Make Shah withdraw his Hindi remarks: CPI MP to Modi

Accusing the Centre of not speaking on "grave economic crisis", CPI parliamentary leader Binoy Vishwam on Monday shot off a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi asking him to urge Home Minister Amit Shah to withdraw his "biased statement" on Hindi.

Vishwam said he was writing the letter to Modi because of the "anxiety and unrest" caused by Shah's remarks on 'One Nation, One Language'.

Instead of expressing themselves on problems of the country, he said the Narendra Modi government is busy with fanning up new and even newer controversies, from Ayodhya to Kashmir, from NRC to Hindi.

The people of the country want the prime minister and the home minister to "express themselves on the grave economic crisis faced by the country", he said.

Acknowledging that none can deny the significant role played by Hindi in the making of modern India, Vishwam said, "but to say that it (Hindi) is the only unifying factor is equal to shutting our eyes to the national reality. It is an expression of contempt towards all other Indian languages that have contributed tremendously to the nation’s unity and its march to social progress."

He said people justifiably believe that Shah was advancing the idea, which is "unacceptable" to a multi-linguistic country like India.

"By highlighting Hindi in such a manner, his attempt can be conceived as a move to depict all other Indian languages spoken by crores of people as 'anti-national'. That may be in tune with the ideology of RSS, which preaches that there need to be a 'chosen' religion and language for the nation. It runs contrary to the pluralistic polity of India and the basic foundations of Indian Constitution," he said.

"This can rightly be construed as part of a strategy aimed at diverting people’s attention from their day to day hardships. I am constrained to state that this is not what people would like to have from a government that came to power with a promise of ‘Sab ka Saath, Sab ka Vikas’," he said.