In what could be another opposition to imposing Hindi in the state, Tamil Nadu Cooperative Milk Federation known as, Aavin, will use only ‘thayir’ instead of ‘dhahi’.
The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) has directed all the state governments to print the word ‘dhahi’ before August 2023 in all the sachets that sell ‘Curd’.
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M.K. Stalin said that this was another move to ‘impose Hindi’ in the state. State minister for cooperatives, S.M. Nasar said that the state government cooperative will not use the word ‘dhahi’ as directed by the FSSAI and instead would stick on to the local term ‘thayir’ for curd.
The Tamil Nadu Cooperative Milk Federation officials told IANS that the message of the state government that it would use only the word ‘thayir’ and not ‘dhahi’ has been communicated to the FSSAI.
Meanwhile the Tamil Nadu state president of the BJP opposed the move of the FSSAI to use ‘dhahi’ and added that this was not in tandem with the central government policy of promoting regional languages.
In a tweet, Annamalai said, “The notification released by the FSSAI for the use of word, Dhahi in curd sachets produced by the state run cooperative societies is not in tandem with the policy of our Hon PM Thiru@narendramodi avl to promote regional languages. We want an immediate roll back on the notification.”
The DMK functionaries have also tweeted in large numbers against the FSSAI directive. A twitter hashtag, “DahiNahipoda” (No to Dahi. Go on) is going viral on Twitter.
It is to be recalled that Tamil Nadu has a long history of fighting for the language and several agitations had taken place in the state for the Tamil language pride.