alleging that the DMK has been involving in “divisive politics” in the name of Tamil, he said the DMK never lost an opportunity to create unrest in the State in the name of Tamil. “Atleast now they should learn Hindi to understand what exactly the Home Minister Amit Shahji had said on the language issue,” Mr. Narayanan said.
Party’s national secretary H. Raja charged the DMK of practicing double standards on the language issue and said if that party was against Hindi, then the schools run by its functionaries should not have CBSE syllabus where Hindi is taught. “The schools owned by DMK functionaries should shift to State board from CBSE…For the sake of pecuniary advantage, they teach Hindi in their schools and for politics, they oppose Hindi,” he said.
The BJP leader maintained that the Justice Party government in 1926 had issued a Government Order classifying Telugu-speaking Scheduled Caste (SC) as Aadhi Telungar' whereas Tamil-speaking SC were classified as Aadhi Dravidar'. “Why this double standards? They could have classified the latter as Aadhi Tamizhar'. It is a clear case of undermining Tamil identity,” Raja said.
Amidst the rage over Union Home Minister and BJP national chief Amit Shah pitching for ‘one nation, one language’ on Hindi Diwas, the former Union Minister of State for Finance and Shipping Pon Radhakrishnan had stoked a controversy by saying “Narendra Modi is the first Prime Minister to have proclaimed that Tamil is one of the oldest languages in the world. He had said Tamil is older than Sanskrit and if we had any love for the language, we should have celebrated it for a year. Tamils don’t know to celebrate. Tamils are ungrateful.” Mr. Radhakrishnan later withdrew the comment saying he had meant those politicians who are using the words Tamil and Tamils for political motives alone as “ungrateful.”
