Raking up the language row, Tamil Nadu Deputy Chief Minister Udhayanidhi Stalin asserted on Tuesday that the state would resist any attempt by the Centre to impose Hindi.
Speaking at an event in Chennai, he said the state is also prepared to wage a language war if necessary.
“If Hindi is forced upon us, Tamil Nadu is ready for a language war,” the DMK leader said. “We have always protected our language, our state rights, democracy, and the voting rights of the people".
Udhayanidhi's fresh remarks came a day after he stirred up a political storm, calling Sanskrit a 'dead language'. He alleged that the Modi government was allocating thousands of crores to Sanskrit while giving only a fraction of that amount to Tamil.
'States being targeted'
Udhayanidhi accused the Union government of targeting the non-BJP-ruled states politically and economically. “The BJP is trying to make economically strong states politically weak, and politically strong states economically weak,” he said.
The Deputy CM further alleged that Tamil Nadu has been suffering due to “unfair sharing of tax revenues, delays or blocking of funds, centrally imposed schemes, the New Education Policy and now the proposed delimitation exercise”.
Emphasising that the DMK will remain a strong voice for federalism and equity, Udhayanidhi compared Dravidian politics to a computer algorithm.
“An algorithm is a set of clear steps used to solve a problem or reach a result. In computers, it tells the machine exactly what to do. Tamil Nadu’s politics also follows a clear and consistent method; this is what we call the Dravidian algorithm," he said.