Dear Mudhalamaichar MK Stalin,

Over the last 30 years or so, I have written open letters to several political leaders, including President Droupadi Murmu and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. However, I never had an occasion to write to you.

What prompted me to write this letter is what you recently posted on the social media platform X, which has already sparked controversy. The BJP preferred to dub it "silly" and move on because it knows it is difficult to contradict what you said.

For the benefit of my readers who might not have read your tweet, let me quote it in full:

"My dear sisters and brothers from other states,

Ever wondered how many Indian languages Hindi has swallowed? Bhojpuri, Maithili, Awadhi, Braj, Bundeli, Garhwali, Kumaoni, Magahi, Marwari, Malvi, Chhattisgarhi, Santhali, Angika, Ho, Kharia, Khortha, Kurmali, Kurukh, Mundari, and many more are now gasping for survival.

The push for a monolithic Hindi identity is what kills ancient mother-tongues. UP and Bihar were never just 'Hindi heartlands.' Their real languages are now relics of the past.

Tamil Nadu resists because we know where this ends."

While I appreciate the general point you make, what you say is not exactly the whole truth. The general point is that no language can flourish without official patronage, and no language is inferior or superior to any other language.

We have two official languages, English and Hindi. Yet, Home Minister Amit Shah proudly claimed that all the files in the Home Ministry are in Hindi. Is his promotion of Hindi not detrimental to English, which is understood by a large number of people all across the country?

I once had an official driver from Uttarakhand who did not know English at all, yet he could follow the Google Maps instructor to reach anywhere in Delhi and beyond. In contrast, we stopped at a place in Gujarat to have a cup of tea.

The supplier did not understand "without sugar" in English or "bina chini" in Hindi. A bystander who heard our conversation interpreted my request in Gujarati. Only then did he understand. I wished Amit Shah had taught his own people Hindi before imposing it on others.

Compared to all other Indian languages, barring Sanskrit, Tamil has been in existence for a longer time. It has a heritage few can challenge. If you feel that your language should not suffer at the hands of anyone, I cannot find fault with it. You need to take effective steps to prevent the annihilation of Tamil.

Jesus spoke Aramaic, which has, for all practical purposes, become extinct. Of course, some dialects are still spoken in the Middle East. Aramaic is thought to have emerged around the 11th century BC. Tamil, spoken primarily in Tamil Nadu, appears in written form in the 5th century BC, according to the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

If successive Tamil kingdoms had not kept Tamil alive, it would not have survived, let alone flourished. Etymological studies suggest that many languages like English, German, and French would not have grown but for a reawakening in Europe. Until then, Latin and, to some extent, Greek were the preferred languages of the elite in Europe, including Britain. With the advent of printing and the arrival of books at affordable prices, people understood the need to translate them into other languages.

English, German, and French were, at best, dialects with no alphabet. They still do not have an independent alphabet other than the collective Roman one. And then, people began writing books in the common man's lingua, and these languages began to flourish. The evangelical and Puritan movements played a significant role in the sudden growth of these languages. Otherwise, English would have been gobbled up by Latin.

India has been under Islamic and British rule for 700 to 900 years. The Mughals did not do much to promote the language they spoke. The court language was Persian, which few people understood. Arabic was used only to read the Quran. Even today, the number of people who can speak Arabic and Persian in India is negligible. A vast majority of the people at that time spoke different dialects, which had no script of their own.

When the British arrived, their only objective was to do business and earn profit. The East India Company, now owned by a Bengali, was at that time in the hands of rich British merchants and traders. It was the first multinational company. Gradually, the company got sucked into internal politics. After the Battle of Plassey, most of Bengal, including Bangladesh, Orissa, and Bihar, came under the British. They did not want to promote English as the language of administration because few understood it in India.

By then, Christian missionaries who wanted to spread the Word of God had begun promoting Hindustani, from which arose Hindi and Urdu. They were the ones who prepared grammar books, dictionaries, and translations of Sanskrit texts into native languages. They also published the first newspapers in all the Indian languages.

Until then, there was no system of education anywhere in India. Of course, there were great teachers like Dronacharya, who taught only the children of the ruling class. There was no place for children like Ekalavya, who was from a tribal community. On the contrary, the Christians believed that they had the mandate and duty to spread education.

In fact, the education system, as we understand it today, was the creation of Christians. Of course, I do not forget Nalanda and Takshila.

In India, Sanskrit was the preferred language of the elite. Those who were masters of the language had little problem because they believed it was the language of the gods. They could not teach the Vedas to non-Brahmins and women. A few years ago, when a woman began chanting some Vedic shlokas while welcoming a Shankaracharya, he got so angry that he scolded the organisers for engaging a lady for the purpose. In other words, Sanskrit could not have become a medium of instruction in the country.

When the British wanted to promote education in the country, they did not want to antagonise the powerful sections of Indian society. That is why they set up a Sanskrit College in Varanasi, now represented by Narendra Modi in Parliament. When Rabindranath Tagore set up Viswa Bharati University at Shantiniketan, he wanted a Sanskrit scholar to assist him. He found the person he wanted in Kshiti Mohan Sen, the grandfather of Prof. Amartya Sen, who was in Varanasi at that time.

