"Totally absurd...," Udhayanidhi Stalin slams Amit Shah over 'Hindi is the uniting force of India' remark

Chennai (Tamil Nadu) [India], September 14 (ANI): Days after sparking controversy with his remark on Sanatana Dharma, Tamil Nadu Minister and DMK leader Udhayanidhi Stalin slammed Union Home Minister Amit Shah's comment on "Hindi being a uniting force in India,"  and said that Home Minister should stop oppressing non-Hindi languages by calling them just regional languages.
Criticising Amit Shah's remark, Udhayanidhi said in a post on X, "I strongly condemn the statement of Union Home Minister Amit Shah claiming that Hindi is the uniting force of India and it is empowering other regional languages."
"Hindi is spoken only in four or five states in the Country and hence the statement of Amit Shah is totally absurd. It is only another version of imposing Hindi under the guise of generating livelihood," he added. 
"While we are speaking Tamil here, Kerala speaks Malayalam. Where does Hindi merge with and empower us? Amit Shah should stop oppressing non-Hindi languages by calling them just regional languages. #StopHindiImposition," he said. 
On the occasion of Hindi Diwas, Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Thursday stressed the need to strengthen all Indian languages and dialects with the hope that Hindi will become a medium to empower all.
Expressing his views on the occasion of Hindi Diwas, the Minister said "Hindi neither ever has competed and nor will compete with any other Indian language", and that "original and creative expression of any country is possible only through its own language which we have to carry with us as all Indian languages and dialects are our cultural heritage."
Extending his best wishes to the countrymen on the occasion of Hindi Diwas, Shah mentioned that Hindi unites the diversity of languages in the world's largest democracy.
"Hindi has been a democratic language. It has honoured different Indian languages and dialects as well as many global languages and adopted their vocabularies, sentences and grammar rules. It also played an unprecedented role in uniting the country during the difficult days of the independence movement. It instilled a feeling of unity in a country divided into many languages and dialects. Hindi, as a language of communication, played an important role in carrying forward the freedom struggle from East to West and North to South in the country," stated the Home Minister.
Considering the important role of Hindi in the freedom movement and after independence, Shah said, the architects of the Constitution had accepted Hindi as the official language on September 14, 1949.
"Original and creative expression of any country is possible only through its own language," said the Minister. (ANI)