Edappadi Palaniswami drops tweet to Modi seeking Tamil in other states

Chennai: Exhibiting great socio-political sagacity, Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami on Wednesday appealed to the Prime Minister to “include Tamil as an optional language for study in other states”.  

“This will be a great service to one of the most ancient languages of the world”, he told the PM through his personal Twitter handle #EPSTamilNadu. However, with the rival politicos lashing out at him for that appeal, which they insisted meant that the CM had accepted the three-language policy and thereby the entry of Hindi in TN schools, he had the ‘contentious’ yet bold tweet deleted some four hours later.

In those four hours that the tweet showed up, it did create much excitement among the supporters of Hindi being taught at schools but the critics got louder. For instance, DMK organising secretary R S Bharathi, a member of the Rajya Sabha, said by asking the PM to introduce Tamil in other states as part of the three-language policy, the CM has “accepted Hindi in our state”.

VCK chief Thol Thirumavalavan too slammed CM’s “attempt to open gates for Hindi” and declared, “Nationalist forces like us will never accept it”. According to him, Tamil being so ancient and recognised the world over as a great classical language with Thirukkural being translated into most of the foreign languages, there was no need to take these special efforts to add glory to Tamil by taking it into the classrooms in the other states.

It’s the responsibility of everyone, particularly the CM, to save Tamil from getting “destroyed”, said the VCK leader.

Elsewhere on social media, there was a video of Thiruma’s speech wherein he had an entirely different interpretation for his anti-Hindi stand. He said if only Hindi had not been kept out of Tamil Nadu, Modi would have mesmerised the Tamil audience in his election rallies with his Hindi oratory and won Lok Sabha seats in the state quite easily. The BJP’s defeat in Tamil Nadu was due to the people not following Modi’s poll speeches, he concluded.

Several people on social media supported the learning of Hindi in Tamil Nadu, arguing that knowledge of more languages always helped in bagging better opportunities elsewhere in the country. Many on twitter posted experiences in other states and a few pointed to even the closest neighbours in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Kerala doing better because they knew Hindi.

“The very tiny minority that opposes the introduction of Hindi in schools is very vocal, whereas the vast majority that supports Hindi remains calm”, said twitterati Narayan Viswam.

Another tweet spoke of DMK MPs who own medical colleges in Tamil Nadu and so the party opposes NEET; DMK members run expensive private schools with Hindi as a subject and so they oppose Hindi in Government schools.

In the midst of all this, Puthiya Tamilagam leader Dr K Krishnaswami declared support for Hindi in government schools in Tamil Nadu and drew large support on the social media. One supporter, Venkat Sudheendra drew the attention of Dr Subramanian Swamy to this “changing times in TN” and said Dr Krishnaswami’s “great move” must be appreciated.