In the battle against Hindi “imposition”, Tamil Nadu’s DMK-led government has put its money where its mouth is, literally. But not everyone is impressed.
The state government has used the Tamil alphabet “roo” as the symbol for the rupee in a promotional logo for the upcoming state budget. The nation’s official symbol for the rupee is ₹, derived from the Devanagari script in which Hindi is written.
The move has riled the BJP, the chief opponent of the DMK’s efforts to keep Hindi out of the southern state.
The promotional videos, posted on X by chief minister M.K. Stalin, have the new logo and the slogan “Ellarkum Ellam (Everything for Everyone)”. In a post on the economic survey on Thursday evening, though, Stalin used the ₹ symbol.
The Tamil symbol for the rupee has since 2003 been in the Unicode, the global character encoding standard.
However, though several countries in South Asia and the Indian Ocean Region call their currency the “rupee”, none has the “roo” as the official symbol of its currency. The Tamil word for rupee is “roobai”.
Tamilian designer D. Udaya Kumar — son of former DMK lawmaker N. Dharmalingam — had designed the ₹ logo. It was made the official logo in 2010, at a time when the DMK shared power at the Centre.
Tamil Nadu BJP president K. Annamalai posted on X a photo of Stalin’s father and former chief minister M. Karunanidhi posing for a photo with Kumar, who now teaches at IIT Guwahati.
Annamalai wrote: “TN State Planning Commission’s executive vice chairperson says the ₹ symbol was dropped because it was based on the Devanagari script…. What the father endorsed, the son rejects.”
Political and literary commentator E.J. Sundar, a former professor of Tamil at Chennai’s D.B. Jain College, said: “No party, besides the BJP, is directly opposing this move by Stalin. If the DMK doesn’t oppose Hindi effectively, at this juncture, other parties will utilise this and even criticise the DMK.”
While the DMK is seen as a moderate Tamil party in the state, the Pattali Makkal Katchi and the Naam Tamilar Katchi have a hardline Tamil supremacy stand. Assembly elections are due next year in Tamil Nadu.
The trigger for the latest round of the language war in Tamil Nadu has been the state government’s opposition to the Centre’s three-language policy for schoolchildren, which the DMK considers an underhand attempt to introduce Hindi as the third language.
The state BJP claims that learning Hindi would help Tamilians secure jobs in the north Indian states. Sundar contested this argument. “This (Stalin’s stand) may politically benefit the DMK…. Most people don’t want Hindi in schools. No longer do Tamil blue-collar workers go to work in north India.”
“Tamils who work in north India are mostly in management positions where they don’t need to know Hindi. Tamil labourers now go to the Gulf countries or Southeast Asia,” Sundar said.
He added: “The attraction of central government jobs has declined. Those who seek these jobs learn Hindi on mobile apps, or go to institutions like the Dakshina Bharat Hindi Prachar Sabha…. North Indians are the main blue-collar workforce here, and they learn Tamil on the job. Perhaps they may find it easier if they learnt Tamil before coming here.”
C. Lakshmanan, national convener of the Dalit Intellectual Collective and former professor at the Madras Institute of Development Studies, dismissed the “roo” push.
“The DMK wants to gloss over its failures in governance by bringing in emotional issues,” he said.
“It won’t have an impact as people are more concerned about their daily struggles and issues like unemployment, education and inflation. They are not convinced any more with the DMK blaming the Centre for everything.”
“People want to learn the language…. Private schools here, including those owned by DMK leaders, offer at least three languages,” he said.
“It gives the impression that only the rich can learn Hindi. The government is depriving government school students.”