NEW DELHI: Actor Vijay’s Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) slammed Union home minister Amit Shah’s remarks on Hindi and said that this is yet another attempt to impose the Hindi language. In a statement, the TVK asked to stop imposing Hindi on others and said that prioritising one language in government administration is arbitrary.In a post on X, TVK propaganda and policy general secretary Arunraj said, “The Union government must stop its attempt to impose the Hindi language, is against the principle of federalism. In a nation where states are divided based on language, giving prominence to a single language in the of a government has 22 official is an authoritarian approach.” He added, “It is strongly condemnable to state that the goal is to make Hindi the cornerstone of the Union government’s administration.”In the statement, the TVK said that the government that rules the Union must embrace people of all religions, languages and states but they are looking at states as “Hindi-speaking” versus “non-Hindi-speaking” or “BJP-ruled” versus “non-BJP-ruled” and giving special importance to only one language goes against the federal spirit. The TVK called upon Shah to withdraw his statement on Hindi day where he mentioned that Hindi will play an important role in self-reliant India. Earlier also, Vijay’s party criticised the alleged Hindi imposition by the Centre through the three-language policy. His party had said that Shah’s comments on English language are a “direct” assault on Tamil Nadu’s two-language policy.On September 14, Amit Shah said that Hindi acts as a bridge between the languages and dialects of India. “I always say that Hindi is not a competition to Indian languages. Hindi is a friend of Indian languages. There are no conflicts between Hindi and Indian languages. The biggest example of this is our Gujarat. Gujarat is not a Hindi-speaking state. The State language is Gujarati…But since beginning in Gujarat, Dayananda Saraswati, Mahatma Gandhi, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, KM Munshi and several other intellectuals accepted Hindi, promoted it and Gujarat became a brilliant example of development of both Hindi and Gujarati through co-existence,” Amit Shah said.
