The Hindi controversy

“Hindi is our national language, our identity and we should be proud of it,” Mr Naidu said, adding that “it’s very unfortunate that we are obsessed with English” which, according to him, was detrimental to the nation’s progress.

Another Union Minister :Learn your mother tongue, learn English and learn another language (as per the three language formula). Allow learning of Hindi as the other language. If you don’t want Hindi, it is ok. It is the decision of the parents and the child,” Union minister Nirmala Sitharaman had said.

“It is unfortunate that everyone is bent upon learning English because it guarantees employment. Hence I want the nation to discuss, promote and learn our mother languages more and at the same time learn Hindi as well,” Naidu told reporters at an event in Ahmedabad.

He further said that it was necessary for people to learn their mother languages as the dominance of English medium have shadowed their cultural heritage. “Since majority of the population speaks Hindi, it is necessary to learn Hindi, but before that we need to learn our mother language,” Mr Naidu said.

Condemning the minister’s comment, Congress’ Randeep Surjewala said, “We don’t need to know from him (Venkaiah Naidu) that Hindi is our national language, he himself speaks mostly in English, will he stop doing it?”

Earlier in April, Venkaiah Naidu had defended a move by the parliamentary committee on official language proposing to make use of Hindi mandatory both in speech and writing for lawmakers and Union ministers, who could read and write the language. Mr Naidu had said that the central government was only ‘promoting’ not ‘imposing’ Hindi on anyone.

Parties like Karnataka’s Janata Dal (Secular) and Tamil Nadu’s DMK have criticised the centre for ‘imposing’ Hindi language in their states. DMK’s Stalin, whose party had successfully led an anti-Hindi agitation in the state in the 1960s, said his party was ready to “resist and defeat” any efforts of Hindi “dominance.” Stalin’s allegations were strongly rejected by the government. “There is no thrusting of Hindi”.