Chennai: Speaking at a program in Gujarat on the occasion of “Hindi Diwas”, Union Home Minister Amit Shah said, “We must learn Hindi, the official language, to understand the soul of our culture and history.” Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Stalin has expressed his opposition to this.
In it, “The need to learn Hindi to understand culture and history is contrary to the culture of unity in the diversity of the Indian Union, which has a multi-lingual population. Thousands of years before the creation of the Hindi language, the Dravidian language family, with Tamil as the primary language, and its cultural values spread across the territory of the present-day Indian Union and its borders. Many historians have pointed it out.
It is an expression of dominance to think that Athaikai should push back the special Tamil and other state languages and create the structure of Hindi as the national language of India. English as the co-official language is a fence put up by the Constitution to protect India’s unique languages including Tamil from the dominance of the official language Hindi. It is because that fence is still strong that the dominant language sheep cannot graze classical Tamil.
The central BJP government is pushing the wrong idea that only Hindi language can unite the people of India. The preference for Hindi language creates unnecessary resentment and divides the people of different states.
This is a united India. Don’t try to split it in the name of “Hindi”. If the local languages are to be protected, the 22 languages currently listed in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution should be declared as official languages along with Hindi as soon as possible. It is time to make all our languages official languages. Celebrate Indian Languages Day instead of Hindi Day and strengthen culture and history,” he said.