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Anti-Hindi agitations
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Anti-Hindi agitation is a term used to describe the opposition the people of Tamil Nadu have voiced to the Indian Government's attempts to establish Hindi as the sole National language of India [1].
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Hindi imposition in Tamil Nadu started in 1937 when the Congress Government of the Madras Presidency under C. Rajagopalachari (Rajaji) made Hindi a compulsory subject in schools. (The British were still the rulers of the Indian subcontinent at that time but elected local governments in the Provinces were installed under the British rule. Madras Presidency was a province that included much of present Tamil Nadu and parts of present Andhra Pradesh.) Tamils opposed Hindi imposition immediately and Sir A. D. Panneerselvam and E.V. Ramaswamy (he would later be known as Periyar or "the great one") organized anti-Hindi imposition protests in 1938. Mr. Thalamuthu and Mr. Natarajan were killed during the protests. Rajaji himself changed his attitude about Hindi, and started opposing Hindi imposition. In 1939 the Rajaji government quit and it was withdrawn in 1940.[2]
The 1940s, 50s and the first half of the 1960s saw many anti-Hindi imposition protests in the form of public meetings, marches, hunger strikes, demonstrations before schools and Indian government offices, and black flag demonstrations before visiting Indian government ministers. Most of these were organized either by the DK or the DMK, and the general public supported them fully. There were several hundred such protests around Tamil Nadu and several thousand people went to jail. Several hundreds were injured when police used lathi charge (charge with wooden sticks) to disburse peaceful protesters.
In addition to the killings by Indian security forces, Chinnaswamy, Muthu, Ranganathan, Sarangapani, Sivalingam and Veerappan poured petrol (gasoline) over their bodies and burned themselves to death in protest of Hindi imposition [3]. Even the presence of large contingents of Indian security forces massed into Tamil Nadu and their ruthless shootings of unarmed demonstrators did not stop the common people (especially students) from continuing with the demonstrations against Hindi imposition. Senior politicians of the ruling Congress Party in Tamil Nadu and in New Delhi promised that Hindi would not be imposed, and the agitation ended in mid-February 1965.
There was another Tamil Nadu Students Agitation against Hindi imposition in 1968. This agitation was minor compared to the 1965 agitation, primarily because the newly elected DMK Government of Tamil Nadu State (that came to power in early 1967) immediately met with student leaders and promised that it would see to it that Hindi is not imposed. In the opinion of many Tamilians [4], Hindi imposition has continued to this day.
However, because of such agitations{fact}, English has remained the educational and business language of India.