Well, we have all heard the stories of Frankenstein or vampires—an army of the dead raised to haunt and hunt the living. I do not mean to petrify my reader in the very first line, but let me bite the bullet and take the bull by the horns. The zombie haunting our nation today is an untoward, undue, unnecessary, and unwanted debate over the imposition of Hindi in the state of Tamil Nadu under the pretext of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, as alleged by proponents of Dravidian secessionist politics.

There are videos making rounds on media where vandals from the state ruling DMK party are seen smearing the signboard of a railway station wherein the station name reads in Hindi. Such egregious and politically motivated cheap parlour tricks are designed to stoke tensions and keep the pot boiling while deliberately trying to cover up the misgovernance and corruption of the administration.

Instead of dousing the fire, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin publicly escalated the tension, declaring, “Tamil Nadu is prepared for another language war." In another post on X, he went so far as to claim that Hindi has gobbled up many regional languages.

Noteworthy is to mention that the Narendra Modi government introduced NEP 2020 without mandating the superimposition of any language, let alone the thrusting of Hindi. The policy insists that governments introduce a language-learning framework where both the state and individuals can ensure that a regional language, apart from English or Hindi, is taught. In fact, the promotion of regional languages is one of the major........

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