By
Fatimah Idera
An octogenarian man has burned himself to death in southern India, as New Delhi’s attempts to impose nationwide usage of Hindi, a language mostly spoken in the north.
Last month a group of parliamentarians headed by the powerful interior minister Amit Shah had recommended Hindi as the national official language, including for technical education such as medicine and engineering.
Also an Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi has spoken of a “slave mentality” around the use of English and promoted the use of Indian languages.
A man named MV Thangavel, 85, a farmer in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, doused himself in petrol and kerosene and set himself alight.
He was also holding a Tamil-language placard reading: “Modi government stop imposing Hindi, Why do we need to choose Hindi over our literature-rich Tamil it will affect the future of our youth.”
Thangavel carried out his protest on Saturday outside an office in Salem of Tamil Nadu’s ruling DMK party, of which he was a member.
The Party leader of MK Stalin, who has criticised the Modi government’s language policies offered condolences to Thangavel’s family but urged others to avoid such extreme protests.
“We must not lose another life, Let’s continue to fight against the imposition of Hindi politically, democratically, and don’t let narrow-mindedness spoil a beautiful country of diversity.” he said.
The subject is a long-running political issue and the then-ruling Congress party sought to make Hindi the official national language in the 1960s, causing enduring resentment in southern India.
