Asked if I was an Indian for not knowing Hindi at airport: Kanimozhi

DMK MP Kanimozhi on Sunday said a CISF officer posted at the airport sought to know whether she was an “Indian” for not knowing Hindi. The incident happened on Sunday afternoon when Kanimozhi was at the Chennai airport to board a flight to New Delhi.

“Today at the airport a CISF officer asked me if ‘I am an Indian’ when I asked her to speak to me in Tamil or English as I did not know Hindi. I would like to know from when being Indian is equal to knowing Hindi. #Hindiimposition,” Kanimozhi wrote on her verified Twitter page.

The DMK’s Lok Sabha MP told DH that the incident took place at the security area of the airport when an officer was making some announcement in Hindi.

“I told the officer that not everyone knows Hindi and the announcement should be in a language that people understand here (in Chennai). That is when she asked me whether I was an Indian,” she said.

As Kanimozhi’s tweet went viral on Twitter and people began trending #HindiImposition, CISF officials met her at the Delhi airport immediately after she got out of the aircraft.

“The officials told me that it is not the policy of the CISF to insist on any language and promised that action will be taken. The DIG, CISF from Chennai Airport also spoke to me over the phone and promised action,” Kanimozhi added.

In a Twitter post, the CISF said it has ordered an enquiry into the matter. “It is not the policy of CISF to insist upon any particular language,” it said.

Kanimozhi’s allegations of “Hindi imposition” comes close on the heels of the DMK viewing the three-language policy proposed in the New Education Policy (NEP) as an attempt to bring Sanskrit via the “back door.”

DMK, which was at the forefront of the anti-Hindi agitation in the 1960s and came to power in 1967 riding high on the wave, has been consistent in its stand on “Hindi imposition.” Tamil Nadu MPs from Congress and her party, DMK, came out in support of her seeking action against the officer for making such remarks.

Soon, Twitter was abuzz with the #HindiImposition hashtag as many used it to air their grievances.

“If this is the treatment a MP and daughter of an ex CM gets in India, imagine the plight of ordinary non Hindi speaking people. #HindiImposition is a pandemic. Non Hindi speakers from all over the country must fight tooth and nail to stop this inhuman imposition,” Amarnath Shivashankar, who tweets via @Amara_Bengaluru, wrote.