There’s a very thin line between acquiring uniformity within a country and imposing uninvited norms in the name of nationalistic virtues.
This ideology seems to be the inspiration when southern states of India take a stand against Hindi being taken forward and glorified as India’s unifying thread of a language.
Every year on the 14th of September, India celebrates the existence of Hindi and patriotic beliefs associated with it under the name of ‘Hindi Diwas’.
The Criticism
It was this year’s ‘Hindi Diwas’ when Prakash Raj, who is a widely known and appreciated actor of the south Indian film industry, and Hindi-language films too, along with several other south Indian film industry actors like Shantanu Bhagyaraj, Shirish Saravanan, music director Yuvan Shankar Raja, etc. took to Twitter to show their criticism against the day.
The actors posted their photos on Twitter in which they were seen donning t-shirts with quotes printed in Kannada and Tamil which read,
- “Hindi theriyathu, poda!” (I don’t know Hindi, go man!),
- “Nange Hindi Baralla, Hogarappa” (I don’t understand Hindi, go ahead),
- “I am a Tamizh Pesum Indian” (I am a Tamil speaking Indian), etc.
Actor Daali Dhananjaya also tweeted in Kannada which meant ‘My country is India, My Root Kannada. I respect all languages but I love my language more. No imposition’. 
The kind of hashtags the actors used in their posts implied the unwelcomed imposition of Hindi that they felt to be happening in the country.
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Long-Running Opposition to Hindi
In India, the Constitution, the supreme law of India, itself does not consider Hindi as the national language, despite it being the most widely spoken language of the country. It is just an official language.
Still, the kind of stature that is served to Hindi by the government is not acceptable to the natives of southern states of India where people have a stronger hold on and connection with the regional languages than Hindi.
Recently announced National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 introduced a three-language formula that drew a lot of flak from regional political parties of Tamil Nadu like AIADMK and DMK as they don’t want to do away with their dual-language policy which makes use of Tamil and English only.
The NEP 2020 was also alleged to have plans for unnecessarily imposing Sanskrit and Hindi.
Actor and writer Nagabhushana NS kept going with the flow with a tweet showing concern for the rural students who may not be knowing Hindi but still have to bear the linguistic bars while dealing with question papers of national level exams, bank challan, etc.
The linguistic spectrum of a country should reflect its vast cultural diversity. The disparities must be resolved so that people may never give up on taking pride in any language that is indigenous to their nation.
Image Credits: Google Images
Sources: Bangalore Mirror, Times of India, Firstpost
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This post is tagged under: Tamil Nadu, AIAMDK, DMK, NEP 2020, National Education Policy, modi government, Hindi, is Hindi India’s national language?, Official languages of India, South Indian movies, Sount Indian actors, South India, South Indian cinema vs bollywood, Hindi imposition, Sanskrit language, English, three language policy, Prakash Raj, hindi diwas, divas, campaign, social media campaign against hindi by south actors, #stophindiimposition, #hindiimposition
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