Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Edappadi Palaniswami said on Thursday that the state government is firm on the existing two-language policy in the state. The Chief Minister was speaking at Fort St George after hoisting the flag on Independence Day. He assured that no projects affecting the people would be allowed.
“Amma (former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa) said that ‘we are firmly against imposing Hindi on a non-Hindi speaking state and would thwart any move to impose Hindi on us,’” said Palaniswami, according to one report in the Times of India.
According to one report in The Hindu, he recalled that Tamil Nadu had passed a resolution in 1968 when CN Annadurai was Chief Minister. The resolution, passed in the state Assembly, was reportedly to remove Hindi and allow only two-language policy with Tamil and English.
In 1986 too, under Chief Minister MG Ramachandran, the state government passed a resolution supporting the two-language formula, he said.
Earlier this year, the draft version of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2019 caused a massive uproar for making the study of Hindi mandatory in non-Hindi speaking states. This was revised soon after politicians and citizens across the country— especially in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka— slammed the draft for imposing Hindi upon states, in an alleged attempt to ‘homogenise’ the diverse linguistic fabric country. Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) had also clarified that the policy was merely a draft. However, the revised draft still advocates for the three-language formula, stating that it needs to be 'implemented in its spirit throughout the country, promoting multilingual communicative abilities for a multilingual country.'
Recently, School Education Minister KA Sengottaiyan said that the government's stance on implementing the two-language policy has remained unchanged even during the terms of former Chief Ministers MG Ramachandran and Jayalalithaa.