Terming the practice of sending letters in Hindi without English translation to elected representatives in non-Hindi speaking States as provocative and violation of the Official Language Implementation Act, Madurai MP Su. Venkatesan has returned a letter written in Hindi to the Ministry of Culture.
In a strongly-worded letter to Minister of State (independent charge) Prahlad Singh Patel, Ministry of Culture, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) MP said, “Officials of the Ministry of Culture should have the sensitivity on issues keeping in mind the multi-cultural and multi-lingual heritage of the country.”
Recalling that he had, in the past, received letters in Hindi from other Union Ministries, the MP said that he had approached the High Court on the issue and the Government of India had expressed regret and assured that future communications would be in English only.
‘Must be deliberate’
Mr. Venkatesan raised doubt that the approach was deliberate on part of the Centre to implement their project of imposing Sanskrit and Hindi on people of non-Hindi speaking States, particularly Tamil Nadu.
It might be resorted to repeatedly with a hope that MPs of non-Hindi speaking States would become tired and reconciled to it. “But I want to emphatically state that Tamil Nadu has unique history of fighting such attempts to impose Hindi and many sacrifices were also made. Hence, we will not get tired and fight out the attempts to weaken our resolve to uphold our identity and great culture,” the MP said.
Stating that the letter in Hindi was in violation of law of the land and assurance given by the Centre to the High Court, Mr. Venkatesan said it amounted to contempt of court.
Sending back the letter, he appealed to the Minister to advise the officials not to resort to such provocative measures in future.
Mr. Venkatesan said that he could infer from the format (in English) enclosed with the letter that it was asking the MPs to make recommendations for “Gandhi Peace Prize.”
