Prime Minister Narendra Modi, talking at a Pongal celebration occasion on the residence of Union Minister and Bharatiya Janata Get together chief L Murugan in New Delhi on Wednesday, hailed the Tamil tradition as one of many world’s oldest residing civilizations and referred to as it the heritage of the complete nation.
The Prime Minister additionally advocated ‘Ek Bharat, Shreshta Bharat’ and emphasised on the cultural unity of the nation.
His speech got here amid tensions between the Middle and the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) authorities in Tamil Nadu, led by Chief Minister MK Stalin, which not solely denounces the Bharatiya Janata Get together’s insurance policies as “imposition of Hindi” but additionally claims that Hindi is “hegemonic” below the banner of “creating” Hindi-speaking states. Parliamentary elections are additionally scheduled in April this 12 months in Tamil Nadu.
“Tamil tradition is India’s shared heritage”
“Tamil tradition is without doubt one of the most historic residing civilizations on the planet,” Prime Minister Modi stated, including, “Tamil tradition is related throughout centuries, studying from historical past and guiding the current into the longer term.”
“At present’s India is drawing energy from its roots and shifting in the direction of new potentialities,” he stated. “On the sacred event of Pongal, we’re experiencing the very religion that strikes India ahead. India is united in its tradition, respectful of its land and assured in its future,” Prime Minister Modi stated.
Prime Minister Modi recalled providing prayers on the 1,000-year-old Gangaikonda Cholapuram temple in Tamil Nadu final July, including that he felt “related with the vitality of cultural unity” in the course of the Kashi Tamil Sangamam in Varanasi.
He additionally recalled his go to to Rameswaram in April 2025 for the inauguration of the Pamban Bridge, including that he “witnessed the greatness of Tamil historical past” on that event. He stated that Tamil tradition is the frequent heritage of the complete nation and humanity and highlighted that varied festivals corresponding to Lohri, Makar Sankranti and Marg Bihu had been celebrated throughout the nation on the identical day.
BJP vs DMK brawl
This isn’t the primary time the Prime Minister has praised Tamil tradition amidst the barrage of accusations between the Middle and the Tamil Nadu authorities, in addition to the DMK and the Bharatiya Janata Get together. On April 15, 2024, Prime Minister Modi stated that India is happy with Tamil, the “oldest language on the planet”.
The DMK additionally claims that Tamil is the world’s oldest residing language.
The BJP authorities has remained steadfast in its stand on the greatness of the Tamil civilization and its antiquity as a part of India’s historic heritage. That is in distinction to the DMK’s coverage of viewing the Tamil language and tradition as distinctive and the oldest, if not the oldest.
The BJP is politically weak in Tamil Nadu and has prevented getting concerned within the Tamil-versus-Hindi debate given the truth that the social gathering needs to increase within the state and understands the sensitivity of the problem for Tamils.
language line
The DMK celebrates Tamil Dravidian tradition, considers it fully totally different from “Sanskrit-Aryan tradition” and accuses the Bharatiya Janata Get together of making an attempt to impose the latter on the folks of Tamil Nadu.
On February 27, 2025, Stalin acknowledged that Hindi was the “hegemonic language” that had worn out many languages in northern India. “Greater than 25 indigenous languages of North India had been destroyed by the invasion of hegemonic Hindi and Sanskrit. The century-long Dravidian motion saved the Tamil language and its tradition due to the attention and varied agitations it generated,” he stated, referring to the dialects of the Hindi belt of North India.
Stalin additionally claimed that Hindi was only a “masks” and that Sanskrit, the language related to the Aryans by the Dravidian motion, was the “face” behind it.
Activist Yogendra Yadav, who has typically criticized the Middle, didn’t agree with Stalin’s criticism. “It’s weak on the details. All fashionable Indian languages have been ‘standardized’ by subsuming a number of neighboring languages and relegating them to the extent of dialects. It’s proper to advocate recognition of all these languages, however it’s improper accountable solely Hindi for ‘swallowing’ different languages,” he stated.
The middle’s insistence on a trilingual system additionally precipitated rifts. Though the Middle stated that the third language could be any Indian language and doesn’t essentially must be Hindi, Tamil Nadu Minister PT Rajan advised The Indian Specific on March 7, 2025, that this solely masks the imposition of Hindi, including that the bilingual system in Tamil Nadu is working effectively and literacy and training enrollment charges are greater than many states.
Archaeologist Ok. Amarnath Ramakrishna stated in a 2023 report that he had discovered proof of city settlement in Keeladi, close to Madurai, courting from the eighth to fifth century BC, casting doubt on the idea that urbanization flowed from north to south, probably making Keeladi as previous as northern city settlements courting again to the sixth century BC.
On January 9, 2025, Stalin introduced a $1 million reward to anybody who may decipher the Harappan script, though Harappa is on the opposite facet of the subcontinent. This was learn by many as an try and discover a connection between Tamil and Harappan, which may place Tamil tradition as older than the Vedic tradition that succeeded Harappan civilization, and reinforce the Aryan-Dravidian dualism.
