Chief Minister and DMK president M.K. Stalin on Wednesday criticised Union Home Minister Amit Shah for stating that “to understand the soul of our culture and history, we have to learn Hindi”.
In a statement, Mr. Stalin pointed out that Mr. Shah had made the remark during an event to mark Hindi Diwas. “It is natural to speak about the greatness of a language. But the specific remark about learning Hindi to understand our culture is against the principle of unity in diversity. Legally, Hindi is not the national language, and is not the only official language,” he said.
If the Union government was really interested in regional languages, it should address the gap between the funding provided for the development of Hindi and Sanskrit and other Indian languages including Tamil. Instead, the Union government was keen on imposing Hindi and Sanskrit through the National Education policy, he said.
“It is a united India. Don’t try to make it Hindia,” Mr. Stalin said.
He also called for the inclusion of Tamil and other regional languages as official languages of the Union government.
