Chennai: The Union Home Ministry’s directive to use Hindi for interactions on the social media has opened a Pandora’s box.
While DMK chief Karunanidhi had on Thursday strongly opposed the government’s move to ‘promote’ Hindi, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa on Friday warned Prime Minister Narendra Modi noting that language was still a sensitive issue for many in the country. She opined that English be made the medium of communication on social platforms.
It may be noted that only 25% of the people in India claim Hindi as their mother tongue. Â
Shiv Sena which has been vociferous in its Marathi approach backed Centre’s decision in its editorial ‘Saamana’, calling Hindi a ‘Rashtrabhasha’. “If Narendra Modi as the PM does not promote Hindi then who else will. PM in his first foreign visit to Bhutan spoke in Hindi,” read a portion of the article. Raj Thackeray’s MNS is yet to give its say on the matter which has now become a political row.
But, another BJP ally, PMK, also a regional party of Tamil Nadu, has opposed the Modi government on this. PMK founder Ramadoss in a statement said that Hindi should not be imposed and demanded that 22 languages be declared as official languages.
Meanwhile, Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati said that the Centre should be equally enthusiastic about regional languages too. She said, “Encouraging use of Hindi language is good but our country has rich heritage of regional languages. That should be encouraged too.”
While the Home Ministry argues that it never aimed at promoting Hindi at the cost of other languages, BJP spokesperson Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi stoked a controversy when he said that the Hindi speakers were considered illiterate and the English speaking a part of the elite class.
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