Calling Hindi a “democratic language” on the occasion of Hindi Diwas (Hindi Day) on Thursday, September 14, Union Home Minister Amit Shah said that Hindi has been a “unifying thread among the diverse languages” in the world's largest democracy, which is India. “From the Independence movement till today, Hindi has played a crucial role in tying India together,” he wrote on X (formerly Twitter), calling upon the people of the country to take a pledge to strengthen all Indian languages ​​including the official language Hindi.

In a subsequent video statement, Amit Shah said that India has been a country of many languages for years. “Alongside several Indian languages and dialects, Hindi has also honoured many global languages. It has adopted their vocabularies, sentences, and rules of grammar. During the difficult days of the Independence movement, it played an unprecedented role in stringing the country together. In a country divided by a plethora of languages and dialects, it instilled a feeling of unity. From east to west and north to south, Hindi played a crucial role as a language of communication in taking the struggle for Independence forward,” he said. He added that the architects of the Constitution welcomed Hindi as an official language on September 14, 1949, after taking into consideration the role it played during the freedom struggle and after.

Stating that original and creative expression is possible for any country only through its own language, Amit Shah claimed that Hindi has never competed with or will ever compete with any other Indian language. A strong nation can be created only by strengthening all Indian languages, he said, adding that he believed Hindi will become a medium to empower all local languages.

Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) leader and Tamil Nadu minister Udayanidhi Stalin, however, condemned the Union Home Minister’s claims that Hindi is a uniting force for India and that it is empowering other regional languages. “Hindi is spoken only in four or five states in the country and hence the statement of Amit Shah is totally absurd. It is only another version of imposing Hindi under the guise of generating livelihood,” he wrote on X on Thursday.

“While we are speaking Tamil here, Kerala speaks Malayalam. Where does Hindi merge with and empower us? Amit Shah should stop oppressing non-Hindi languages by calling them just regional languages,” Udayanidhi said, further calling to put a stop to Hindi imposition.

Amit Shah’s claims earlier in August that “the official language must be eventually accepted without any kind of opposition” had triggered a political controversy, with Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin strongly denouncing the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led Union government’s push for Hindi acceptance. “Igniting the embers of the ‘1965 Anti-Hindi Imposition Agitations’ would be an unwise move,” Stalin had warned at the time.

Even in 2019, Amit Shah had drawn widespread flak after he pitched to make Hindi the “common” language in India, claiming that the country should have one language reflecting its identity, and that only Hindi could unite the nation.