A four-year-old video of Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) MP Dayanidhi Maran comparing the poor job prospects of those who only speak Hindi as opposed to English, particularly in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, has resurfaced on social media. This has been amplified by the BJP criticising the DMK of being condescending to Hindi speakers and it has put the Dravidian party’s allies in the INDIA bloc in a sticky position.

PREMIUM

The present ruling party in Tamil Nadu, the DMK, led protests at that time in erstwhile Madras state which snowballed into a riot. They found support in states like West Bengal. DMK founder CN Annadurai announced that January 26, 1965 (when the Official Languages Act came into force) will be observed as a day of mourning. About 3,000 DMK cadres, including Annadurai, were arrested as a pre-emptive measure to foil the protests. About 70 people were killed, according to government estimates. Earlier, PR Rangaswami, 78, who was a first-year student at Chennai’s Pachaiyappa’s college leading the anti-Hindi agitation in 1965 had recalled in an HT interview about how the protest had begun peacefully before it spiralled out of hand. “We raised slogans, ‘Hindi ozhiga, Tamil vaazhga’ (down with Hindi, long-live Tamil),” he had said.

Eventually, the proposal was dropped. Under Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri, it was guaranteed that both Hindi and English would be used in official transactions. In February 1965, he made a radio announcement to this effect to calm the situation and the protests subsided. To date, politicians of Tamil Nadu warn the union government of a reaction similar to the 1965 protests when rallying against Hindi imposition.

It was this protest that caused a major political change in the history of the state. It ousted the Congress in Tamil Nadu and brought the DMK to power for the first time in 1967 under Annadurai and since then the state has only swung between the two Dravidian majors- DMK and AIADMK. The movement which was led by students also gave birth to future leaders, such as the state’s present water resources minister Durai Murugan. Among the students who were arrested also included VK Sasikala’s late husband M Natarajan from Presidency College and G Vaiko from Madras Law College in Chennai. While Natarajan introduced Sasikala to the late J Jayalalithaa, Vaiko became a fiery orator under the DMK led by the late M Karunanidhi before he split to form the Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (MDMK) which espouses Tamil sub-nationalism.

Both the DMK and the opposition AIADMK have promoted the use of Tamil and English in education and employment. The linguistic resistance has also always found linkages ideologically to the Dravidian movement and the two front-line Dravidian parties operate along this dogma. The DMK has opposed the three-language policy prescribed under the National Education Policy (NEP), 2020 stating that they will continue to maintain Tamil Nadu’s two-language formula of English and Tamil. Though the state BJP unit is in favour of the policy brought in by their central leadership, they have taken a position to oppose any form of Hindi being imposed to appeal to the state’s electorate. DMK leaders specifically state the difference that they are not against Hindi but against the imposition of the language which they perceive as undermining state autonomy and being against federalist principles.

Earlier in June, Tamil Nadu chief minister and DMK president MK Stalin said that the BJP-led Union government and its institutions continue to give an “undue” and “unfair” advantage to Hindi over other Indian languages, while opposing a circular (dated April 3) issued by a public sector insurance company (The New India Assurance Company Ltd) for implementation of Hindi. “Gone are the days of non-Hindi speaking citizens of India tolerating the second-class treatment meted out to them, despite their contribution in propelling India’s growth with their hard work and talent,” Stalin said.

“Tamil Nadu and DMK will do everything under our power to stop Hindi imposition, as we have always strived in our history. We will remove the undeserving special status that Hindi enjoys everywhere in the Union Government, like Railways, Postal Department, Banking and Parliament that affects us and our people on a day-to-day basis.” Earlier, in March, Stalin described as “unabashed Hindi imposition” a directive by the Food Safety and Standard Authority of India (FSSAI) to use the term Dahi (meaning curd in Hindi) on packaging of curd followed by the regional word within brackets.

“The language debate in Tamil Nadu presents an interesting overview of the historical struggles to resist the imposition of Hindi in the 1960s and the current political resistance combined with the demand for all the 22 languages mentioned under the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution of India recognised as official languages of the union,” says political analyst Ramu Manivannan. “States like Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Maharashtra and West Bengal have moved from resisting the Hindi imposition to advocating their rights in terms of seeking national status for their own languages as official languages of the union beyond the status of being acknowledged under the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution of India. The DMK government led by Stalin, in the recent past, has not only been articulating this position but also seeking the support and understanding of other states in the country.”

Last year, NDA ally in Tamil Nadu, the Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK) protested against public sector Prasar Bharthi’s broadcast in Karaikal local radio station where a four-hour Hindi broadcast began last October 2. This has reduced the Tamil broadcast by two hours, said PMK founder S Ramadoss. Meanwhile, DMK ally MDMK led by Vaiko announced a protest in early October in Chennai of the expansion of Hindi in radio broadcasts and the NEP.

Last April, Union home minister Amit Shah while presiding over the 37th Parliamentary Official Language Committee said that Hindi should be accepted as an alternative to English in Indian states as a unifying language, leading to another controversy. Stalin reacted sharply that it was an attack on the unity of India. “The BJP leadership is continuously working to destroy India’s diversity. Is Amit Shah thinking that a ‘Hindi state’ is enough but not an Indian state? One language for all does not ensure unity. Uniformity also does not create unity. You are repeating the same mistake. But you will not succeed in it,” Stalin had said. The DMK’s mouthpiece Murosoli warned the BJP not to forget the anti-Hindi agitation from 1965.