Karnataka chief minister Siddaramaiah on Thursday added to the growing clamour around the impending delimitation of Lok Sabha seats while his Tamil Nadu counterpart MK Stalin upped the ante over the emotive issue of Hindi language, fuelling the controversy on two contentious issues that have the potential to widen the chasm between India’s northern and southern regions.
In a series of posts in Kannada, Siddaramaiah hit back at Union home minister Amit Shah, who had dismissed the row a day ago and said no southern province will suffer a reduction in their parliamentary representation. “The Union home minister Amit Shah’s statement that he will not allow injustice to be done to the southern states during the delimitation of constituencies is not credible. It is tainted with malicious intent to create confusion in the southern states,” he said on X.
His strong comments came just hours after Tamil Nadu chief minister Stalin fired a salvo at the Centre, saying the southern state will not allow the “imposition” of the Hindi language and vowed to protect Tamil and its culture. “We will oppose Hindi imposition. Hindi is the mask, Sanskrit is the hidden face,” he said in a series of posts that appeared to refer to a 2017 article on the connection between Hindi and many northern Indian dialects published in Mint newspaper.
Stalin said many north Indian languages spoken in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh such as Mythili, Brajbhasha, Bundelkhandi and Awadhi were “destroyed by the hegemonic Hindi”.
{{/usCountry}}Stalin said many north Indian languages spoken in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh such as Mythili, Brajbhasha, Bundelkhandi and Awadhi were “destroyed by the hegemonic Hindi”.
{{/usCountry}}“Ever wondered how many Indian languages Hindi has swallowed? Bhojpuri, Maithili, Awadhi, Braj, Bundeli, Garhwali, Kumaoni, Magahi, Marwari, Malvi, Chhattisgarhi, Santhali, Angika, Ho, Kharia, Khortha, Kurmali, Kurukh, Mundari and many more are now gasping for survival,” he said.
“The push for a monolithic Hindi identity is what kills ancient mother tongues. UP and Bihar were never just “Hindi heartlands.” Their real languages are now relics of the past,” he added.
Together, the Opposition chief ministers represented a pushback from two major southern states on the emotive issues that have roiled Indian politics for weeks now, and sparked a protracted back-and-forth between the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Opposition.
Countering Stalin’s charge, Union minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said: “Poor governance will never be hidden by such shallow attempts to divide society. It will be interesting to know what the Leader of the Opposition,Rahul Gandhi Ji, has to say on this subject. Does he, as MP of a Hindi-speaking seat, agree?”
At the heart of the spiralling controversy are two questions with decades-old baggage that threaten to drive a wedge between India’s northern and southern states and exacerbate already acute political differences.
The first is delimitation – originally scheduled for 2026 – which redefines the number of representatives a state sends to the Lok Sabha on the basis of population. A 2019 analysis by Milan Vaishnaw and Jamie Hintson of Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, published in HT, projected that such an exercise could see the overall strength of the Lok Sabha rising to 668, with Uttar Pradesh alone seeing its tally increase from the current 80 to 143 by 2026. In contrast, Tamil Nadu, which currently sends 39 representatives, could see the number rise to just 49. Kerala, which sends 20, would see no change at all.
On Wednesday, Shah sought to allay fears in Tamil Nadu, saying southern states will get a fair share of seats in the delimitation exercise. His comments came a day after Stalin called the impending delimitation “a sword hanging over the southern states” and announced an all-party meeting in Chennai on March 5 to discuss the politically contentious issue. “The Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government has made it clear in the Parliament that on a pro rata basis, redrawing of parliamentary constituencies based on population levels will not alter the proportion of Lok Sabha members of parliament from the southern states,” Shah said. He also assured that if there was any increase in seats during delimitation, the southern states would get an equal share.
To be sure, calculations show that if the number of Lok Sabha seats are increased proportional to the population of states, the more populous but poorer northern states will see their relative representation in Parliament expand at the expense of the prosperous but less populous southern states that have done far better in population control over the last few decades.
The Union government has not announced the timeline for delimitation or of the census which has to act as the basis for the exercise. And Shah’s comments appeared to suggest that the government could either defer the delimitation (like others before it have), or simply choose to not pursue any equity in representation across states. While such equity will ensure that every vote across India has the same weightage in terms of representation in the Lok Sabha, reducing the proportional representation of states such as Tamil Nadu will be tantamount to penalising them for successfully controlling the population (the national preoccupation in the 1970s especially) and rewarding the northern states for not doing so.
The second issue is that of Hindi, specifically against the backdrop of the National Education Policy, which mandates a three-language policy – something that states such as Tamil Nadu see as a proxy for Hindi imposition.
Stalin and Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan have been sparring for a week over the implementation of NEP in the state, with the former claiming funds were being held back as a form of blackmail. Stalin, who heads the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, also said that the Union government was sowing the seeds of another language war and that Tamil Nadu was ready for it. Language has long been an emotive issue for the state that was rocked by anti-Hindi agitation in the 1960s.
In his tweets, Siddaramaiah underlined the emotive nature of the controversy, saying if the central government genuinely wished to ensure fairness for the southern states, the home minister must clarify whether delimitation will be based on the latest population ratio or the current number of Lok Sabha seats.
“It is evident that if delimitation is carried out based on the latest population ratio, it will be a severe injustice to the southern states. To prevent such unfairness, previous delimitation exercises were conducted using the 1971 census as the basis, following constitutional amendments,” he stated.
He also touched upon the question of fiscal federalism. It is becoming increasingly evident that every decision taken by the Union government — whether it is the unfair distribution of tax revenues, injustice in GST and disaster relief funds, the imposition of a burdensome education policy, or amendments to UGC regulations — is intended to punish Karnataka,” he said.
States such as Tamil Nadu and Karnataka have highlighted that they generate more tax revenue, and that under the current devolution share, get far less of it than some northern states such as Uttar Pradesh that generate far less revenue.
Stalin, too, didn’t hold back. “If Tamil Nadu accepts the trilingual policy, the mother language will be ignored and there will be Sankritisation in the future,” he said.
He said NEP provisions say that other Indian languages will be taught in schools in “addition to Sanskrit” and that others such as Tamil could be taught online. “This makes it clear the Centre has planned to do away with languages like Tamil and impose Sanskrit,” the CM alleged.