In a bid to take its fight against the National Education Policy (NEP) and its resistance to Hindi to the next level, the M.K. Stalin-led Tamil Nadu government, on Thursday, dropped the official rupee symbol from the state budget logo. This is the first time a state rejected the national currency symbol.
In a tweet, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Stalin released the state’s 2025 budget logo, which showed the official rupee symbol being replaced with the Tamil letter 'Ru'. The logo has set the stage for a new debate amid the raging language row between the Centre and the state. Stalin and his DMK have refused to implement NEP 2020 and condemned the Centre saying it is “blackmailing” Tamil Nadu. The state’s resistance to the three-language formula and refusal to set up PM Shri Schools in the state have resulted in the Centre withholding Rs 2,512 crore under the Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA).
சமூகத்தின் அனைத்துத் தரப்பினரும் பயன்பெறும் வகையில் தமிழ்நாட்டின் பரவலான வளர்ச்சியை உறுதி செய்திட…#DravidianModel #TNBudget2025 pic.twitter.com/83ZBFUdKZC
— M.K.Stalin (@mkstalin) March 13, 2025
Tamil Nadu contends that the Centre, by insisting on the implementation of the three-language formula, is trying to impose Hindi on the Tamil speaking population. However, Union minister Dharmendra Pradhan and the BJP in Tamil Nadu have been stating that the DMK is playing politics with the language issue, spoiling the future of the students. “Opposition to NEP 2020 has nothing to do with the preservation of Tamil pride, language and culture,” he had claimed.
Pradhan’s statement in the Parliament against the Tamils saw the DMK MPs staging a protest in the Parliament complex.
Now, the decision to drop the rupee symbol and replace it with the Tamil letter Ru has set the stage for yet another round of political war between the BJP and the DMK. While the DMK claimed that this was a form of showing respect to Tamil, the BJP in Tamil Nadu, rubbished it calling it a “political drama.” BJP chief K. Annamalai lashed out at the DMK saying it is insulting the Tamilian who created the Rupee symbol.
The Indian rupee symbol was officially adopted on July 15, 2010. The symbol was created by a Tamilian, D. Udayakumar, when he participated in a design competition conducted by the Indian government on March 5, 2009. The symbol is a combination of Devanagari letter Ra and the Latin capital letter R without its vertical bar. The parallel lines at the top represent the Indian tricolor flag and symbolise the idea of reducing economic disparity. It was announced as the national rupee symbol by Pranab Mukherjee.
With the Tamil Nadu budget to be tabled in the state assembly on March 14, the decision to replace the rupee symbol promises yet another round of political mileage for the DMK which is capitalising on the language issue for the past few weeks.
