Thiruvananthapuram: Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Sunday joined the protests against Union Home Minister Amit Shah's call to make Hindi a unifying language, terming it a "planned attempt" to stir a controversy and divert attention from pressing problems in the country.
Pinarayi said Shah's call was a 'war cry' against the mother tongue of non-Hindi speaking people.
In a two-part tweet, Pinarayi termed Shah's claim absurd. "The claim that Hindu unifies our country is absurd.That language is not the mother tongue of a majority of Indians. The move to impose Hindi on them amounts to enslaving them. The Union Minister's statement is a war cry against the mother tongues of non-Hindi speaking people," he said.
In the second part, he wrote: "No Indian should feel alienated because of language. India's strength lies in its ability to embrace diversity," he said, demanding that the Sangh Parivar relinquish its 'divisive' policies. He said the right-wing party should realise that people can see through the 'ploy', that it was an attempt to divert attention from the real problems."
Pinarayi wrote on Facebook that Hindi has been recognised as the national language. However, later he edited that portion out after several people pointed out that Hindi is not the national language but only one of the 22 languages designated as India's official languages.
Governor's U-turn
Kerala Governor Arif Mohammed Khan, who faced the wrath of the twitterati for terming Hindi as India's national language on Saturday, made a U-tun on Sunday, saying 'all languages spoken in India are national languages'.
On Saturday, he tweeted: "A language inspires and unites people. Let us strengthen our unity through Hindi, our national language. Along with our mother tongue, let us use Hindi in our work".
His Sunday's tweet read: "To me, all languages spoken in India are national languages, because they're spoken by Indian nationals. Languages enable us to understand & appreciate one another. Each language is a medium to bridge distances. All languages lead to the same destination – understanding".
Shah had in a series of tweets on Saturday said India should have a language that becomes the country's identity globally.
"India has many languages and every language has its importance. But it is absolutely necessary that the entire country should have one language that becomes India's identity globally," he said on the occasion of the Hindi Diwas.
Hitting out at the BJP, senior congress leader Ramesh Chennithala said the attempt was to divide the people and create divisions in society on the basis of language.
KPCC president Mullapally Ramachandran also lashed out at Shah's one nation one language theory, saying it would divide the country along linguistic lines.
The BJP should draw lessons from the protests in Tamil Nadu in 1967 against imposition of Hindi, he said.
CPM state secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan said the RSS agenda of 'imposing' one language and one culture by decimating the country's rich culture was now being revealed through Amit Shah's words.
(With PTI inputs)
