India's many languages are not its weakness: Rahul Gandhi
New Delhi, Sep 16: Days after Home Minister Amit Shah pitched for Hindi as a common language for the country, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Monday said India's many languages are not its weakness.
Congress leader Rajiv Shukla, at a media briefing, said Hindi is India's official language which "we want to grow", but along with that regional languages should also be encouraged.
There should be no fight over language, he said.
"Hindi continues to grow, this is what we all want, but by putting pressure, by doing something, it is not appropriate to use that issue only for votes.
"India's many languages are not her weakness," Gandhi said in a tweet and listed 23 Indian languages.
The Congress on Saturday said the three-language formula should not be tinkered with and controversies must not be stirred up on "emotive" issues settled by Constitution-makers.
According to the Official Languages Act, 1963, Hindi and English are the official languages for the Union government and Parliament.
A total of 22 languages of the country are recognised under the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution.
??Oriya ?? Marathi
— Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) September 16, 2019
?? Kannada ??Hindi ??Tamil
??English ??Gujarati
??Bengali ??Urdu ??Punjabi ?? Konkani ??Malayalam
??Telugu ??Assamese
??Bodo ??Dogri ??Maithili ??Nepali ??Sanskrit
??Kashmiri ??Sindhi
??Santhali ??Manipuri...
India’s many languages are not her weakness.
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Congress using hijab issue to pacify minority anger, alleges Karnataka LoP R Ashoka
Bengaluru: Leader of Opposition in the Assembly R. Ashoka has accused the Congress government of using the hijab issue to placate what he described as discontent among minority voters after the Davanagere by-election.
In a post on X on Wednesday, Ashoka alleged that the state government, instead of addressing issues such as price rise, corruption, farmers’ distress and law and order, was attempting to retain its minority vote base by reviving the hijab issue.
Referring to the 2022 dress code introduced by the BJP government, which prohibited hijab in schools and colleges, Ashoka said the Karnataka High Court had upheld the policy and emphasised the importance of discipline in educational institutions.
He questioned the Congress government’s move to revisit the issue and asked whether setting aside the court-backed policy to benefit one community could be described as secularism.
Ashoka further alleged that while the government was willing to permit hijab, it continued to prohibit saffron shawls.
He accused the government of dividing students on religious lines rather than treating schools and colleges as spaces of equality.
Drawing a comparison with Mamata Banerjee’s government in West Bengal, Ashoka claimed that excessive appeasement politics had harmed the state and warned that the Congress in Karnataka could face a similar political response.
He said voters in Karnataka would teach the Congress a lesson for what he termed “vote-bank politics” and for compromising constitutional and judicial principles.
