BENGALURU: The central government is carrying out a ‘linguistic genocide’ of the country’s regional languages, said Senthil Nathan, secretary of Campaign for Language Equality and Rights.
Speaking at a seminar on ‘Campaign for Language Equality’, he said that the movement to save regional languages had gathered pace over the past two years. He said many languages, such as Bhojpuri and Maithili, were billed as dialects of Hindi, a fact which the speakers of those languages opposed.
Nathan brought up the suicide of a dalit girl in his native Tamil Nadu over the NEET issue, and said the government’s imposition of NEET was an extension of its Hindi imposition. He said Tamilians living in four cities in the US too had protested against NEET at Indian embassies. He said the solution was an amendment in the Constitution, and asked citizens to work towards that goal.
Speaking on the occasion, Anand G, president, Banavasi Balaga, said in Karnataka, if someone knew only Kannada, they faced difficulties at certain places in the state. Citing examples of what he termed was imposition of Hindi, he said, “The IBPS exams for selection of clerks at banks and applications for Railway jobs are mandated to be written in either Hindi or English. The interviews to obtain driving license also have to be conducted in Hindi or English.” A book that details the campaign against Hindi imposition in Namma Metro, authored by Anand G, too was released at the programme.