DMK warns of 1965-like protest against Hindi; CM calls for unity

A day after Union home minister Amit Shah accused the Tamil Nadu government of not teaching professional courses in Tamil, the DMK called it lies and warned that they will not hesitate to resist like the 1965 agitation against Hindi imposition. Meanwhile, chief minister MK Stalin urged the other southern states to be united against threats of language imposition and the delimitation exercise based on population.

While wishing Telugu and Kannada speaking “Dravidian sisters and brothers” for Ugadi on Sunday, Stalin said at a post on X: “In the face of growing linguistic and political threats like Hindi Imposition and delimitation, the need for southern unity has never been greater. We must come together and defeat every attempt to undermine our rights and identity. May this Ugadi kindle the spirit of resistance and solidarity that binds us together.”

This comes amid a tussle between the DMK-led government and BJP-led Union government over the two issues. The DMK since February has continued its opposition towards National Education Policy’s three-language formula. It stated that the three-language police was a way to impose Hindi in Tamil Nadu which has followed a two-language formula (English and Tamil) since 1968.

On March 22, Stalin hosted a meeting with three other chief ministers and political leaders of seven other states to pass a resolution urging the Union government to conduct a fair delimitation so that these states which have performed well economically and controlled their population are not penalised.

Amit Shah shared his interview a day ago on X saying that the “DMK govt is anti-Tamil because it has not introduced medical and engineering education in Tamil.” The DMK responded that it’s a lie and that since 2010 under the previous DMK regime, Chennai’s Anna University has been offering civil and mechanical engineering courses in Tamil and that the current government is working to introduce medical education in Tamil. “Lies, lies, lies - that’s all the BJP has to offer!” the DMK said on X. “Let’s shatter this nonsense with facts.”

In January last year, for the first time the Tamil Nadu Textbook and Educational Services Corporation (TNTBESC) released Tamil translations of key medical textbooks such as Gray’s Anatomy for Students and Guyton and Hall Textbook of Medical Physiology. “A team of 50 medical professionals is working on a total of 13 such Tamil books for MBBS students,” the DMK said on Sunday. “It’s the BJP that wants to destroy Tamil identity - that’s why the dead language Sanskrit has been funded with hundreds of crores, but barely any funding is given for Tamil by the Union…People have smartened up, they see through the shameless blatant lies of the BJP and it’s leaders and their anti-Tamil propaganda will not work …”

Hitting out at the Centre over pending funds under MGNREGA, Stalin said in a post on X: “Beneficiaries of #MNREGA, which is already starved of funds and the poor who benefit from our #KMUT cash transfers will be the ones who will be hit the hardest...This is not digitisation. It is institutionalised extraction. The poor swipe, the rich smile.”

On Saturday, the DMK also led a protest demanding the release of ₹ 4,034 crore funds pending under the MGNREGA scheme from the Centre to the state. Stalin described withholding funds as “political sadism”.

Responding to the allegations, BJP state president K Annamalai on Sunday said that Tamil Nadu has received a historically high allocation of ₹39,339 crores from the Union government under PM Narendra Modi in the last four years under the MGNREGA Scheme.” Thiru @mkstalin, since you’ve now been caught in the web of irregularities in the scheme’s execution, would you issue consent to the CBI to investigate the rampant corruption in the scheme in Tamil Nadu?”Annamalai said.

“The DMK is using delimitation and the language policy and everything else trying to go against Centre to distract from other issues in the state,” Tamil Nadu BJP vice president K S Narendran told HT.