Jayalalithaa, BJP allies in Tamil Nadu oppose Centre's move on Hindi

CHENNAI: The row over Centre's move to promote Hindi in social media and official work snowballed today with Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalitha and two of BJP's allies opposing it strongly while a union minister said a "wrong propaganda" was being made on the issue.

At the national level, CPI(M) leader Brinda Karat also opposed any move to impose Hindi while in Odisha Assembly a member's attempt to put a question in Hindi was disallowed by the Chair.

Shooting off a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Jayalalithaa described the Home Ministry's proposal as "against the letter and spirit" of the Official Languages Act, 1963, and said the "highly sensitive issue" caused "disquiet" to the people of Tamil Nadu "who are very proud of and passionate about their linguistic heritage".

Social media by their very nature were not only accessible to all persons on the internet, but were meant to be a means of communication to persons living in all parts of India, including those in 'Region C', she said.

"People located in 'Region C' with whom the Government of India's communication needs to be in English, will not have access to such public information if it is not in English. This move would therefore be against the letter and spirit of the Official Languages Act, 1963," she said.

DMK President M Karunanidhi, whose party had successfully led the anti-Hindi agitation in 1960s, had yesterday dubbed the move as a beginning of "imposition of Hindi" that would make non-Hindi speaking people second class citizens.

The Centre's move also found no favour with two of its Tamil Nadu allies also, with both PMK and MDMK opposing it.

PMK founder S Ramadoss said the BJP in its election 2014 manifesto, had promised to develop all languages with rich history and culture. He also called for declaring all 22 languages in the VIII schedule of the Constitution, including Tamil, as official language and "thus put an end to the Hindi imposition controversy."

Attempts to 'impose' Hindi in the past have been successfully resisted with, though attempts were later made to do the same, he said while terming the latest move as a "softer version" of the imposition of Hindi.

MDMK chief Vaiko cited Modi's preference of the social media platform and said that the Centre's advisory on Hindi was a "matter of concern."

He demanded that all Indian languages be made official languages in the interest of the country's "unity and integrity" and till such time English should continue as the official language.

"Tamil Nadu will never accept imposition of Hindi," he said in a statement, while recalling the earlier anti-Hindi agitation. The state unit of CPI also opposed the move.