CHENNAI: State sports minister cum DMK youth wing secretary Udhayanidhi Stalin has called out Union Home minister Amit Shah for his Hindi Diwas message.
Slamming Shah for calling Hindi the unifying force of India, Udhayanidhi Stalin said, "I strongly condemn the statement of union home minister Amit Shah claiming that Hindi is the uniting force of India and it is empowering other regional languages."
In a message posted on his official handle on micro blogging site 'X', Udhayanidhi said, "Hindi is spoken only in four or five states in the country and hence the statement of Amit Shah is totally absurd. It is only another version of imposing Hindi under the guise of generating livelihood."
"While we are speaking Tamil here, Kerala speaks Malayalam. Where does Hindi merge with and empower us? Amit Shah should stop oppressing non-Hindi languages by calling them just regional languages, " added the minister who caused a political storm over a week ago by reiterating his party's position on Sanathan Dharma.
His message on Sanathan became a runaway hit in the national polity that even Prime Minister Narendra Modi issued a political war cry against the opponents of sanathan dharma, and that too after the DMK sought to put the issue to bed.
In fact, the DMK, precisely its president cum Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M K Stalin had dubbed similar Hindi Diwas messages of the union home minister as imposition of Hindi. Curiously, Stalin has left it to his minister son Udhayanidhi to cross swords with the BJP leadership vis-a-vis alleged Hindi promotion by the union government.