Tamils are ungrateful people: Former BJP minister

As the anti-Hindi statements grab the centrestage in Tamil Nadu, former Union minister Pon Radhakrishnan on Monday stoked a controversy by terming Tamils as “ungrateful people” for having failed to celebrate Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his lavishing praise on the “oldest language”.

Radhakrishnan’s comments were met with all-round condemnation from political leaders with actor-politician Kamal Haasan seeking to know whether he has changed his language. The Tamil Nadu Congress too took serious exception to Radhakrishnan’s statement seeking an explanation and apology from him for his “outrageous” remarks.

“Narendra Modi is the first prime minister to have proclaimed that Tamil is one of the oldest languages in the world. Going a step further, he had said Tamil is older than Sanskrit and if we had any love for the language, we should have celebrated it for a year. Tamils don’t know to celebrate people. Tamils are ungrateful,” Radhakrishnan told reporters here.

Radhakrishnan is one of the senior leaders of the BJP in Tamil Nadu and was the lone BJP MP from the state in the first term of Narendra Modi.

Asked to comment on Radhakrishnan’s statement, DMK president M K Stalin said he would respond to all such statement during the party’s protest against Hindi imposition across the state on September 20.