Chennai: The good old anti-Hindi political trope that primarily catapulted the DMK to power in 1967 reared its head once again on Friday with Chief Minister M K Stalin spearheading the widespread opposition to the celebration of ‘Hindi Month’ at the Chennai Doordarshan office by strongly condemning it.
‘Are you the Governor or an Aryan?’ Stalin asked Governor R N Ravi after the appellation, ‘Dravida Nal Thirunadu’ (Great Dravidian Land), was smudged out from the lines of the Tamil anthem that was played at the beginning of the event, presided over by Ravi in the evening.
In his message on X, the Chief Minister said omitting the phrase ‘Dravida Nal Thiurunadu’ from the State anthem was a violation of the State’s laws and accused the Governor of denigrating the people living in the State and the integration of the nation in the pretext of celebrating Hindi.
Would the governor, suffering from Dravidian phobia, instruct singers to omit the term ‘Dravida’ while singing the national anthem at his functions, Stalin asked, pointing out that Ravi was continuously offending the sensibilities of the Tamil people.
Ahead of the meeting, the DMK’s Students’ wing held a protest in front of the office, and PMK founder S Ramadoss came out with a hard hitting statement against the celebrations, while the Chief Minister shot off a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi saying the Hindi Month celebrations belittled other languages.
‘As you are aware, the Constitution of India does not accord national language status to any language. Hindi and English are used only for official purposes such as legislation, judiciary and communication between the Union Government and the State Governments,’ he said in the letter.
In such circumstances, according a special place to Hindi in a multilingual country like India by celebrating ‘Hindi Month’ in non-Hindi speaking States was an attempt to belittle other languages, he said, adding: ‘Therefore, I suggest that holding such Hindi language oriented events in non-Hindi speaking States could be avoided,
If the Union Government still desired to hold such events, Stalin suggested that the celebration of the local language month in the respective states was also done with equal warmth. Also, he suggested the holding of special events to celebrate the richness of all the Classical languages that the Union Government had recognized in the respective States, enhancing cordial relationships among all.
Dravidar Kazhagam President K Veeramani, too, objected to the Hindi Day celebration, describing it as an attempt to impose Hindi. Protesting the omission of the line mentioning Dravida land in the Tamil anthem, he said that in an earlier meeting attended by a Union Minister the entire anthem was not sung and in another event, the Sankarcharya of Kanchi Kamakoti Peetam did not rise for the singing of the anthem.
The DMK students wing pointed to Doordarshan changing the nomenclature of its Tamil channel, earlier called ‘Pothigai,’ into DD Tamil, saying that a beautiful name had been axed and raised slogans against the Hindi Day celebrations.
Ramadoss said that when there were 1700 other languages in India – 122 of them spoken widely by the people – it was unfair to celebrate Hindi that too in the State where the world’s oldest language, Tamil, was spoken.
India had no national language and English and Hindi were only declared as official languages and the eight schedule of the Constitution had a list of 14 languages, he said.
The Governor on his part said the criticism of Hindi was an excuse and claimed that in the last three years, during his travels to the nooks and crannies of the State, he had seen a growing interest among the people, particularly students, to learn Hindi.
