Opinion | DMK’s War Against Hindi: Divorcing Logic, Marrying Prejudice
Given DMK and the Periyar ideology’s long history of attacking Sanatana Dharma and tireless efforts to keep the artificial North-South divide alive for vote bank politics, the latest round of aggression is unsurprising
Tamil Nadu’s Dravidian politics is hell-bent on ensuring that the state and its people remain in denial of their umbilical cord with Bharat. The main Dravidian party, DMK, has declared war on studying Hindi as the third language under the new National Education Policy (NEP), even though Tamil and English will remain the first and second languages.
Given the DMK and the Periyar ideology’s long history of attacking Sanatana Dharma and tireless efforts to keep the artificial North-South divide alive for vote bank politics, the latest round of aggression is unsurprising. Such divisive regional chauvinism has kept state parties like the DMK and the TMC in power. Shiv Sena kept milking it by beating up ‘outsiders’ since Bal Thackeray’s time.
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But in an increasingly wired world, this politics not only has its limitations but is plain stupid and self-defeating.
The three-language formula, first mooted with consensus at a meeting of chief ministers in 1961 and introduced in the NEP of 1968, mandated the teaching of Hindi as a language in non-Hindi-speaking states. Later, following strong opposition to the policy, Tamil Nadu adopted a two-language policy of teaching Tamil and English in its government schools.
The idea has been to create Hindi as a national bridge language, just as English works very effectively as an international bridge language. In that context, the DMK’s opposition to it is not just wilfully prejudiced but also deeply illogical.
It is assumed that 54 per cent of Indians can speak Hindi, and a much wider audience can understand it. One interesting factor is Bollywood’s reach and popularity. According to the 2001 Census, 52 crore out of 121 crore people claimed Hindi as their spoken language, which is roughly 44 per cent. India has 130 million people, or a little over 9 per cent now, who speak English.
Which, then, is a better bridge language in this country?
Also, MK Stalin’s Muslim-appeasing promise of making Urdu is even more crazed. Last counted, there were 5.07 crore Urdu speakers in India, which is just 4.19 per cent of the population. While Urdu has some relevance in UP or Delhi, its utility in Tamil Nadu—beyond making some local Muslims happy—is almost zero.
Hindi, on the other hand, brings actual economic benefits. As Zoho founder Sridhar Vembu recently said, “As India is a fast-growing economy, engineers and entrepreneurs in Tamil Nadu will be smart to learn Hindi. Ignore the politics, let us learn the language! Aayiye Hindi seekhein (let’s learn Hindi)."
He reasoned that his company engineers work closely with clients in Delhi and Mumbai, and not knowing the language is a disadvantage for Tamil engineers working in rural parts of Tamil Nadu.
“As Zoho grows rapidly in India, we have rural engineers in Tamil Nadu working closely with customers in Mumbai and Delhi. So much of our business is driven from these cities and from Gujarat. Rural jobs in Tamil Nadu depend on us serving those customers well. Not knowing Hindi is often a serious handicap for us in Tamil Nadu," Vembu said. “I have learned to read Hindi haltingly in the last 5 years and I can now understand about 20 per cent of what is spoken," he added.
Tamilians are among the smartest professionals worldwide. Eventually, they will be able to see beyond the vacuous heat of the present controversy. If it is before 2026, Stalin will find out at the ballot that his illogic did not sell.
Abhijit Majumder is a senior journalist. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.
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