DMK accuses Vijay govt of 'imposing' Hindi, TVK hits back

With just two days to go for the results of the Madurantakam and Dharapuram Assembly by-elections, a seemingly desperate DMK appears to have gone back to its tried-and-tested formula of Hindi imposition politics.

The Dravidian giant has accused the Joseph Vijay-led TVK government in Tamil Nadu of allowing Hindi in public signage and hospital stationery. The ruling party, meanwhile, insists the practices either predate its tenure or are downright false allegations.

DMK’s old weapon

The Madurantakam and Dharapuram went to bypolls yesterday as the seats fell vacant after former AIADMK MLAs K Maragatham Kumaravel and P Sathyabama resigned and joined the TVK. Vijay fielded them again from the same seats, against DMK and AIADMK candidates.

Also read: The good and bad of the Vijay government's policy U-turns

In the final days of campaigning, a row broke out over a highway direction board that carried city names in Hindi, apart from English and Tamil.

On polling day and on Wednesday (October 7), fresh trouble broke out over a government hospital medicine cover and claims that Tamil lettering had been removed from the name board at the entrance of the Kallazhagar Temple in Madurai to make way for Hindi.

DMK leaders were quick to question the TVK government’s commitment to the two-language policy in constituencies where language sentiment can still move votes. TVK ministers wasted no time in asserting that the party would never favour Hindi and that it was in no way responsible for these incidents.

Trouble over highway signboard

The first incident involved a newly installed direction board on the Sathankulam-Nazareth stretch of State Highway 93 in Thoothukudi district.

It bore the place names in Tamil, English and Hindi. As videos spread online, DMK president MK Stalin remarked sarcastically that Tamil Nadu had until then faced Hindi imposition only from the Union government; now, the state government itself was doing the job. He called the two-language policy Tamil Nadu’s life principle and warned against “playing” with it.

The government quickly blacked out or removed the Hindi lettering and installed a fresh board in Tamil and English. Public Works Minister Aadhav Arjuna said an assistant divisional engineer and an assistant engineer were suspended on October 1 for “negligence” that violated the two-language policy, and that departmental proceedings were under way.

He stated that the two-language policy was a core principle for the TVK as well—just as it has been for the Dravidian parties since 1968—and that officials who breach it will face strict action. AIADMK leaders described the episode as a political battle.

Row over medicine packets

On the day of polling for the bypolls, brown-paper medicine packets handed out at the Government Medical College Hospital in Karur and at the Coimbatore Government Medical College Hospital sparked the next flashpoint. These covers carry dosage instructions in Tamil, English and Hindi.

Also read: ‘Pirated AIADMK’: AIADMK attacks Vijay’s TVK ahead of Madurantakam bypoll

DMK IT wing secretary TRB Rajaa posted photographs on X on Tuesday and wrote that the “three-language policy” appeared to be reaching government hospitals. Pudukottai MLA V Muthuraja asked whether Hindi on highway signboards and medicine envelops were the “change” the chief minister had promised, and mocked the health minister over an earlier remark on full-sleeved shirts and dengue.

Hospital authorities said the covers had been printed during the DMK’s tenure itself and distributed without the Hindi text being noticed. Karur medical college dean M Bharathi Mohan told reporters the covers appeared to have been printed last December and that the staff had now been told to stop using them.

DMK-era stationery?

Health Minister KG Arunraj rejected the charge as cheap politics. He told The Federal that the Karur hospital typically procures plain medicine envelopes from the central prison and stamps “morning / afternoon/night” only in Tamil. A shortage led to an emergency order on December 31, 2025, under the previous DMK government, for 4 lakh envelopes from the Erode District Printing Industrial Cooperative Society. Those covers entered circulation in January 2026, still during the DMK period, he said.

In Coimbatore, on the other hand, the three-language template had been officially approved and printed through the Chinthamani cooperative about three years ago, again under DMK rule, Arunraj added. The present administration had only drawn existing stock and had not altered anything at all, he insisted.

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Arunraj further said the use of the disputed packets was stopped at both hospitals as soon as the matter reached the government. Karur will return to prison-made envelopes stamped only in Tamil. Coimbatore will switch to packets in Tamil and English.

“The TVK will never compromise on this,” he told The Federal and accused the DMK of staying silent while the covers circulated under its own rule and of now posing as language guardians.

The temple ‘lie’

However, on the back of the hospital row, a third claim emerged on Wednesday morning. A section of the local media alleged that Tamil lettering had been removed from the name board at the entrance of the Kallazhagar Temple in Madurai to make way for Hindi.

Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Minister S Ramesh said the report was entirely false and had been “deliberately manufactured”. He posted current photographs and said the Tamil text remains exactly as it has stood over the years; the image used in the report had the Tamil characters masked by digital alteration.

Also read: TVK accuses Stalin of ‘body-shaming’, asks EC to revoke his star campaigner status

Ramesh condemned the news channel and warned that legal action would follow against media outlets that spread fabricated news. He asked the public not to believe edited pictures.

Minister Rajmohan, also speaking to The Federal, said the government accepts healthy, constructive criticism. However, falsehoods being deliberately spread on social media cannot be accepted, he added.

Change of public mood

Political observer Dayalan Shanmugam believes the DMK’s anti-Hindi narrative will not take hold. Speaking to The Federal, he said many people in Tamil Nadu actually like Hindi, and the DMK’s campaign against it is more likely to push voters towards the TVK than away from it.

Shanmugam said the DMK is desperate because it has found no policy ground on which to oppose the TVK. “What ideology can they use to attack the TVK, which does not have a distinct ideology of its own,” he said. “Opposing the BJP worked for the DMK on the ground because the BJP has a basic ideological position. But the TVK’s only clear line is opposition to the DMK,” he argued.

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He added that the TVK government retreats at once if a decision is shown to be wrong. The DMK has policy and history; the TVK does not. What is visible, he said, is that the TVK will do whatever it takes to hit and weaken the DMK, and the DMK has still not understood how to handle that.

'Yet to figure out the weak point'

Shanmugam described the TVK as a “rainbow party” that has gathered contradictory symbols under one roof: Ambedkar and Periyar as its leaders, acceptance of Meenakshi Amman, and Kamarajar claimed as its own. “It has kept all of these within itself,” he said. That breadth, he suggested, leaves the DMK without a single ideological flank on which to pin the ruling party down.

Tamil Nadu has a long history of following the two-language policy of Tamil and English. Since 1968, successive Dravidian governments—led by DMK or AIADMK—have opposed what they called “Hindi imposition by the Centre” and treated any official use of Hindi as a political dynamite.