Chennai | Actor-turned-politician Kamal Haasan has joined the wave of criticism against Home Minister Amit Shah’s promotion of Hindi as ‘One Nation, One Language’.
The Makkal Needhi Maiam (MNM) chief asked the centre not to renege on promises made to states when India was made a republic and warned the Narendra Modi government of a language war that “India or Tamil Nadu doesn’t need or deserve”.
“India was formed as a result of the unification of many empires by many kings who relinquished their thrones but the one thing that many people across states refused to give up was the ways of their language and culture”, he said.
“Unity in diversity is a promise we made when India became a republic. Now no Shah, Sultan or Samrat should renege on that promises. Jallikatu was just a protest… the battle for our language will be exponentially bigger. India or Tamil Nadu doesn’t need or deserve such a battle,” Kamal Haasan said, adding, “We respect all languages but our mother language will always be Tamil.”
“Most of the nation happily sings the national anthem happily in Bengali. The reason is the poet who wrote it gave respect to all languages and cultures, and hence it became our anthem. So don’t make an inclusive India into an exclusive one,” the MNM leader said, warning the centre that “all will suffer due to this short-sighted folly”.
Kamal said that most Indians don’t sing the national anthem in their own language but for the Bengalis. He added that the reason we are happy to do so is because the author of those verses embraced and acknowledged the importance of the languages and cultures that make India and accorded them their due respect.
“We are capable of seeing unity in diversity. Long live Tamil, long live the Tamil people and long live India.”
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