DMK, NE groups oppose Centre's Hindi move

Chennai: The ruling DMK on Sunday 'warned' the Centre against imposing Hindi saying the Tamil people still remembered the anti-Hindi agitation by late party patriarch M Karunanidhi, implying that they would not allow it to happen.

The ruling party's mouthpiece 'Murasoli' in its edition on Sunday carried a well-known slogan of Karunanidhi (1924-2018) against foisting Hindi on people and captioned the write-up as 'Warning to the Union government.'

The crux of the Tamil slogan, which involves figurative use of language, is a clarion call to the people to staunchly oppose imposition of Hindi and an assertion that there is no 'coward' in the state hinting that Hindi cannot be imposed on them.

According to the party organ, Karunanidhi as a 14-year-old student marched on the streets of his native Tiruvarur in 1938 along with other students raising this slogan to oppose Hindi imposition. Reacting to Union Home Minister Amit Shah's statement on April 7 that Hindi should be accepted as an alternative to English and not to local languages, DMK president and Chief Minister M K Stalin had said that it would wreck the nation's integrity. Meanwhile, the Asam Sahitya Sabha, a century-old literary-cultural organisation of Assam, has also criticised the central government's move to make Hindi a compulsory subject

till class 10 in North-Eastern states. The All-Assam Students' Union (AASU), which also holds significant clout in the state, demanded that the government concentrate on conserving and promoting indigenous languages.

In a statement, Asam Sahitya Sabha Secretary-General Jadav Chandra Sharma said if Hindi is made compulsory, the future of indigenous languages and Assamese as a link language will be endangered.

Sharma also said the Sabha had been pressing the state government for the inclusion of Assamese in CBSE and English medium schools, but no progress has been made in this regard so far.

Sabha, an influential organisation constituted in 1917, works for the development of the Assamese language, literature and culture.

AASU chief advisor Samujjal Kumar Bhattacharjya asserted that the move was a threat to the future of indigenous languages of the North-eastern region.

"We strongly oppose the move by the government to make Hindi compulsory at the expense of Assamese and other mother languages," he said in a Tweet.

"It is a threat to the indigenous culture and languages of the North East," Bhattacharjya said demanding that the government immediately withdraw the decision.

Opposition parties in Assam have also criticised the Centre's announcement that all the eight Northeastern states have agreed to Hindi being a compulsory subject till class 10 and described it as a "step towards cultural imperialism". The opposition parties, including the Congress and Assam Jatiya Parishad, have demanded the withdrawal of the decision, which it said is against the interests of the people of the region.

Shah had said at a meeting of the Parliamentary Official Language Committee in New Delhi on April 7 that all NE states have agreed to make Hindi compulsory in schools up to Class 10.

Shah had also said Prime Minister Narendra Modi decided that the medium of running the government is in the official language and this would definitely increase the importance of Hindi.