State Cong joins chorus, warns of protests 

Joining the issue with ally DMK, state Congress president KS Alagiri on Sunday said the real face of the BJP which believes in “one-country, one- language culture” has been exposed immediately after the Union Cabinet has been formed.

Claiming that several recommendations of Kasturirangan Committee tabled before the Union Human Resource Development Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank has created an unrest among the people of Tamil Nadu, Alagiri referred to the recommendations of the committee and said the committee report suggest that a trilingual policy should be made compulsory to enable the students to understand the vast geography and culture of the country.

Recalling the assurance, former Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru had given to non-Hindi speaking states in 1960 on following the two-language policy and appreciation of DMK founder CN Annadurai to the same, the TNCC president said that such an assurance was possible because a democratic leader like Nehru was the Prime Minister then. “We cannot expect a PM with brute majority and without democratic values to protect such an assurance,” Alagiri remarked, adding that the Centre was taking steps detrimental to state’s interest only because education was in the concurrent list.

“Tamil Nadu government should bravely oppose such decisions taken without consulting the states. I do not know if the AIADMK regime has the courage to do it,” the state Congress president added. Reasoning that legal safeguards were given to Nehru’s assurance during Lal Bahadur Sastri and Indira Gandhi’s tenure by amending the Official Languages Act, Alagiri cautioned that if the Modi regime attempts to thrust Hindi in the pretext of National Education Policy overlooking the legal safeguards of the past, they would be forced to organise massive protests against the same.