CUDDALORE: If Hindi had been imposed in Tamil Nadu, Tamil would have been gradually sidelined and the heritage of Tamils would have been eroded, VCK leader Thol Thirumavalavan said in Chidambaram on Tuesday.
Paying floral tributes to the statue of language martyr Rajendran at Annamalainagar, Thirumavalavan said the period of anti-Hindi agitations was a time when members of the Tamil community were prepared to sacrifice their lives for the language. If Hindi had been made a compulsory subject then, students would have been forced to study Tamil, English and Hindi and pass all three to be promoted to the next class, he said.
“If people like Rajendran had not opposed the imposition of Hindi and had not shed blood, today everyone here would be speaking Hindi,” he said.
Referring to the claim that learning Hindi would ensure employment opportunities, Thirumavalavan pointed out that many Hindi-speaking people were coming to TN in search of jobs. “Lakhs of youths from Bihar have come to TN. If learning Hindi guaranteed jobs, why are people from Hindi-speaking states such as Bihar, MP and Rajasthan migrating to other states,” he asked.
He said attempts to promote Hindi in the name of employment were aimed at making it easier to dominate people, impose a particular culture and narrate history through one language. “Their objective was not just employment through language, but domination through language,” he said.
He said that if Hindi had been imposed, Tamil would have been pushed to a lower position, while Hindi would have dominated administration. Political power has continued to remain concentrated in the north, with Hindi-speaking people occupying positions of authority in Delhi. If all of us had studied Hindi, we too would have fallen for the ‘Modi spectacle’ today, he added.
Stating that such politics did not succeed in Tamil Nadu because the imposition of Hindi was resisted, he said, "Otherwise, people of Tamil Nadu would also have aligned themselves with the RSS. That would have gone against the principles of Ambedkar and Periyar."
Thirumavalavan added that even if it led to political loss, his party would not change its stand. "Some people had recently entered politics speaking about Tamil, Tamils and Tamil Nadu, but they followed the RSS agenda. They will not speak about annihilation of caste, but will glorify caste, invoking figures like Rettamalai Srinivasan to suit their narrative,” he said.