It is one thing to oppose Hindi but quite another to oppose a symbol, especially one that represents the Indian rupee, merely because it has the accoutrements or trappings of Devanagari, which the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) viscerally hates.

Ironically, the symbol ₹ was designed by the son of a then DMK MLA, D Uday Kumar, who competed openly with many other Indian residents before the then UPA government commended it to the public for adoption on July 15, 2010.

The DMK government in Tamil Nadu says it is going to ostracise the offending symbol from the budget documents to be presented in the assembly on the 14th and replace it with the Tamil letter phonetically sounding ‘ru’.

As per the Indian Constitution, currency is in the Union list. By extension, therefore, its symbol, too, is in the domain of the central government. Ergo, what the Tamil Nadu government has done is a clear case of overreach. Perhaps it knows that it is on shaky ground and hence softened its stance soon after its offensive against the symbol, saying it is just a mark of protest against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government at the centre........

© News18