'Do not play with it': Stalin warns TVK government against touching the two-language policy

The language war has returned to Tamil Nadu politics, and this time the accusation comes with a sharper edge. DMK president and former chief minister M.K. Stalin on Friday accused the TVK government of attempting to impose Hindi in the state, warning it against making changes to Tamil Nadu's two-language policy of Tamil and English. The trigger was Governor Vishwanath Arlekar's address to the 17th Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly, in which he outlined the policy position of Chief Minister C. Joseph Vijay's government on language and education. "So far, Tamil Nadu has been facing the Union government's imposition of Hindi. Now, it seems the state government itself is taking up that role, which appears to be the change they had promised," Stalin said in a post on X, sharing his charge publicly. Questioning the approach of the TVK government, he asked: "Is this yet another attempt by the TVK government to first test the waters in everything and then take a 'U-turn' once opposition emerges?" He accused the government of running a "reels government" for North Indian influencers, and asserted that the two-language policy was central to Tamil Nadu's language policy. "The two-language policy is Tamil Nadu's lifeline. Do not play with it!" he said. The language charge lands in a week already bruising for the ruling TVK. At a campaign meeting in Dharapuram on Friday, ahead of the October 6 bypoll, Stalin had taken a direct swipe at Vijay, calling him a "Reels" Chief Minister and questioning whether promotional reels and social media publicity could solve ordinary families' problems. According to reports of the meeting, Stalin attacked the government over rising prices, alleging that people were struggling with the cost of essential commodities, and claimed Tamil Nadu's GST revenue had declined for three consecutive months. He also targeted Vijay over governance, power supply, law and order and industrial development, accusing the Chief Minister of treating governance "like a shooting spot." The TVK is yet to respond to the language accusation. But the pattern Stalin describes, trial balloons floated and quietly deflated after backlash, will be familiar to anyone watching the Vijay government. For a party that came to power promising change, the charge that it is testing the waters on the one policy Tamil Nadu treats as non-negotiable is politically radioactive. Anna's 1968 two-language resolution was not a bureaucratic preference; it was the product of a mass anti-Hindi agitation. Stalin's warning is that the TVK would do well to remember what happened the last time a government in Chennai played with that fire.