Punching holes into the ruling DMK’s claim as the vanguard of protecting and developing Tamil, BJP stalwart and Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Friday asked Chief Minister MK Stalin to take steps to implement Tamil in the curriculum for medicine and engineering and offer the courses in Tamil at the earliest.
“I want to urge the Tamil Nadu chief minister to take steps to impart engineering and medical education in Tamil. The DMK president has not done enough for this. But Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made crucial changes to accommodate regional languages in recruitment of personnel for the Central Armed Police Forces (CAPF),” he said, participating in the CISF Day at the newly-christened Rajaditya Chola Recruits Training Centre (RTC) in Thakkolam near Vellore.
“Like his counterparts in other states, the Tamil Nadu chief minister should start medical and engineering courses in Tamil which will not only strengthen Tamil as the mother tongue but also benefit Tamil medium students. Besides empowering the mother tongue, it will provide equal opportunity to children educated in Tamil medium,” he pointed out.
“Our youth can now write the CAPF examinations for the post of constables in their mother tongue – languages, including Tamil, listed in the eighth schedule of the Constitution. Till now, this option was not there and it was the PM’s decision,” Shah pointed out to drive home the point that the BJP is accommodative of regional languages without discrimination. However, the fact remains that the decision to permit candidates appearing for CAPF examinations to write in any of the 13 languages was made following a stiff protest from Stalin as it was originally in Hindi and English.
Earlier in the day, Stalin, in a social media post and in a letter, the latest in a series, to the party cadre, said the National Education Policy (NEP) is redundant as far as Tamil Nadu is concerned since the state has surpassed the goals the policy aims to achieve by 2030 and as such, “This is like a LKG student lecturing a Ph D holder. It is the biggest irony. Dravidam does not take dictations from Delhi. Instead, it sets the course for the nation to follow.”
Charging Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan with provoking Tamil Nadu, the DMK president said “The tree may prefer calm, but the wind will not subside… He forgot his place and dared to threaten an entire state to accept #HindiImposition, and now he faces the consequences of reviving a fight he can never win. Tamil Nadu will not be blackmailed into surrendering.”
The chief minister, ridiculing the BJP’s signature campaign to press for three-language policy of the NEP as a circus like tamasha which has become a laughing stock in the state, challenged the saffron party to make this the core agenda in the 2026 Assembly election so that it can be a referendum on Hindi imposition. “From the names of schemes to awards to Union Government institutions, Hindi has been im posed to a nauseating extent, suffocating non-Hindi speakers, who are the majority in India,” he wrote adding “History is clear. Those who tried to impose Hindi on Tamil Nadu have either been defeated or later changed their stance and aligned with the DMK. Tamil Nadu will not tolerate Hindi colonialism replacing British colonialism.”