Centre marks Hindi Diwas amid row over ‘imposition’

The Prime Minister, in his greeting, expressed gratitude to all who have made efforts to enrich and strengthen the country’s largest spoken language.

New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union home minister Amit Shah on Wednesday greeted citizens on the occasion of ‘Hindi Diwas’, saying Hindi has brought the country special honour globally, even as political parties in multiple non-Hindi speaking states reiterated their opposition to “imposition” of the language.

Union home minister Amit Shah during an event of "Hindi Diwas 2022 and 2nd Akhil Bharatiya National Language Sammelan" at indoor stadium, in Surat on Wednesday. (ANI)

The Prime Minister, in his greeting, expressed gratitude to all who have made efforts to enrich and strengthen the country’s largest spoken language.

“Hindi has brought special honour to India all over the world. Its simplicity, spontaneity and sensitivity always attract. On Hindi Diwas, I extend my heartfelt greetings to all those people who have contributed tirelessly in making it prosperous and empowered,” he said in a tweet in Hindi.

Shah said Hindi is the friend of all Indian languages and it “unites the whole nation in a thread of unity” as an official language.

“Modi’s government is committed to the parallel development of all local languages including Hindi. I salute the great personalities who have contributed in the preservation and promotion of Hindi. Happy ‘Hindi Diwas’ to all,” he tweeted in Hindi.

Hindi language is not a competitor but a “friend” of all other regional languages in the country and they are mutually dependent on each other for their growth, Shah later told an All India Official Language Conference in Surat.

Denouncing what he called a “disinformation” campaign to pit Hindi against native languages, the minister said: “I want to make one thing very clear. Some people are spreading disinformation that Hindi and Gujarati, Hindi and Tamil, Hindi and Marathi are competitors. Hindi cannot be a competitor to any other language in the country. You must understand that Hindi is the friend of all the languages of the country.”

Native languages in the country will prosper only when Hindi prospers, and vice versa, the minister told the conference.

In 2019, Shah had sparked a furore after he advocated for ‘One Nation, One Language’ and stressed that Hindi is the only “unifying language”. Among opposition parties, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam chief and now Tamil Nadu chief minister, M K Stalin, had described Shah’s remarks as a sign of “Hindi imposition”.

On Wednesday, Janata Dal (Secular) in Karnataka and some Kannada organisations protested against the celebration of Hindi Diwas, prompting chief minister Basavaraj Bommai to announce that his government will soon bring in a legislation to make Kannada “mandatory” in the state.

JD(S) leader and former chief minister H D Kumaraswamy questioned the government over the celebration. “Instead of celebrating Kannada, the Bommai government is celebrating Hindi,” he said during a protest in Bengaluru.

The Union government is “hell bent on imposing Hindi through the National Education Policy (NEP)”, Stalin said. “It is India. Not Hindia. Indian languages, including Tamil, should be declared as official languages of the Union government,” he said in a statement.

The DMK chief also urged Shah to make Indian languages, including Tamil, the official languages of India and celebrate “Indian Languages Day” instead of Hindi Diwas to strengthen the country’s culture and history.

“To say that one should learn Hindi to understand the culture and history (of India) is against the Unity in Diversity principle of India, which consists of people who speak different languages,” he said.

“India’s culture and history aren’t hidden in Hindi. Historians have pointed out that the Dravidian language family led by Tamil had spread across today’s India and beyond,” he added.