When the East India Company was compelled to earmark Rs 1,00,000 for spreading education in India, it chose to set up another Sanskrit College, like the one in Varanasi, in Calcutta. Reformers like Raja Rammohun Roy wanted the younger generation to study science, literature, mathematics, etc., and not learn by heart some Sanskrit shlokas. The memorandum he submitted to the British needs to be studied.

It was this memorandum and, later, the setting up of modern universities in Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras in 1857 that enabled the growth of a middle class capable enough to fill the void when the British left in 1947. It was not Sanskrit education that liberated India, that is Bharat.

You have rightly said that Hindi is a newcomer even in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. When Tulsidas wanted to translate the Ramayana into the common man's language, he chose Awadhi. He titled it Ramacharitmanas.

I had a friend and guide, Ram Chandra Prasad Sinha, who simultaneously translated Tulsidas' work into Hindi and English in poetic form. I read and reviewed the book, published by Motilal Banarsidas. The original text made no sense to me. It would make no sense to Yogi Adityanath either because Awadhi, which you mentioned in your tweet, is as dead as the dodo.

I find from my friend Ashish Alexander's research work that Tulsidas did not find favour with the Sanskrit scholars for "paraphrasing" Valmiki's Ramayana. He could get away, probably, because he was himself a Brahmin.

In Kerala, Malayalam was looked down upon by the privileged class, and they wrote in Sanskrit. In fact, there was no Malayalam poetry until Thunchathu Ezhuthachan translated the Ramayana into Adyatma Ramayanam in Malayalam. That is why he is called the father of Malayalam.

Christian missionaries played a significant role in the development of the language, as they produced the first dictionary and grammar book in Malayalam. Many of the first plays and travelogues were contributed by them.

Today, Bengali is the national language of Bangladesh and is spoken widely in West Bengal, Assam, Orissa, and even Bihar. The Bengali elite considered Bengali as fit only for the lower castes. Needless to say, Sanskrit was the language of the elite. It was the Baptist missionary William Carey and the Serampore Mission that played a pioneering role in the development of the language. The result of their effort was the first-ever Nobel Prize for Literature that Tagore won. He was the first Asian to win the coveted prize. Today, only about 25,000 people speak Sanskrit, while 234 million people speak Bengali.

When India became independent, we adopted the three-language formula, under which English, Hindi, and the mother tongue were taught in schools. At a rally of the youth, Nehru exhorted young men and women from the North to study any South Indian language.

One of them was Sudhanshu Chaturvedi. When he asked Nehru which language he should choose, pat came the reply: Malayalam, considered the most difficult. He took up the challenge, learned Malayalam, translated several Hindi classics into Malayalam, and Malayalam books into Hindi. He retired as a principal in Kerala and now lives in Delhi, reading and writing in Malayalam.

You have a point that only those who study in schools run by Kerala, Kannada, Tamil, and Telugu societies in cities like Delhi study Malayalam, Kannada, Tamil, and Telugu. In most other schools in North India, nobody studies a Southern language. They automatically choose Sanskrit. One reason they do so is that they get good marks in Sanskrit.

The New Education Policy also promotes Sanskrit, not South Indian languages. Several decades have passed since the three-language formula was implemented. How many Hindi speakers can speak a South Indian language?

Hindi was created by the British. Swami Dayananda Saraswati, who founded Arya Samaj, considered heretical, was the first to translate portions of the Vedas into Hindi in 1875. Much before him, Max Muller's translation of the Vedas into English was published in 1856. In the late 19th century, Rev Samuel Kellogg, an American Presbyterian missionary, fused Awadhi with ten other dialects to create modern Hindi grammar.

The first Indian writer of modern Hindi, Bharatendu Harishchandra, was born 11 years after Kellogg. Munshi Premchand, who is considered the greatest writer in Hindi, was also not a Brahmin for whom the language of choice was Sanskrit.

You can see how one culture swallows another at Kanyakumari. I have read in translation "Thirukkural," one of the greatest literary works in the world. Tamil Nadu has erected a statue to honour its author Thiruvalluvar. It does not contain any story of heroics. But every kural is packed with wisdom.

I am not against Hindi. I am for all Indian languages. Let all of them flourish. Why relegate English to the background and promote only Hindi?

In conclusion, the promotion of Hindi at the expense of other Indian languages, including Tamil, is a matter of deep concern. While Hindi has its place, it should not overshadow the rich linguistic diversity that defines India. Tamil, with its ancient heritage, stands as a testament to the strength of regional languages. The three-language formula, though well-intentioned, has failed to bridge the North-South linguistic divide.

Instead of imposing Hindi, we should celebrate and preserve all languages, ensuring they flourish through education and official patronage. Let us not repeat history by allowing one language to dominate, but rather, foster an environment where every language thrives, enriching our cultural diversity. Let me conclude by congratulating you for your tweet.

Yours etc