India's food safety authority issued a directive to rename curd packets as 'Dahi' in Hindi was changed on Thursday as it triggered a backlash from Tamil Nadu's Chief Minister and milk producers. They believe that this was an attempt to impose Hindi on non-Hindi speaking states.
The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) asked the federation of milk producers in Tamil Nadu to change the labels of their curd packets from 'curd' in English and 'Thayir' in Tamil to 'Dahi' in Hindi. The directive also applied to other dairy products such as butter and cheese. As the controversy peaked on Friday, the FSSAI announced it was changing the directive.
Tamil Nadu's Chief Minister, MK Stalin, slammed the directive and wrote on Twitter, "The unabashed insistence of #HindiImposition has come to the extent of directing us to label even a curd packet in Hindi, relegating Tamil & Kannada in our own states. Such brazen disregard to our mother tongues will make sure those responsible are banished from South forever."
Stalin's criticism was echoed by an unlikely ally: the Tamil Nadu chief of the BJP, K Annamalai, who belongs to the ruling party at the centre. Annamalai said he had demanded a rollback of the directive, saying it was not in line with Prime Minister Narendra Modi's policy of promoting regional languages.
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This is not the first time that Tamil Nadu has opposed what it calls 'Hindi imposition' by the central government. The state has a long history of anti-Hindi agitation dating back to the 1930s.
People staged huge protests against Hindi imposition in the 1960s had catapulted Stalin's party, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), to power. The then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru had assured continuing English as a link language as long as non-Hindi-speaking states accept Hindi.
