Two hashtags #TamilSpeakingIndian and #HindiTheriyathuPoda (I don’t know Hindi) were trending nationally with lakhs of twitter-handles tweeting with the hashtags.
Following Twitter hashtag trends, a tweet by actor Shirish with a picture of him and music director Yuvan Shankar Raja wearing t-shirts with imprints of the same hashtags went viral and several actors including Aishwarya Rajesh and Santhanu and his wife Keerthi started following the trend.
“The phone was continuously ringing the whole day and several people were continuously calling me to place orders for the t-shirts”, said the vendor who is selling the imprint t-shirts.
This trend gained significance when several incidents which brought the Hindi imposition discussion back in the state. First, when DMK MP Kanimozhi was stopped and questioned about her nationality by CISF personnel and when the MP said that she doesn’t understand Hindi. This led to a huge outrage in the state and CISF was forced to clarify and inform that they will deploy staff with knowledge of other regional languages.
Even before the issue would get settled, Ayush Ministry Secretary Rajesh Kotecha asked the doctors from Tamil Nadu to leave the webinar if they don’t understand Hindi and it created controversy. On this, DMK MP Senthil Kumar tweeted saying that an explanation will be sought through the parliamentary standing committee for the Secretary’s conduct.
Recently national award winner and director Vetrimaran also came out and said that he was stopped at the airport for 45 minutes for not speaking in Hindi.
Language is always seen as a very emotive issue in the state. The attempts made to promote Hindi have always hit a roadblock in the state and irrespective of the differences, both AIADMK and DMK have opposed any such moves.
Even when the three language policy proposed by the central government under the New Educational Policy was rejected by the state government saying that they will continue to follow the successful twolanguage policy in the State.
As the elections are nearing, political parties are raking up the issue. No party wants itself to be on the wrong side. Yesterday DMK Kanimozhi tweeted a picture along with the youngsters saying that “A spark is enough to ignite a sentiment. When we printed Tshirts, in the era of blatant Hindi imposition, we didn’t know that the youngsters would respond passionately like our forefathers in fighting discriminatory practices. Thank you.”
As the campaign gained momentum on Monday several BJP leaders including the state unit president clarified that the Tamil Nadu BJP is against Hindi imposition and anyone is free to learn the language of their choice.
Political analysts in the state opined that the language issue will be taken up by political parties especially by the DMK during the election season to target BJP and its ally AIADMK in the State.