The Trinamool Congress on Friday said any effort to impose Hindi on non-Hindi speaking states will be resisted, a day after Union Home Minister Amit Shah said time has come to make official language Hindi an important part of the country's unity.
Mr Shah, noting that 70 per cent of the agenda of Cabinet's agenda is prepared in Hindi, also maintained that the language should be accepted as an alternative to English, and not local languages.
Pointing out that Hindi was not India's national language, the Trinamool said his agenda of "one nation, one language and one religion" will remain unfulfilled.
"If Amit Shah and the BJP try to impose Hindi on non-Hindi speaking states, it will be resisted. The people of this country, where there is so much diversity, will never accept such a thing.
"Even India's first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru had said that Hindi will not be imposed on non-Hindi speaking states until they are willing to accept it," senior Trinamool leader Sougata Roy said Echoing him, senior Trinamool leader Sukhendu Sekhar Ray said attempts to project Hindi as the national language is against the "spirit of the Constitution".
"We are against this agenda of Hindi imperialism... this is how fascism grows. Imposing Hindi is against the tenets of federalism," Ray said.
Pro-Bengali advocacy organisations, such as 'Bangla Pokkho', also said that Hindi imperialism will not be tolerated.
"We want equal rights. We defeated the British; we would defeat Hindi Imperialism too. They (BJP leaders) want to turn India into Greater Uttar Pradesh. They want to capture jobs, markets, businesses etc. We will fight till the end," Kaushik Maiti, a senior leader of Bangla Pokkho, said.
Mr Shah, presiding over the 37th meeting of the Parliamentary Official Language Committee, said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has decided that the medium of running the government is the official language, and this will definitely increase the importance of Hindi, according to a statement issued by the Union Home Ministry.
Noted academician Pabitra Sarkar claimed that the statement was "premature" and "unacceptable".
"This is a very premature statement made without taking into cognizance the views of others. There is a history of resistance in southern India against the imposition of Hindi," he said.
The West Bengal unit of the BJP came out in support of Mr Shah's statement and said any opposition to his views is "politically motivated".
"Whatever Amit Shah Ji has said is based on ground reality. Those who are opposing it are doing it to politicise the matter. They should study our country's history before making a remark," BJP state spokesperson Samik Bhattacharya said.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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