Alas, slowly will Tamil perish/As languages of the West flourish.” This was a Tamil poet’s fear in the early 20th century. But Subramania Bharati’s apprehensions were unfounded. Tamil found its savior in none other than the Government of India. Tamil was made a classical language. The UPA government’s elevation of Tamil was, of course, far from disinterested, and seemed to be done against the recommendations of some of the academic members of the Centre’s committee of languages.

A promise to this effect was in the UPA’s common minimum programme, and the then President’s first address to Parliament had also raised hope~particularly of M Karunanidhi, leader of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam. Ironically, the DMK’s anti-Hindi movement in the mid-1960s was set off by the Congress’ insistence on making Hindi the country’s sole official language. Keeping the heat on the Centre over its recent stand on the 3-language formula to be made mandatory for the release of funds for the state under the SSA programme, and quoting a poem of yet another poet Bharathidashan, the TN chief minister made it clear that manipulation to impose Hindi would never succeed with the Tamils. A rough translation of the poem is “Hindi, if you step into the Dravidian land of happiness, your feet will be chopped off”.

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Recently, condemning the public sector LIC for making Hindi the default language in its widely used website, MK Stalin described it as linguistic tyranny and demanded its immediate rollback. As if it were an ill-conceived idea of the Centre to celebrate Hindi nationalism to revive the latent but divisive language controversy plaguing the nation for quite a long time, there have been protests from southern states warning the Centre that ham-handed attempts to popularize Hindi would lead to serious consequences. Under attack from then TN chief minister Jayalalitha and political parties in the states, the UGC had to withdraw, in 2014, its controversial circular directing universities to teach Hindi as one of the primary languages in undergraduate courses.

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Karunanidhi’s push for Tamil as an official language was grounded in his belief that Tamil, as “the first mother tongue in the world” is superior to both English and Hindi. The argument necessarily relegated other languages to an inferior status. This was a case of linguistic chauvinism. Not surprisingly........

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