: The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam is opposed only to the imposition of Hindi on the Tamil-speaking people, but not to the learning of the language by the Tamils on their own, said Kanimozhi, MP and secretary of the DMK Women’s Wing.
Speaking at a meeting organised by the Vellore urban district DMK here on Sunday night to pay homage to the language martyrs who laid their lives during the agitation against the imposition of Hindi in 1965, Ms. Kanimozhi recalled that it was during a meeting in Vellore that DMK founder C.N. Annadurai announced the party’s decision to give up its fight for creation of Dravida Naadu in the thick of the Indo-Chinese war in 1962, realising that the Tamils could live happily only when their houses and properties were protected from the foreign invasion.
Referring to the attempts of the Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance government to impose Hindi and Sanskrit on the people of Tamil Nadu, she said that the DMK would not remain a silent spectator to these attempts. It was a myth that the youth of Tamil Nadu would not get employment in other States if they did not know Hindi, she added.
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Ms. Kanimozhi questioned the use of learning Sanskrit which is not spoken anywhere in India except in a small place in Karnataka, and is used only for recitation of hymns in temples. It will be better if one learns Telugu, Kannada or Malayalam, she said. “We cannot dismiss Tamil as a mere tool for communication. It is part of our tradition which is passed on to generations’’, she said.