'Stop oppressing non-Hindi speakers': Udhayanidhi slams Amit Shah's comments on Hindi Diwas

Slamming Union Home Minister Amit Shah for his remark that "Hindi unites", Tamil Nadu Minister Udhayanidhi Stalin on Thursday said it is "absurd" to claim that Hindi, spoken in just four to five states, unites the entire Indian union.

Udhayanidhi said the union minister has as usual shown his love for Hindi by commenting that only "Hindi unites people and empowers regional languages."

"This view is only an alternative form of a clamour for Hindi; that if it is learnt, a person can develop," the Minister said in Tamil on social media platform X.

"In Tamil Nadu it is Tamil, and Malayalam is the language in neighbouring Kerala. How is Hindi uniting these two states? How it is empowering?" he asked.

Further, he said: "It is absurd to say that Hindi, spoken in four to five states, is uniting the whole of the Indian Union....Amit Shah should stop oppressing non-Hindi languages by calling them just regional languages."

Amit Shah should stop relegating non-Hindi languages to the status of provincial languages and insulting them, Udhayanidhi said in Tamil on X and added the hashtag #StopHindiImposition.

The union home minister on Thursday said that Hindi unites the diverse languages in India and it has honoured different Indian as well as global languages and dialects.

In a message on the occasion of 'Hindi Diwas', Shah said Hindi has never competed nor would compete with any other Indian language and that a strong country would emerge only by strengthening all its languages. The home minister expressed confidence that Hindi would become a medium to empower all the local languages.