Tharoor as ‘Bharatiya’ to cut ‘Hindi Belt’; Non-Hindi speak Hindi? |Shashi Tharoor| |AICC| |Rahul Gandhi| |Manorama News Premium|

As Congress gears up for the presidential election, discussions about leaders and their language are once again active. The question is whether the national leaders of India are only those from the state where Hindi is the mother tongue. Thiruvananthapuram MP Shashi Tharoor is in the news about the relationship between the party and the ‘Hindi belt’ with the rumor that he will contest for the post of AICC president. The first president of AICC was a Bengali, W.C. Wasn’t it Banerjee? All that time only freedom was talked about in Congress meetings. So the leaders and ranks were not much aware about the need of Hindi belt. Were there not even people from states like Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Kerala who led the AIIC till 1947? In post-independence India, leaders including Kamaraj led the Congress party. Sonia Gandhi herself, who is now the President, was born and brought up in Italy and was the daughter-in-law of India, whose mother tongue was not Hindi. However, he led the party since 1998 (with a short vacated post). It is said that proficiency in Hindi is not the main qualification to become a national leader. That is what Shashi Tharoor also underlined. He responded that it is not about speaking Hindi, it is about becoming Indian. K. said that he did not try to become the chairman of AICC because he did not have the Hindi side to face the ‘Gosais’. Karunakaran once said. K once asked how can I become the Prime Minister without Hindi and English. Kamaraj was also the President of the same Congress Party!