Chennai (Tamil Nadu) [India], January 26 : Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) spokesperson Saravanan Annadurai on Monday opposed the alleged imposition of Hindi, while agreeing with Tamil Nadu Deputy Chief Minister Udhayanidhi Stalin's recent statements against "Hindi imposition".
Speaking to ANI, he referred to the alleged waning influence of other Indian languages such as Odia, Bihari, Rajasthani, and Gujarati due to the advent of Hindi, saying that Hindi imposition effectively treats people like second-class citizens and strips away the cultural identity of certain sections of society.
"Our leader Udhayanidhi Stalin has made a scathing attack on how Hindi imposition is impacting the lives of the common man in our country. He traced the history of how certain languages were wiped off the map due to the rise of Hindi. Odia, Bihari, Rajasthani, Gujarati; they had rich literature, but after adopting Hindi, they are nowhere; they are not as influential as they used to be," Annadurai told ANI.
"This is the reason why we oppose Hindi imposition because it makes everybody a second-class citizen, and it takes away the cultural identity of a certain section of people, and that is the reason we opposed it, and there was a violent past to it," he added.
The DMK spokesperson further accused the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of attempting to impose Hindi through legislative measures and central policies.
"In every possible way, the BJP is imposing Hindi. Let it be naming the central government schemes, the policies. Recently, laws have been named in Hindi, which is against the constitution because it says the substantive part of any statute should be in English only. How can you name the penal code BNSS? We are using the short form because we are not able to pronounce the entire full name because Hindi is not our mother tongue, we don't know Hindi," Annadurai said.
"For Union Government jobs, only English and Hindi are offered as optional languages. Effectively shutting out people who know only their mother tongue, especially people who know only Malayalam, Telugu, Kannada or Tamil. We are fighting against that," he added.
Earlier, Tamil Nadu Deputy Chief Minister Udhayanidhi Stalin addressed a public meeting organised by the Chennai North-East District DMK in Tiruvottiyur, to observe Veera Vanakkam Day in honour of people who died during the language agitation in the state in the late 1930s.
In the meeting, the Tamil Nadu Deputy Chief Minister asserted that the state would firmly oppose and not accept the "Hindi imposition" by the central government. He pointed out that several mother tongues once spoken in states such as Haryana, Bihar, and Uttar Pradesh gradually declined after the introduction of Hindi.
"Hindi has become a language that swallows many mother tongues," he said, adding that this is why Tamil Nadu has consistently opposed the alleged Hindi imposition.
Udhayanidhi Stalin further stated that many other states are now beginning to follow Tamil Nadu's stand on language rights. Reiterating the State government's position, he said Tamil Nadu would strongly oppose Hindi imposition, the New Education Policy, and any other form of coercion by the Union Government.