Chennai:
Tamil Nadu on Thursday replaced the rupee symbol in promotional material for the 2025/26 state budget – which will be presented Friday morning – with a Tamil letter.
The decision to swap out the currency symbol comes amid the DMK’s battle with the centre over the ‘imposition’ of Hindi via the three-language formula in the new National Education Policy.
There has been no formal notice from the Tamil Nadu government, so far, on this swap.
However, DMK leader Saravanan Annadurai told a news outlet “there is nothing illegal about it… this is not a ‘showdown’. We prioritise Tamil… that is why the government went ahead with this”.
The BJP, unsurprisingly, has a sharply different perspective.
The party’s state unit spokesperson Narayanan Thirupathy told NDTV the move amounted to the DMK saying it is “different from India”, and accused it of trying to divert attention from failures.
The symbol swap comes as the state preps for an election early next year, a poll battle that will be a fierce (and certainly all-out) fight between the DMK and AIADMK, with the BJP – which has never managed a political foothold in Tamil Nadu – lurking ominously in the background.
The larger picture here is the ongoing ‘language war’ between the DMK and the BJP-led central government over the National Education Policy, or NEP, which mandates students in Class VIII and above to study a third language from a list of 22 options, which includes Hindi.
The Tamil Nadu government has objected to the requirement for a third language, pointing to its current two-language policy under which students are taught Tamil and English.
This policy, Chief Minister MK Stalin has stressed, has served Tamil Nadu – the second-largest state economy – well and there is no need for a change.
The BJP maintains its formula will benefit people travelling to other states. It has also argued the NEP does not force a student to study Hindi.
In an exclusive interview with NDTV last month, Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan accused the Tamil Nadu government of creating a “false narrative” and depriving students of academic progress for their own political ends.
