News Brief
'Hindi Imposition’ Alleges Tamil Nadu CM Stalin; Shares Circular Issued By New India Assurance Co.
Tami Nadu Chief Minister M K Stalin.
Chief Minister MK Stalin in a tweet posted today (12 June) alleged that the central government and its institutions were imposing Hindi. He shared a circular issued by New India Assurance Co., which is a public sector insurance company.
He tweeted, “While each and every citizen of India is contributing to its development, the Union Government and its institutions continue to give an undue and unfair advantage to Hindi, over other Indian languages in every possible way. Also, they are intent on spending their valuable resources on imposing Hindi down our throats, rather than for public welfare.
“Latest in this list is the unjust circular issued by @NewIndAssurance. It must be withdrawn with immediate effect and its Chairperson Neerja Kapur needs to apologise for the disrespect shown towards non-Hindi speakers of India and non-Hindi speaking employees of @NewIndAssurance.
“Gone are the days of non-Hindi speaking citizens of India tolerating the second-class treatment meted out to them, despite their contribution in propelling India's growth with their hard work and talent.
“Tamil Nadu and DMK will do everything under our power to #StopHindiImposition, as we have always strived in our history. We will remove the undeserving special status that Hindi enjoys everywhere in the Union Government, like Railways, Postal Department, Banking and Parliament that affects us and our people on a day-to-day basis.
“We pay our taxes, contribute to the progress and believe in our rich heritage and this nation’s diversity. Our languages deserve to be treated equally. We will resist any attempt to replace Tamil with Hindi in our land.”
Responding to the tweet, the company tweeted, “@NewIndAssurance specifically mentioned under point 25 that all advertisements, tenders and press releases to be published in newspapers in English, Hindi and Regional languages as done by any other Public Sector Organisation of India. We respect all regional languages.”
The subject of the circular is ‘Check points for Hindi implementation’ and states that it has been issued as per guidelines issued by the Department of Official Language of the Home Ministry.
While according to Article 343 (1), the official language of the Union shall be Hindi in Devanagari script, the Official Languages Act enacted in 1963 provides for the continued usage of English.
Article 351 titled ‘Directive for development of the Hindi language’ states, “It shall be the duty of the Union to promote the spread of the Hindi language, to develop it so that it may serve as a medium of expression for all the elements of the composite culture of India and to secure its enrichment by assimilating without interfering with its genius, the forms, style and expressions used in Hindustani and in the other languages of India specified in the Eighth Schedule, and by drawing, wherever necessary or desirable, for its vocabulary, primarily on Sanskrit and secondarily on other languages.”
Critics of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) have said that the party rakes up the issue of ‘Hindi Imposition’ whenever it finds itself on the backfoot. They cited the allegations of corruption against the government, the Income Tax raids on Excise and Electricity Minister V Senthil Balaji and the twin hooch tragedies.
They also said that similar kind of circulars have been issued by the Congress led government prior to 2014 of which the DMK was an alliance partner.
Interestingly, the issue has been taken up by Chief Minister Stalin, a day after Union Home Minister Amit Shah in his Vellore rally, spoke about how the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government and Prime Minister Narendra Modi have promoted and celebrated Tamil culture through initiatives like the Kashi Tamil Sangamam, translation of Thirukkural and steps like allowing aspirants to appear for the NEET and Central Armed Police Forces (CAPF) exams in Tamil.
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