BJP unleashing cultural terrorism, says Siddaramaiah on Amit Shah's Hindi remark

Amit Shah said Hindi should be accepted as an alternative to English and not to local languages

Karnataka Leader of the Opposition Siddaramaiah on Friday accused the BJP of “cultural terrorism against non-Hindi speaking states” while asserting that Hindi can never become India’s national language.

Siddaramaiah was reacting to Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s pitch for Hindi to become "an important part of the unity of the country” and an alternative to English.

“Hindi is not our national language and we will never let it be,” Siddaramaiah said in a series of tweets, taking “strong offence” to Shah’s comments.

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“Imposing Hindi is a sign of coercive federalism rather than cooperative federalism. Pluralism is what has held our Country together & any attempt by BJP to undo this will be met with strong opposition & retaliation,” he said.

Hailing linguistic diversity as the “essence” of India, Siddaramaiah said the BJP has a “myopic view” on languages. “...their opinions are derived from pseudo-nationalists like Savarkar,” the Congress leader said.

Siddaramaiah also took on Shah's Gujarati roots. “It is disgraceful on the part of Amit Shah to betray his mother state Gujarat & mother tongue Gujarati for Hindi for his political agenda,” he said. “I wonder how a person who betrays his motherland can ever work in the interest of India,” he said, accusing Shah of "behaving like Savarkar".

Batting for states to be given more linguistic and cultural autonomy, Siddaramaiah said all-India exams should be conducted in regional languages and that the NEP should be “reworked” to avoid Hindi imposition. “...all major state languages should be official languages,” he said.

"We take pride in Kannada identity & we believe that Karnataka, as our poet Laureate Kuvempu said, is the daughter of Bharata,” Siddaramaiah said.

In its own set of tweets, the BJP dubbed Siddaramaiah as “English lover” and accused him of making baseless allegations. The BJP cited Article 343 of the Indian Constitution on Hindi being the official language of the Union of India.

“Amit Shah has stated that when citizens of States who speak other languages communicate with each other, it should be in the language of India. Shouldn't Indians communicate with each other in a language that was born in India? He has clearly stated that Hindi should be accepted as an alternative to English and that Hindi should be made more flexible by accepting words from native languages,” the BJP said, and asked Siddaramaiah to clarify if he spoke Hindi or English with “party owner” Sonia Gandhi.

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