Students’ choice, Pandiarajan on Hindi classes at IITS 

“Hindi and French classes are commenced only after obtaining signatures from all the 101 research students studying in the institute and it was not introduced without their approval. Moreover, Hindi and French are only optional subjects and even if students skip the classes it will not affect their attendance,” said Pandiarajan, while addressing reporters.

Recently, the Tamil Development Department introduced French and Hindi classes in IITS, but it was criticised by Opposition parties stating that state government is acting as a puppet of the Centre and is helping in imposition of Hindi in the state.

DMK seniors and former ministers Duraimurugan and Thangam Thennarasu gave statements accusing Pandiarajan that he was acting against the interests of Tamil language by introducing Hindi in the state.

Pandiarajan came out with a justification for introducing Hindi classes in IITS by saying that the late chief minister J Jayalalithaa passed a Government Order (GO) in 2014 to teach two languages in addition to Tamil for research scholars in IITS. Among the two languages, one will be international language and other will be national language, with speakers higher than Tamil.

Among the international languages French has the status of a diplomatic language and is one of the languages most loved by former chief minister CN Annadurai. Similarly, among the languages spoken in India, Hindi, Bengali, Marathi and Telugu speakers are higher when compared to Tamil and so students were given the choice of these four languages along with Gujarati, Kannada and Malayalam among which students chose Hindi.

The Minister also said that there is nothing to politicise and the AIADMK is not acting as a puppet of BJP government at the Centre. “AIADMK is following the footsteps of Annadurai, who has laid principles to develop Tamil language in the state and the present government is fully implementing the principles. Has DMK done anything towards development of Tamil language or in implementing the principles of Annadurai,” questioned Pandiarajan.