Joining the list of politicians making controversial remarks was DMK spokesperson and Rajya Sabha MP TKS Elangovan, who said that speaking Hindi will make people ‘Shudras’. He made the remark during an anti-Hindi conference held at the Dravidar Kazhagam office in Chennai’s Vepery on Saturday, June 4. ‘Shudras’ are designated the lowest rung in the Hindu caste hierarchy.
“Through Hindi imposition, Manu dharma is being imposed on us. What Hindi will do is make us Shudras. Hindi will not do us any good. See this list: West Bengal – is it developed or not? Orissa – is it developed or not? Then Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Kerala, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Punjab – are they all developed or not? Why I’m asking this is because Hindi is not the mother tongue of these people. Now see the list of states that are not developed: Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan and a few other newly created states. Why should I learn Hindi?” he said at the meeting.
Elangovan further said that the Tamil language is 2,000 years old and that Tamil culture practises equality. “There was no caste till the 10th century in Tamil Nadu,” he said.
Talking further about Hindi imposition in the country, he made another controversial remark, “We should not allow this (Hindi imposition) as long as we are humans. If we allow this we will not be humans, but slaves and shudras,” he said, adding that if Hindi enters TN it will cause harm and damage the brotherhood existing between the people.
The MP’s remarks received widespread condemnation. BJP state president K Annamalai took to Twitter to slam the MP and the DMK. “@Arivalayam party MP TKS Elangovan says that Hindi is the language of underdeveloped states & adopting it would make people a Shudra. DMK was always & will be a casteist party. They’ll never think beyond that,” he tweeted.
.@Arivalayam party MP TKS Elangovan says that Hindi is the language of underdeveloped states & adopting it would make people a Shudra.
— K.Annamalai (@annamalai_k) June 6, 2022
DMK was always & will be a casteist party. They’ll never think beyond that. pic.twitter.com/eQ9CJwsDWR
Elangovan is, however, not the first Tamil Nadu politician who has engaged in controversial remarks that were widely condemned. Notably, merely a week ago, Annamalai himself had come under fire for using the word ‘pariah’ in a tweet to praise the completion of eight years by the Narendra Modi-led government. A complaint was filed against the BJP leader in this regard and he later explained that the word meant “a person, organisation or country that others dislike and avoid”.
Last month, DMK’s policy outreach secretary Dindigul Leoni was criticised after he said that Chief Minister MK Stalin was responsible for a Dravidian revolution by elevating a member of the Dalit community, which once carried slippers on their heads, to a Chennai Mayor.
Before that, Tamil Nadu Education Minister K Ponmudi met with controversy when he said “Hindi-speaking people sell pani puris” during the Bharathiar University convocation ceremony, where Governor RN Ravi was also present. “In Tamil Nadu, there are two languages – English and Tamil. While English is an international language, Tamil is a local language. What is the need to learn Hindi? They said we can get jobs if we learn Hindi... Do we get jobs now? Check the people who are selling pani puris in Coimbatore and Tamil Nadu. Whose shop? Whose is it? All the shops are theirs only. All that happened in the past only. Now, we have English,” he said.
This episode was preceded by Minister RS Rajakannappan being transferred from his portfolio after a Block Development Officer (BDO) from Ramanathapuram alleged that the minister rebuked him using casteist remarks.
Earlier in April, Union Home Minister Amit Shah had said that “Indian people of different states should communicate with each other in Hindi, and not English”, while presiding over the 37th meeting of the Parliamentary Official Language Committee. Many residing in non-Hindi speaking states had strongly opposed Shah’s statement seeing it as an imposition of the Hindi language.
Meanwhile, Elangovan reacted to the controversy by saying that he meant that the infiltration of north Indian languages will lead to infiltration of Manu dharma. Speaking to CNN News18, he said, “After infiltration of the northern language in the form of Hindi or Sanskrit to the south, the concept of Manu dharma which was practised in the north had also infiltrated into the south. The south until then was an equanimous society. There is no caste difference, everyone was treated equally. Because of the entry of north Indian languages, the Tamil society turned into a class society, a Manu dharma society. That was what I meant. So if Hindi comes in, then it will make us shudras. Sanskrit-Hindi concept had already made us Shudras (sic).”