Tamil Nadu chief minister assures Tamils that his government would resist any attempt to erode the state’s linguistic heritage
Team Clarion
CHENNAI – Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin has reaffirmed his commitment to protecting the Tamil language and culture, accusing the central government of attempting to impose Hindi as a front for Sanskrit domination.
“Will oppose Hindi imposition. Hindi is the mask, Sanskrit is the hidden face,” Stalin said in a letter to his party workers.
The ruling DMK has been alleging that the Centre imposed Hindi through the three-language formula as part of the National Education Policy (NEP), a charge denied by the Union government.
“Hindi is just a mask, Sanskrit is the hidden face,” Stalin declared, alleging that the promotion of Hindi by the Union government was a strategic move to subtly push Sanskrit into mainstream education and administration. He accused the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of using Hindi as a political tool to weaken regional languages, particularly Tamil, which has one of the oldest literary traditions in the world.
Stalin claimed that many North Indian languages spoken in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, such as Mythili, Brajbhasha, Bundelkhandi and Awadhi “have been destroyed by the hegemonic Hindi.”
“More than 25 North Indian native languages have been destroyed by the invasion of hegemonic Hindi-Sanskrit languages. The century-old Dravidian movement safeguarded Tamil and its culture because of the awareness it created and the various agitations,” PTI quoted the ruling DMK chief as saying.
Tamil Nadu is opposing NEP because the Centre is trying to impose Hindi and Sanskrit through the education policy, he added.
The chief minister assured the people of Tamil Nadu that his government would resist any attempt to erode the state’s linguistic heritage. “We will not allow the imposition of Hindi or Sanskrit to dilute our identity. Tamil is not just a language; it is our history, our culture, and our pride,” he emphasised.
Tamil Nadu has historically opposed the imposition of Hindi, with anti-Hindi protests dating back to the 1930s and intensifying in the 1960s.
Countering BJP’s contention that the third language according to the NEP could even be a foreign one, Stalin claimed that according to the three-language policy schedule, “only Sanskrit is being promoted in many states.”
BJP-ruled Rajasthan was appointing Sanskrit teachers instead of Urdu instructors, he claimed.
“If Tamil Nadu accepts the trilingual policy, the mother language will be ignored and there will be Sankritisation in the future,” media reports quoted Stalin as saying.
He claimed that NEP provisions say that other Indian languages will be taught in schools in “addition to Sanskrit” and that others like Tamil could be taught online.
“This makes it clear the Centre has planned to do away with languages like Tamil and impose Sanskrit,” the chief minister stressed.
Meanwhile, pro-Tamil activists and scholars have welcomed Stalin’s stance, arguing that linguistic diversity must be preserved and that Tamil Nadu should continue to resist any form of cultural imposition from the Centre.
