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Upping the ante against alleged Hindi imposition by the Centre, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M K Stalin on Thursday once again said the state will not allow the "imposition" of the language and vowed to protect Tamil and its culture.
"Will oppose Hindi imposition. Hindi is the mask, Sanskrit is the hidden face," he said in a letter to partymen.
The ruling DMK has been alleging Hindi imposition by the Centre through the 3-language formula as part of the National Education Policy (NEP), a charged denied by the Union government.
In the letter, Stalin claimed many north Indian languages spoken in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh such as Mythili, Brajbhasha, Bundelkhandi and Awadhi "have been destroyed by the hegemonic Hindi."
"More than 25 north Indian native languages have been destroyed by the invasion of hegemonic Hindi-Sanskrit languages. The century-old Dravidian movement safeguarded Tamil and its culture because of the awareness it created and the various agitations," the ruling DMK chief said.
Tamil Nadu is opposing NEP because the Centre is trying to impose Hindi and Sanskrit through the education policy, he added.
Countering the BJP's contention that the third language according to the NEP could be even a foreign one, Stalin claimed that according to the 3-language policy schedule, "only Sanskrit is being promoted in many states."
BJP-ruled Rajasthan was appointing Sanskrit teachers instead of Urdu instructors, he claimed.
"If Tamil Nadu accepts the trilingual policy, the mother language will be ignored and there will be Sankritisation in the future," he said.
He claimed NEP provisions say that other Indian languages will be taught in schools in "addition to Sanskrit" and that others like Tamil could be taught online.
"This makes it clear the Centre has planned to do away with languages like Tamil and impose Sanskrit," the CM charged.
Dravidian stalwart and former Chief Minister CN Annadurai had mandated the two-language policy in the state decades ago to make it clear "there is no place for imposition of Aryan culture through Hindi-Sanskrit and destruction of Tamil culture," Stalin said.