Politics of Language is not new to Tamil Nadu (TN). But still is being used by DMK the ruling Dravidian party in the state. This very party, under C.N. Annadurai, its founder tried to stir the emotions of linguistic chauvinism, although its coming to power was mainly due to the bullet shot received by the tinsel star MGR (MG Ramachandran) from the gun of his fellow film actor MR Radha due to personal enmity.
The pictures of wounded MGR were pasted nook and corner of the state and the DMK, a member of which was MGR, rode to power. Now under the present chief minister M.K. Stalin, the DMK is trying to whip up the same sentiments to cover up its corruption and other failures on many fronts of governance, it may not have any impact on the impending elections due within 11 months to the state legislative assembly.
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As parliament is rocked for a couple of days with this issue, with the DMK members creating a ruckus, a legal challenge in the Supreme Court seeking a direction to the DMK-ruled state to implement the National Education Policy (NEP) compelling it to implement the three language formula, as Hindi is not a must but any one of the Indian languages has to be introduced, is set to gain credence amongst the common citizenry of Tamil Nadu.
Advocate G.S. Mani in his Public Interest Litigation (PIL) has sought a direction from the Apex Court not only to the state of Tamil Nadu but also to other so-called INDI Alliance states, Kerala and West Bengal which have refused to implement NEP and have not yet signed MoU with the Centre. Only members of parliament from TN have been raising this issue an indication that Kerala and WB would also sooner accept NEP as the language policy is to implement any one of the Indian languages and not necessarily Hindi. For example, even in TN the border districts of Kerala, Karnataka and Andhra children (and parents) are interested in learning Malayalam, Kanndam, Telugu etc. and there is a sizeable chunk of people having Telugu as their mother tongue, like Malayalees, Kannadigas, etc. have settled in the state for generations.
There are Marwaris with Hindi as their Mother Tongue, Saurashtras (mainly in and around the temple town of Madurai), and many other smaller linguistic groups like Tulu and even Urdu-speaking Muslims are settled in the state for generations and voice for introducing their respective mother tongue for their children to learn. In fact, there is no state today in India with a single language although states re-organisation in the mid-1950s was said to have been done along linguistic lines.
In Bengal Presidency, as was then know, there were Biharis and others from the Eastern region of the country, like in the then Madras Presidency, there were (and are) Malayalees, Telugus, Marwaris, Saurashtras, Kannada,Tulu, Konkini speaking and even after states re-organisation many were settled in the state, like in Karnataka today there are many Marathi speaking. Even in TN’s Thanjavur there are Marathis from the days of Chatrapati Shivaji Maharaj and Serfoji was the last Maratha King who ruled the Tamil Thanjavur, then known as the Chola Kingdom. In fact, he was popular for his yeoman services in the filed of medicine and the Serfoji Maharaj Medical College is still existing and is an allopath hospital cum college ever since the British period.
Now DMK’s raising this issue vociferously and agitating in parliament stalling any other proceeding, has in fact boomeranged as Stalin, Kani Mozhi, the Maran brothers are Telugus. Their father late M.Karunanidhi’s parents migrated from Ongole in Andhra Pradesh and served the Telugu Kings as temple sevaks. They were the Telugu deva dasis and dasas dedicated to temples of Thanjavur other temples of today’s Tamil Nadu. How Karunanidhi managed to be at the helm of politics and reined for decades is another story. The Dravidian icon E.V. Ramaswamy Naicker @ ‘Periyar’ was a Kannadiga Balija Naidu who commented that Tamil was a barbaric language. He said many untellable including incest relations with one’s own mother and sisters. His disciples Annadurai and Karunanidhi penned many titillating so-called short stories and novelettes along those lines. The coordinator of a comparatively new political outfit ‘Nam Tamilar Party’ (meaning We Tamils Party) has stirred a controversy by calling the bluff of this ‘Periyar’ meaning ‘elderly person’ as quoted by union finance minister Nirmala Seetharaman in her reply to these ‘Dravidian stalk’ invoking EVR Naicker ‘Periyar’ at the drop of the hat.
Now, in this new age of social media, every youngster is aware about the happenings and the aspiring gen-X is not to be bluffed. The linguistic politics of the DMK will not give any political mileage. In fact if an organization goes for a survey, like many do pre-poll, exit-poll etc. in today’s Tamil Nadu many would opt for Hindi. The state government’s (euphemism for ruling DMK) resistance for narrow political ends in fact deprive lakhs of common people, their children going to government schools, where as their own children study in private schools under CBSE syllabus with three or even more languages and their own family members run schools have Hindi as a compulsory subject and fine is said to be imposed on a student for speaking in Tamil in the class room where English and Hindi are taught. This is perhaps the ‘Dravidian’ model much trumpeted by Thiru Mu Ka Stalin.
