Speaking at a recent media conclave in Chennai, Tamil Nadu’s Information Minister P.T.R. Palanivel Thiyagarajan strongly defended the state’s two-language policy. Calling it a “successful, best learning model.” He asserted that the state will not adopt the three-language system, citing it as an infringement on state autonomy.
Of course PTR’s assertion didn’t come all of a sudden. It is the outcome of a long-fought language war in a state that witnessed the anti-Hindi agitation. Right from the early 1960s Tamil Nadu has been opposing the three-language policy proposed by the Centre. Be it the AIADMK regime under MGR or Jayalalithaa, or the DMK regime under M. Karunanidhi or under M.K. Stalin, successive Dravidian governments in Tamil Nadu never chose to compromise on the two-language policy and did not opt for the three-language policy.
In March 2025, while opposing the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, the Tamil Nadu government under M.K.Stalin reiterated that there would be no change in its two-language policy of Tamil and English, which has been in force since 1968. In fact, this was the same when Edappadi K. Palaniswami ruled the state for 4.5 years after the death of his leader Jayalalithaa.
Tamil Nadu, apparently, is the only state which doesn’t follow the three-language formula, which includes the local language, Hindi or any Indian language, and English - followed by every state across the country. The history goes back to 1967, the year when the anti-Hindi agitation in Tamil Nadu hit the skies, when many of the protesters were martyred. Incidentally, Tamil Nadu is the only state in the country which celebrates the language martyrs, calling them as Mozhipor thiyagigal in Tamil. In 2024, the Stalin government announced that every year January 25 will be observed as the Tamil language martyrs' day.
Why is there opposition to the three-language policy in Tamil Nadu?
A few months before Union minister Dharmendra Pradhan defended the non-disbursement of funds to the tune of Rs 2,551 crore under the Samagara Siksha Abhiyan (SA). Pradhan accused the DMK politicians of being divisive, politically motivated and depriving the students of learning a third language. Pradhan’s statement combined with the state’s opposition to the three-language policy and the demand for SSA funds soon turned into a row, which till now remains as an unresolved conflict between the Centre and the state.
It all began in 1967 after C.N. Annadurai, the first non-Congress chief minister of Tamil Nadu took charge. He said learning Hindi was no longer needed or useful and that English was enough as the language for Tamils to interact with the world. But even before Annadurai could take over as the chief minister, in 1937 when the then chief minister C. Rajagopalachari decided to introduce Hindustani as a compulsory language at the secondary schools in the state. In 1938-39, the Justice Party and Periyar E.V. Ramaswamy launched an agitation by strongly opposing this. Thalamuthu and Natarajan, the two youths who participated in the agitation, died then. The two are even now celebrated as the icons of the anti-Hindi agitation movement in Tamil Nadu.
And years later in 1967, when the country was getting ready to roll out Hindi as an official language for communication, agitations broke out across Tamil Nadu. At least 70 persons were killed in police firing and more than a dozen people self-immolated opposing the Hindi imposition. The protests in Pollachi during the A.K. Bakthavatsalam regime in Tamil Nadu in the late 1960s set the tone for a regime change, ousting the Congress from power. And the DMK was catapulted to power, thanks to the anti-Hindi movement that spread like a wildfire in the state.
But it did not end there. Again in 1968, when the Parliament adopted the official languages amendment act agitations broke out in Tamil Nadu. The parliament along with the amendment proposed a three-language policy. The policy then said that the Hindi-speaking states will have to follow three languages - Hindi, English, and one of the modern Indian languages, preferably a South Indian language. And the non-Hindi speaking south Indian states were asked to follow three languages, a local language, Hindi and English. This is when Annadurai moved a resolution in the assembly. This resolution rejected the three-language formula and categorically said that the state will teach only Tamil and English in the schools. On January 23, 1968, on the floor of the Madras Assembly, and after a three-day debate, the House adopted a resolution scrapping the three-language formula. Since then, the state has been following a two-language formula.
The seeds sown by Annadurai, turned into the basis for the state’s language policy. Successive governments followed it. And in 1976, when the Government of India notified the official language rules, it said that the three language policy is applicable to the whole of India, except the state of Tamil Nadu. The two language policy found resonance in 2019, when the NEP proposed Hindi as a third language, and in 2020 when the NEP 2020 was proposed by the centre, the then AIADMK government opposed it tooth and nail. A resolution was again adopted in the state assembly.
Though the NEP 2020 as proposed by the centre doesn’t impose Hindi and allows learning any modern Indian language, the majority of the view in Tamil Nadu is that the three language policy is nothing but a smokescreen to introduce Hindi to the people through the backdoor. While the state is not opposed to its people learning Hindi, it only opposes the Hindi imposition.
Beyond this the other major reason for the state opposing the three language policy should also be looked through the prism of a uniform national policy on education. Successive Tamil Nadu governments have always demanded that education be shifted from the concurrent list of the constitution to the state list.