Prayagraj (Uttar Pradesh) [India], July 5 : Amid the language row, Congress MP Pramod Tiwari on Saturday noted that Hindi is the mother tongue, but still, "importance" should be given to Marathi and slammed the Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis-led NDA government in Maharashtra.
Tiwari told ANI, "BJP and its two allies (Shiv Sena and NCP), which have separated from their original parties by betraying them, are polluting the environment in Maharashtra. The Congress and the whole country have a three-language policy. Hindi is our mother tongue, but still, Importance should be given to the regional language, which is Marathi in Maharashtra. And English is a contact language. Now, which movement are you running apart from? This is being deliberately done by the BJP government of Devendra Fadnavis and its two allies to conceal their failures."
His comments came on a day when Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) chief Raj Thackeray and his brother, former Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray, shared the stage after 20 years.
Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) chief Raj Thackeray launched a veiled attack on Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and said that the Chief Minister did what could not be possible for Balasaheb Thackeray, as he brought the two estranged brothers of the Thackeray family together.
Thackeray brothers garlanded the statue of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj at the joint rally of their parties, Shiv Sena (UBT) and Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) at Worli Dome in Mumbai.
Addressing the gathering, Raj Thackeray said, "I had said in one of my interviews that my Maharashtra is bigger than any politics and fight. Today, after 20 years, Uddhav and I have come together. What Balasaheb could not do, Devendra Fadnavis did it... The work of bringing both of us together."
"Minister Dada Bhuse came to me and requested me to listen to his point. I asked him what the third language would be for Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and Rajasthan. All the Hindi-speaking states are behind us, and we are ahead of all Hindi-speaking states; still, we are being forced to learn Hindi. Why?. I don't have anything against Hindi; no language is bad. It takes a lot of effort to build a language. We Marathi people ruled over a lot of states during the Maratha Empire, but we never enforced Marathi on those parts. They started with the experiment of imposing Hindi over us and were trying to test if we would not have opposed it, they would have gone up to making Mumbai separate from Maharashtra," he added.
He further asked if anyone would raise a question about his pride in Marathi.
He further said, "They say that our children have learnt in English medium schools. So what? Dada Bhuse studied in Marathi schools and became a minister. Devendra Fadnavis studied in an English-medium school and became the Maharashtra CM. So what? I would tell you that I studied in a Marathi school, but my father, Shrikant Thackeray, and uncle, Balasaheb Thackeray, studied in an English medium school. Can anyone raise a question about their love for Marathi? Tomorrow, I will learn Hebrew also. Will anyone raise a question about my pride in Marathi?"
Recently, the Maharashtra government withdrew its April 16 orders on the implementation of the three-language policy that made Hindi a "mandatory" third language for school students in Classes 1 to 5 studying in English and Marathi medium schools.