Stalin Roars Back To Form With ‘This Is Not Hindia’

Having spent a few months quietly, attending to duties in Chennai and around the state, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister roared back to form in response to Amit Shah’s comment on Hindi being a friend of all languages. “This is India, not Hindia,” Stalin said, reminding the Home Minister that Hindi is not the national language and not even the sole official language of the country. His advice to the HM was to celebrate an “Indian languages Day” and not a national Hindi Day. Shah may need no reminding that his assiduous promotion of Hindi is not going to work in Tamil Nadu, which is a kind of last bastion against the language thanks to its history of anti-Hindi sentiment. In fact, it was the anti-Hindi wave that brought the Dravidian parties to power in 1967 with CN Annadurai, the Tamil writer from Kancheepuram, becoming the first non-Congress CM of the state. Since then, no national party has posed so much as a threat to the Dravidian duopoly in 55 years. Any central agency, including the airport and its security teams, have been at the receiving end of language chauvinism opposing their use of Hindi. Of course, Amit Shah makes the point that unless local languages coexist with Hindi, India cannot run the country in its own languages.