DMK chief M. Karunanidhi on Thursday condemned the MHA order for priority to Hindi on official social media interactions and advised the prime minister to focus on development agenda.
“No one can deny it’s a beginning to impose Hindi against one’s wish. This would be seen as an attempt to treat non-Hindi speakers as second class citizens,” Karunanidhi told Headlines Today.
“All well-wishers want Modi to focus on economic and social development… Language battlefields have not yet dried. History has recorded anti-Hindi agitation. Can we forget Nehru’s assurance that English would be official language as long as non-Hindi speakers want,” Karunanidhi said.
Karunanidhi is the first to attack the Centre over its order promoting Hindi. Following the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has also accepted Hindi as the preferred language, asking the bureaucrats and departments concerned to use it to in official communication.
In fact, the Centre has directed all the states, except the AIADMK-ruled Tamil Nadu, to correspond with it in Hindi. The order is likely to create problems for many states, particularly the southern ones.
In its directive to the departments under it, the home ministry has said that all work should be done in Hindi. It has also asked the bureaucrats to give dictations in Hindi.
To encourage work in Hindi, the government has promised rewards to the bureaucrats who use the language maximum in their work. The Centre has even told the PSU banks that Hindi is compulsory on social media and internet.
According to reports, an MHA order of May 27, just a day after Narendra Modi was sworn in as the Prime Minister, made the use of Hindi compulsory for use in social media by the government and its officials.
Defending the decision, Minister of State for Home Kiran Rijiju, said on Thursday, “Hindi as official language doesn’t mean we will discourage regional languages. All languages will be given due importance.”
Rijiju said that it was wrong to say “if we promote Hindi then we discriminate other languages”. He said “Hindi is our Raj Bhasha”.
-INDIA TODAY
