Bengaluru:The friendly conversation between Bollywood actor Ajay Devgn and Kannada actor Kichcha Sudeep took a political turn with Chief Minister Basavaraj Bomma, former Karnataka chief ministers Siddaramaiah and H D Kumaraswamy joining the debate and insisting that Hindi is like any other language in India and not the national language.
"Whatever Sudeep has said is correct. After the formation of states on linguistic basis, languages got importance there (in those regions). That is supreme. The same has been said by Sudeep, which is right. Everyone should accept and respect it," the Chief Minister told reporters in Hubballi. "Hindi was never & will never be our National Language. It is the duty of every Indian to respect linguistic diversity of our country. Each language has its own rich history for its people to be proud of. I am proud to be a Kannadiga!! Congress stalwart Siddaramaiah tweeted.
The JD(S) second-in-command Kumaraswamy too aired a view similar to Siddaramaiah and backed Sudeep. "Actor @KicchaSudeep saying that Hindi is not a National Language is correct. There is nothing to find fault in his statement. Actor @ajaydevgn is not only hyper in nature but also shows his ludicrous behaviour. According to him, Hindi is also one of the languages like Kannada, Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam and Marathi. "India is a garden of several languages. Land of multi cultures. Let there be no attempts to disrupt this," he added in his series of tweets on Thursday on the issue. Just because a large population speaks Hindi, it doesn't become a national language, Kumaraswamy said adding, less than nine states, Kashmir to Kanyakumari, have Hindi as second or third language or not even that.