‘Never opposed Hindi,’ says Pawan Kalyan after he wades into ongoing language row over NEP

Pawan Kalyan’s statement came in response to some criticism of the leader’s recent statements on the ongoing row between the National Democratic Alliance government at the Centre and Tamil Nadu’s Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam’s government.

The DMK, which perceives the policy as a move to impose Hindi on the Tamil public, had been critical of Kalyan’s recent remarks that that there were no objections when Tamil movies were dubbed into Hindi for “financial gain”.

“Tamil Nadu seeks revenue from Hindi-speaking states through the dubbed films,” he said at the Janasena foundation day event Friday, adding neither imposing a language forcibly nor opposing it blindly achieves the objective of national and cultural integration.

DMK leaders, including spokesperson Dr Syed Hafeezullah, have criticised the remarks, saying they belied a “a narrow understanding of Tamil Nadu’s stand” and that the party wasn’t opposed to “anyone learning Hindi but the imposition of Hindi through National Education Policy (NEP)”.

However, the BJP, a partner in the TDP-led NDA in Andhra Pradesh, has backed Kalyan.

In his statement on X Saturday, Kalyan said that the NEP 2020 did not make Hindi compulsory but that “false narratives about its imposition” were being peddled to mislead the people.

“According to the NEP-2020, students have the option to learn any two Indian languages (including their mother tongue) along with a foreign language. If they don’t want to study Hindi, they can choose Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, Marathi, Sanskrit, Gujarati, Assamese, Kashmiri, Odia, Bengali, Punjabi, Sindhi, Bodo, Dogri, Konkani, Maithili, Meitei, Nepali, Santhali, Urdu or any other Indian language,” it said.