Asserting that Hindi is not the country’s national language, Karnataka Congress leaders on Friday accused the BJP of trying to unleash its agenda of “cultural terrorism” against non-Hindi speaking States.
Leader of the Opposition and senior Congress leader Siddaramaiah, KPCC president D.K. Shivakumar, and former KPCC president Dinesh Gundu Rao took strong objection to Home Minister Amit Shah’s statement on using Hindi as the medium of communication.
In a series of tweets, Mr. Siddaramaiah denied accepting Hindi as the “national language” and stressed that it would not be allowed. He further accused the Centre of forcing States to adopt Hindi as the medium of communication, underscoring that India should stand for cooperative federalism rather than “coercive federalism”.
Mr. Shivakumar tweeted: “All Kannadigas are proud of our mother tongue but we do need a second language to be part of a globalised world. That second language is English. Without English, so many Kannadigas won’t be working across the world, and Bengaluru wouldn’t be India’s IT capital”.
Mr. Siddaramaiah recalled the failure of attempts in the past to impose Hindi on non-Hindi speaking States and accused Mr. Shah of betraying the former’s home State Gujarat and mother-tongue Gujarati for Hindi, for his political agenda.
Mr. Shah on Thursday said Hindi should be accepted as an alternative to English and not to local languages. Presiding over the 37th meeting of the Parliamentary Official Language Committee, Mr. Shah said Prime Minister Narendra Modi has decided that the medium of running the Government was the official language and this would definitely increase the importance of Hindi.
Noting that linguistic diversity was the essence of the country and “we will respect each other’s sentiments”, the former Chief Minister said, “Pluralism is what has held our nation together and any attempt by the BJP to undo this will be met with strong opposition and retaliation”.
“We are not against any language…but Kannada occupies first place in Karnataka,” the former Chief Minister said
“It is shameful on the part of Amit Shah to betray his home State Gujarat and mother tongue Gujarati for Hindi. I wonder how a person who betrays his motherland can ever work in the interest of India,” he said, adding that Mr. Shah’s roots were from where Mahatma Gandhi was born, but he “was behaving like pseudo-secular Savarkar”.
Congress leader Dinesh Gundu Rao, in a tweet, suggested to Mr. Shah to impose Hindi in his home State Gujarat.
Taking serious exception to the Union Minister’s efforts to impose Hindi, the former Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy wondered if Mr. Shah does not know English.
Declaring his support to a campaign against the imposition of Hindi, he said, “Kannada’s status is bigger than [that of] Hindi’s in Karnataka. Hindi cannot be imposed here. We should strive to protect Kannada here.”
