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DMK workers blacken Hindi text at Tamil Nadu station; Chidambaram calls imposition of Hindi 'dangerous idea'

Chennai: The debate over making Hindi a national language has taken a rather violent turn after several youth workers of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam defaced the name of a railway station that was written in Hindi in Tamil Nadu’s Gudiyattam area on Wednesday.

DMK cadres were detained for blackening the Hindi text on the Gudiyattam railway station signage in Vellore district.

The incident comes at a time when the DMK has announced a state-wide protest against Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s remarks about Hindi being a unifying language.

In a video accessed by Times Now, several youths allegedly from the DMK can be seen holding ‘Get Out Hindhi’ placards and smearing the Hinti text of the signboard on the platform in black ink.

Last Saturday, Amit Shah had said on the occasion of Hindi Diwas that a common language would be “the mark of India’s global identity” and expressed intention to make Hindi the national language. However, the Centre faced a lot of backlash from opposition parties and people from the southern part of India where Hindi is not a widely-spoken language.

This drew the ire of the DMK-ruled Tamil Nadu government that announced state-wide protests on September 20 condemning the ‘Hindi imposition’. “This meet urges the Centre to give up the imposition of Hindi language immediately and engage itself in useful activities that will develop the nation,” the DMK said in a statement, according to news agency PTI.

Former finance minister and senior Congress leader P Chidambaram, who is currently under trial and is lodged in the Tihar jail in the INX Media money laundering case, also voiced his displeasure with it and urged the people of Tamil Nadu to join the DMK in its protest.

“A dangerous idea that Hindi alone can unite the people of this country has been floated. The Tamil people, as well as all others who speak other languages, will never allow the imposition of Hindi. We support the development of all languages, but we will never accept the idea that Hindi alone will unite the people of this country. I urge the TNCC president KS Alagiri to ask all Congress workers to join the state-wide protest announced by the DMK on 20.09.2019 to oppose the imposition of Hindi,” Chidambaram said in a tweet posted by his family from his official Twitter account.

Earlier in the day, actor-turned-politician Rajinikanth, after Kamal Haasan, expressed their displeasure with the Home Minister’s remark to make Hindi a national language, with Rajinikanth saying that “no one will accept the imposition of Hindi, especially in Tamil Nadu and southern India”. “No Shah, Sultan or Samrat should renege on that promise. We respect all languages but our mother language will always be Tamil,” Kamal Haasan had said on Monday.

“India is a country of different languages and every language has its own significance. But it is important to have a language for the whole country, which should become the identity of India in the world. Today, if one language can do the work of unifying the country, then it's Hindi, the most spoken language,” Shah had said in a series of tweets.

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