Tamil Nadu shows the path for every state to follow to protect their mother tongue by identifying hegemonic languages and the strategy to escape their clutches, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister and DMK president MK Stalin said and vowed to halt Hindi imposition and save mother Tamil.

The Chief Minister, who turned 72 on Saturday, took this vow after paying floral tributes at the memorials of Dravidian icons, rationalist social reformer ‘Periyar’ EV Ramasamy, DMK founder CN Anna Durai (Anna), and his father and DMK patriarch M Karunanidhi (Kalaignar).

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“It is an unadulterated lie of the BJP-led Union Government that the three-language formula under National Education Policy (NEP) was to develop and foster the languages of the states. The recent announcements of Punjab and Telangana governments making Punjabi and Telugu mandatory in schools has exposed the hollowness of this claim. It is is proof of sister states following the footsteps of Tamil Nadu,” he said in an epistle to party cadre, the fifth in the series against Hindi imposition through the National Education Policy (NEP).

“The hidden agenda behind the BJP’s language policy is hatred for state languages and imposition of Sanskrit and Hindi. It was Tamil Nadu which had exposed it first by making Tamil mandatory up to 10th class in all schools, including CBSE schools, in the state two decades ago through a legislation by the then Karunanidhi Government. It has withstood the test of judicial scrutiny,” read the letter drawing attention to the CBSE’s draft examination pattern initially leaving out state languages and including them after protest from Punjab.

Recalling the anti-Hindi agitation of 1965, Stalin listed the names of the martyrs who laid down their lives by self-immolation and otherwise and the leaders who were arrested and lodged in prison and said the DMK government under Anna passed the resolution on the two-language policy in the state assembly in 1968 to safeguard the future generations.

Thus, Tamil Nadu and the Tamil people continue to remain the pioneers in protecting the state languages from hegemonic assault each and every time, he explained.

Further, he pointed out that it was Anna’s two language policy and the DMK’s credo ‘Opposition to Hindi Imposition’ which shields Tamils from the BJP’s persistent attempt tom thrust Hindi.