Chennai: Tamil Nadu Chief Minister, M.K. Stalin on Sunday wrote a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi claiming that “there are continuous efforts of the Central government to impose Hindi under the ‘one nation theory’ in non-Hindi speaking states”.
Stalin in the letter said that “the efforts to impose Hindi on non-Hindi speaking people would destroy the feeling of the brotherhood of people of different languages and cultures…”
“The recent attempts to impose Hindi are impractical and divisive in character and puts non-Hindi speaking people in a very disadvantageous position in many respects,” he added.
In the letter, he further said that “this was not acceptable; not only to Tamil Nadu but also to any state that respects and values its mother tongue”.
The Chief Minister said that approach of the Union government should be to include all languages including Tamil in the Eighth schedule of the Constitution.
He also referred to a report of the parliamentary sub-committee on official languages, which had reportedly recommended that Hindi should be the compulsory medium of instruction in educational institutions administered by the Union government such as the IITs ,IIMs, AIIMS and central universities.
Stalin further said that it was also recommended (by the sub-committee) that Hindi should replace English.
He also asserted that several youths in Tamil Nadu had sacrificed their lives in 1965 in the anti-Hindi agitations that erupted in part of the state.
“Jawaharlal Nehru respected the sentiments of the people and assured that English would continue to be one of the official languages as long as non-Hindi speaking people want,” Stalin added in the letter.
