Chennai: With a history of anti-Hindi agitation in the state, the M.K. Stalin-led Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) has now been trying to bridge the gap between Tamil Nadu and the Hindi-speaking states of India — especially after facing criticism from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for being anti-Hindi and anti-national.
Earlier this month, the DMK had posted advertisements about its initiatives in Hindi newspapers.
This despite Tamil Nadu and Dravidian parties in the state being among the first in the country to resist the alleged attempt of Hindi imposition since the late 1930s. In 1965, the DMK rose to prominence in Tamil Nadu with its anti-Hindi movement and, to date, the party has been raising its voice against Hindi imposition.
For instance, the party has been critical of the BJP’s statements on Hindi, like Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s remarks in 2019 on Hindi Diwas, where he said Hindi can unite the nation, and later in 2022, claimed that it is a friend of other languages. Further the same year, Shah announced that classes in central educational institutions will use Hindi as a medium of instruction.
Countering Shah’s remarks in October last year, Stalin had reportedly said, “It is India and not ‘Hindia'”. The state also reportedly saw several protests by the Dravidian parties slamming the statement during the time.
The party, however, has shown signs of softening its stance on Hindi and has come a long way, especially since the call by Udhayanidhi Stalin, Tamil Nadu’s minister for sports and youth welfare and the CM’s son, in October 2022 — “Hindi theriyadhu poda” (Don’t know Hindi, go away).
DMK has started a podcast called “Speaking for India”, through which Stalin will address the nation. The podcast would be translated into Hindi and other languages, including Telugu, Malayalam, and Kannada. The state government has even announced the opening of jobs for people who are fluent in Hindi.
“The BJP has been trying to divide the people based on language. It has been trying to create an image that we, from Tamil Nadu, are against the Hindi language and the Hindi-speaking people. This is a false propaganda,” DMK spokesperson, advocate A. Saravanan, told ThePrint.
“The efforts of the DMK is to bust this false propaganda in the Hindi heartland,” he added.
“Our leader or the people of Tamil Nadu is not against Hindi. We have one of the highest numbers of people studying Hindi in Dakshina Bharat Hindi Prachar Sabha (an institution in Chennai for teaching Hindi to non-Hindi speakers),” added Saravanan.
However, speaking to ThePrint, Narayanan Thirupathy, BJP state vice-president, said the anti-Hindi forces are now embracing the language.
“They think that the Congress is unlikely to win even 50 seats (in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections), and the DMK wants to be the leader of the INDIA alliance,” he said, and quoted a Tamil proverb that one’s own imagination can lead to one’s downfall.
Meanwhile, for political analysts, the DMK’s efforts are more political — a show to demonstrate that members of the opposition INDIA alliance are agents of change.
“BJP is trying to project that the members of the INDIA alliance are divisive. The steps taken by the DMK is to show that they are willing to reach others in the country and that the party is only against any form of excesses or imposition,” A.S. Panneerselvan, a political analyst and a fellow at Chennai’s Roja Muthiah Research Library, told ThePrint.
The DMK’s outreach also aligns with the national image that Stalin had been trying to cultivate, said political analysts. Stalin had played a crucial role as the cementing force in bringing the INDIA alliance together and, earlier this year, had said, “Talking about a third front is pointless.”
“DMK’s presence helped to sort out differences with parties, like Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) or Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress,” said Panneerselvan.
As the DMK expands its canvas from Tamil Nadu to a national stage, Hindi will certainly play a key role, said analysts.
“There is also a need to reach out to the Hindi heartland to make them understand what it means to be a regional party in India,” said Panneerselvan, adding, “The digital possibility of reaching out to the people has also helped the DMK make its point.”
For Saravanan, Stalin is “way better than former Gujarat CM (Narendra Modi)”. “He has already got this pan-India image, we are just bolstering it,” he said.
But, according to BJP’s Thirupathy, “Stalin and DMK think they are a national party, but they are being hated by the people of the nation with their comments on Sanatana Dharma. They need to learn Hindi so that they can realise how much the country hates DMK and the INDIA alliance.”
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The north-south divide
Earlier this year, Tamil Nadu and Bihar witnessed a wave of panic as videos of migrants allegedly fleeing from the southern state to their home state, of alleged violence against these workers and their appeals for help went viral in both states.
“Though the Tamil Nadu government quickly acted on these videos and busted them as fake, there was a lot of misinformation doing the rounds. We had even used social media platforms, written in Hindi to convey the truth,” said a senior DMK source, speaking to ThePrint.
The issue of migrant workers also raised some doubts in the DMK’s political alliance with the ruling Janata Dal (United) and Rashtriya Janata Dal in Bihar. Stalin assured Nitish Kumar that the Bihari workers were safe in Tamil Nadu and officials from Bihar were sent to verify the situation.
The Tamil Nadu police reportedly arrested several people for spreading false news and put an end to the matter.
The DMK source said that to counter the spread of such disinformation, the party will hire people with Hindi skills to monitor and manage the social media content related to the party, which would include managing its Hindi content on social media and translating the CM’s speeches from Tamil to Hindi.
In the Hindi heartland, where regional parties like the DMK and their ideologies are still unclear, the efforts of the DMK would ensure that a lot of disinformation is avoided, DMK sources said.
The Speaking for India podcast is an attempt by Stalin to bring out the “voice of South India”. In his announcement, Stalin said, “As the chief of the third largest party in Parliament, and as someone among you, speaking for India is (what) this podcast (is aimed at).”
Notably, the first episode of the podcast was released when Udhayanidhi’s Sanatana Dharma remark was making national headlines. In the podcast, Stalin lambasted the BJP and went on to call the Gujarat model of governance “rudderless”.
Political analysts observed that the DMK’s initiative will highlight the issues that the non-BJP ruled southern states face. “Rights of the state being snatched, the governors’ interferences, allocation of funds, imposition of Hindi etc,” are some of these issues, said political scientist Priyan Srinivasan to ThePrint.
Moreover, Panneerselvan pointed out that the government has taken steps to translate several Tamil books into other languages and said, “Taking the idea of plurality across the country means you have to speak the language of the people of various regions.”
According to DMK sources, the party had conducted the social justice conference to create awareness about the discrimination the country has been facing. Stalin at the meeting had said that the degree of problems might be different in different states, but the core issue across the states remained the same — “gross discrimination”.
“For India to grow stronger, all states need to grow stronger,” said Saravanan. “The DMK is focused on taking forward the progressive aspects of Tamil Nadu, educational system, equal opportunity for women, women’s rights, social justice system, among others.”
(Edited by Richa Mishra)
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