'Hindi not in competition with other languages': Amit Shah says language row ignited by oppn to hide corruption

Shah also announced that from December, he would correspond with citizens, chief ministers, and MPs in their respective languages.

New Delhi: Home Minister Amit Shah on Friday targeted the DMK, alleging that “some parties” are using the language row as a tool to hide their corruption even as he insisted that the country has faced problems over the language question in the past as well and it should not be repeated.

However, he did not mention delimitation of Parliament and Assembly constituencies, another issue highlighted by the DMK, in his two-hour-long reply to a debate on the working of the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) in Rajya Sabha.

Shah said every Indian language is a treasure and Hindi is “not in competition” with any other Indian language but “only a friend” to them.

At the outset, the Minister said, he wanted to convey that the Modi government has set up the Indian Languages Section under the Department of Official Language to promote all Indian languages. A system has been put in place for the translation from all languages into Hindi and English, he said.

He also announced that from December, he would correspond with citizens, chief ministers, and MPs in their respective languages and pegged it as a “strong response” to those who “use language to hide their corruption”.

“There have been enough divisions in the nation in the name of language, and it should not happen anymore,” he said, amid the row over the three-language formula outlined in the National Education Policy. "Some are raking up the language issue for their own politics. They are doing it just to hide their corruption," he said without taking DMK’s name.

As DMK-led Tamil Nadu government has been at loggerheads with the BJP government at the Centre over the three-language formula, Shah claimed, "for those who use language to hide their scams, let me tell them every language is important. How can we oppose a language when we ourselves hail from them? I come from Gujarat, and (Finance Minister) Nirmala Sitharaman hails from Tamil Nadu. We have worked for the promotion of Indian languages," he said.

Taking on the Stalin-led DMK, he said the union government has been asking the Tamil Nadu government to provide medical and engineering courses in Tamil.

“For the past two years, we have been making efforts to provide medical education in Indian languages. The Tamil Nadu government does not have the courage to do this in Tamil. But our government will make medical and engineering courses available in Tamil in Tamil Nadu. You like the language of a country thousands of kilometres away, but not the language of your own country,” he said.

Referring to the internal security situation, he said no one can now dare carry out blasts and escape unlike in the past.

“There was a time when bomb blasts were routine. I want to tell the people of the country that, for the last 10 years, the series of bomb blasts have stopped. No one can now dare carry out bomb blasts. The country is safe under Narendra Modi. We are committed to uprooting terrorism,” he said.

He said there is peace in Kashmir, the majority of terrorists in the northeast have surrendered, and the country is moving forward under the leadership of Modi.