Leaders, and actors in South take to social media and t-shirts to protest ‘imposition’ of Hindi

Prominent personalities including former Karnataka chief minister HD Kumaraswamy (JD-S), Congress leader Dinesh Gundu Rao and south Indian film star Prakash Raj gave vent to their ire against “Hindi Divas” which they saw as an attempt by the Centre to impose its language on non-Hindi speaking states.
Tweets with hashtags StopHindiImposition and stophindidivas were trending on the micro-blogging site all through the day.

Tamil Nadu Lok Sabha member Kanimozhi (DMK) launched a t-shirt campaign last week to protest what she saw as imposition of Hindi. “A spark is enough to ignite a sentiment. When we printed Tshirts, in the era of blatant Hindi imposition, we didn't know that the youngsters would respond passionately like our forefathers in fighting discriminatory practices. Thank you,” she tweeted a few days ago.

The Centre celebrates the birth anniversary of Beohar Rajendra Simha as Hindi Divas as a tribute to his campaign to force the Centre to use Hindi as the official administrative language across all arms of the union government. “"But why should non-Hindi people celebrate Hindi's use in the union government," Kumaraswamy wondered in a series of tweets he put out, cautioning the Centre to drop efforts to promote Hindi on other states. He called the observance of the day as meaningless, and urged the Centre to stop the practice.

According to him, Hindi Divas was one of the several ways through which the Centre was seeking to impose Hindi on people of other languages including Kannada. Hindi was a symbol of linguistic arrogance, he said, and added self-respecting Kannadigas would strongly protest it. He warned the Centre that people speaking other languages will rise in revolt if it did not end the practice of the Hindi day celebrations.

Senior Congress leader in charge of Tamil Nadu affairs, Dinesh Gundu Rao warned the Centre that Kannadigas were supreme in Karnataka. The Centre, he said in a tweet, was seeking to forcefully impose Hindi on Kannadigas through its three-language formula. The state government was betraying the state by not protesting the policy so as to please the Centre, he added.

South Indian film star Prakash Raj, criticizing Hindi ‘imposition’, said he could speak a few languages, but he was proud of his mother tongue Kannada. A couple of other Kannada actors too joined him.

In Tamil Nadu, scores of people wore t-shirts with slogans in Tamil such as “I am a Tamil-Speaking Indian,” and “I don’t know Hindi, get lost!” In Karnataka too, many people wore t-shirts with similar slogans in Kannada to register their protest against use of Hindi as an official language.

In Bengaluru, a few Kannada organizations staged protests at different places, including in front of the railway station, against the use of Hindi.

Three years ago, the Siddaramaiah regime in Karnataka got the metro authorities to remove Hindi signboards at stations after scores of Kannadigas began a social media campaign with the hashtag #NammaMetroHindiBeda. It sparked a similar campaign in Mumbai too where sections of citizens protested use of Hindi at metro stations.