Hindi imposition: VCK announces protest on Nov 1

CHENNAI: VCK Chief Thol Thirumavalavan on Friday announced a protest on November 1 to condemn Hindi imposition by the Union government, excess interference into the rights of the State government and the recent attack on Tamil Nadu fisherman by the Indian Navy.

"The Indian constitution states that India is a federation, but on the contrary the Union government in a planned manner is taking away the rights of the states. Especially, the financial rights of the states are taken away by the Union government in the form of GST where the money that was available to the state government through taxes has been forcefully expropriated by the union government," said Thirumavalavan, in a statement.

Calling November 1 as the National Day of Linguistic Rights, Thirumavalavan said that non-Hindi speaking states were guaranteed that Hindi will not be imposed unless they wish but the ruling BJP government in the Centre is imposing Hindi on all possible platforms.

Quoting the recent report submitted by the Parliamentary committee on official languages, headed by Union Home Minister Amit Shah, Thirumavalavan said that the recommendations of the committee is intended in a manner to completely destroy the rights of the non-Hindi speaking states and is against the principles of "unity in diversity."

Thirumavalavan further said that recently, Indian Navy shot at a Tamil Nadu fisherman named Veeravel and he is now admitted with grievous injuries. He alleged that the BJP-led Union government is silent on the issue of Chinese intrusion and has failed in preventing Chinese forces from occupying Indian territories for several thousand square miles.