BackAdvisory on social media for Hindi-speaking states only: MHA
Minister of state for home Kiren Rijiju says government circular of 27 May was based on an earlier circular of 10 March
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New Delhi/Chennai: The government said on Friday that an order pertaining to the use of Hindi on social media was only applicable to Hindi-speaking states, moving to defuse a potential controversy.
Minister of state for home Kiren Rijiju said the government circular of 27 May was based on an earlier circular of 10 March, when the present Bharatiya Janata Party-led government was not in power. He said that the controversy was “unwarranted".
“It is clarified that these instructions of the department of official languages dated 10 March 2014 do not seek to impose communication in Hindi on states which are not Hindi speaking," the home ministry said in a statement. “The instructions of department of official languages have only reiterated the existing government of India’s policy on the use of Hindi in which the use of Hindi is compulsory in government’s communication only in the Hindi-speaking states."
Earlier, terming the Centre’s move on use of Hindi as being “against letter and spirit" of the law, Tamil Nadu chief minister J. Jayalalithaa asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi to ensure that English was the language of communication on social media.
M. Karunanidhi, chief of Tamil Nadu’s opposition Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, had said on Thursday that the PM should focus on development rather than on promoting Hindi.
Jayalalithaa said she had learnt that two office memoranda issued by the Union home ministry “direct that official accounts on social media like Facebook, Twitter, blogs, Google and YouTube, which at present use only English, should compulsorily use Hindi, or both Hindi and English, with Hindi being written above or first".
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