Hindi is not the national language, says Tamil Nadu CM

Chennai: Hindi is just an official language and not the national language, Chief Minister M K Stalin said on Thursday, reacting to the unsavoury incident at the Dabolim airport in Goa where a CISF personnel told a woman engineer from Tamil Nadu to learn Hindi stating that it was the national language.

Who would tell them that Hindi was not the national language, Stalin asked in his message on X, adding that India was a federal nation in which people spoke diverse languages and the CISF personnel should bear that in mind and be aware of the federal nature of the country while discharging their duties.

All languages should be given the due respect and honour at airports, he said, condemning the manner in which the woman passenger was intimidated by the CISF personnel, who had also taken a class on the need for all Indians to learn Hindi.

State Minister for Youth Affairs Udhayanidhi Stalin also condemned the incident in his message on X, pointing out that the CISF personnel had intimidated the woman who was travelling with a baby. CISF personnel were deployed to provide security and not to teach Hindi to others, he said.

Language Right was part of Human Rights, which the Union government should understand and take action against the imposition of Hindi on those who speak other languages, he said, adding that the repeated occurrence of such incidents could not be tolerated.

PMK founder S Ramadoss also demanded action against the CISF personnel who asked the woman to learn Hindi. It was yet another case of personnel deployed for security purposes forgetting their duties and questioning political leaders, MPs, and MLAs about their knowledge of Hindi, which had been happening repeatedly, he said.

What locus standi did someone who did not even know the basic fact that Hindi was not the national language have to advise people’s representatives, doctors, and engineers on the languages they should learn, he wondered.

It was the repetition of the lie that Hindi was the national language by some Union Government officials and Union Ministers of late that had led to the CISF personnel developing such an impression and behaving in that fashion, he said.

On earlier occasions, at various airports in the country, many people from the State had been subjected to similar humiliations for not knowing Hindi. DMK MP Kanimozhi Karunanidhi was intimidated in Chennai airport itself.