Takeaways from Modi’s Pongal address: Tamil outreach before TN polls, push for national unity

His address comes at a time of friction between the Centre and the Chief Minister M K Stalin-led Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) government in Tamil Nadu, with the latter not only accusing the BJP dispensation of “Hindi imposition”, but also claiming Hindi to be “hegemonic” while flagging the “underdevelopment” of Hindi-speaking states. Tamil Nadu is also slated for the Assembly elections in April this year.

‘Tamil culture India’s shared heritage’

“Tamil culture is one of the most ancient living civilisations in the world,” Modi said, adding that “Tamil culture connects centuries together, learning from history and guiding the present towards the future”.

He underlined that “today’s India is drawing strength from its roots and moving forward towards new possibilities”. “On the sacred occasion of Pongal, we are experiencing the very faith that is propelling India ahead — a nation that is connected to its culture, respects its land, and is filled with confidence about its future,” Modi said.

Modi recalled he offered prayers at the 1,000-year-old Gangaikonda Cholapuram temple in Tamil Nadu last July, adding that during the Kashi Tamil Sangamam in Varanasi, he felt “connected with the energy of cultural unity”.

He also recalled his Rameswaram visit, in April 2025, for the inauguration of the Pamban Bridge, adding that he “witnessed the greatness of Tamil history” on that occasion. He said Tamil culture is a shared heritage of the entire nation and humanity, emphasising that various festivals — Lohri, Makar Sankranti and Magh Bihu, among others – were celebrated across the country on the same day.

BJP vs DMK tussle

This isn’t the first time that the PM has praised Tamil culture amid charges flying thick and fast between the Centre and the Tamil Nadu government, and between the DMK and the BJP. On April 15, 2024, Modi said that India was proud of Tamil, “the oldest language of the world”.

The DMK has also maintained that Tamil is the oldest living language of the world.

The BJP dispensation has been sticking to its stance about the greatness of Tamil civilisation and the antiquity of Tamil as a subset of India’s ancient heritage . This is in contrast to the DMK’s line that sees Tamil language and culture as distinctive, and also among the oldest, if not the oldest.

The BJP has been politically weak in Tamil Nadu and has avoided getting into the Tamil-vs-Hindi debate given the fact that the party wants to expand in the state and understands the sensitivity of the issue for the Tamil people.

Language row

The DMK hails the Tamil-Dravidian culture, which it sees as completely different from the “Sanskrit-Aryan culture”, accusing the BJP of trying to impose the latter on the people of Tamil Nadu.

On February 27, 2025, Stalin said Hindi was a “hegemonic language” that had obliterated many languages of north India. “More than 25 north Indian native languages have been destroyed by the invasion of hegemonic Hindi-Sanskrit languages. The century-old Dravidian movement safeguarded Tamil and its culture because of the awareness it created and the various agitations,” he said, referring to the dialects of north India’s Hindi belt.

Stalin also maintained that Hindi was merely a “mask”, and Sanskrit, a language associated with the Aryans by the Dravidian movement, the “face” behind it.

Activist Yogendra Yadav, who has often been critical of the Centre, had disagreed with Stalin’s critique. “It’s weak on facts: All modern Indian languages have been ‘standardised’ by subsuming several neighbouring languages, relegating them to the level of dialects. Arguing for recognition of all these languages is right, but blaming only Hindi for ‘swallowing’ other languages is wrong,” he had said.

The Centre’s insistence on the three-language formula has also created rifts. While the Centre said that the third language could be any Indian language and not necessarily Hindi, Tamil Nadu minister P T Rajan wrote in The Indian Express on March 7, 2025, that this was just a cloak for Hindi imposition, adding that Tamil Nadu’s two-language formula had served it well, and that it had higher literacy rates and a higher education enrolment ratio than many states.

In a 2023 report, archaeologist K Amarnath Ramakrishna said that he had found evidence of urban habitation at Keeladi near Madurai dating back to the 8th to 5th century BC, which would question the theory that urbanisation flowed from the north to the south, potentially making Keeladi as old as the urban habitations of the north that date back to the 6th century BC.

On January 9, 2025, Stalin announced a prize of 1 million dollars for anyone who could decipher the Harappan script, despite the fact that Harappa is on the opposite side of the subcontinent. This was read by many as a bid to locate Tamil-Harappan linkages, which could situate the Tamil culture as older than the Vedic culture, which succeeded the Harappan civilisation, and would thus bolster the Aryan-Dravidian binary.