Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Sunday slammed Home Minister Amit Shah's push for Hindi as India's national language as "a new battlefield in the name of the language."
"Union Home Minister Amit Shah's Hindi agenda push despite nationwide protest needs to be seen as Sangh Parivar's signs to launch a new battlefield in the name of the language. The perception that only Hindi can unite the country is completely wrong. People in the south and the north-east don't speak Hindi," Vijayan wrote in a Facebook post.
The Kerala Chief Minister also called Shah's idea ''absurd" in a tweet.
"The claim that Hindi unifies our country is absurd. That language is not the mother tongue of a majority of Indians. The move to inflict Hindi upon them amounts to enslaving them. Union Minister's statement is a war cry against the mother tongues of non-Hindi speaking people," Vijayan tweeted.
On Saturday, Shah, in a series of tweets wrote: "India is a country of different languages and every language has its own importance but it is very important to have a language of the whole country which should become the identity of India in the world. Today, if one language can do the work of tying the country to the door of unity, then it is the most spoken Hindi language."
"Today, on the occasion of Hindi Day, I appeal to all the citizens of the country that we should increase the use of our mother tongue and also use the Hindi language as one language to realize the dreams of Bapu and iron man Sardar Patel. Happy Hindi Day," he had further stated.
Apart from Vijayan, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) president MK Stalin and former Karnataka chief ministers Siddaramaiah and HD Kumaraswamy have also criticized the Home Minister for pitching "one nation, one language" on the occasion of Hindi Diwas (September 14).
( With inputs from ANI )