‘No Hindi vs Marathi in Maharashtra’: Aaditya Thackeray plays down language row, accuses BJP of spreading ‘poison’ in state | India News
NEW DELHI: Shiv Sena (UBT) MLA Aaditya Thackeray on Sunday dismissed the ongoing language row in Maharashtra, saying there is no “Hindi vs Marathi in Maharashtra” and slammed the BJP for comparing it to the Pahalgam terror attack.Speaking a day after the state government rolled back its contentious three-language policy, Aaditya said, “This controversy exists only on biased media or social media. There is no Hindi vs Marathi in Maharashtra. The real concern was the burden of three languages on standard 1 students. Why should the third language be Hindi?”He asserted that while Maharashtra accommodates several languages, “we won’t tolerate the insult of our mother tongue in our own state, nor the imposition of any language.”Responding to BJP leader Ashish Shelar’s comparison of attacks over the language issue to the Pahalgam terror attack, Aaditya accused the party of harbouring animosity towards the state. “There is a lot of poison in BJP’s mind when it comes to Maharashtra. Today, BJP compared Maharashtra to the terrorists in the Pahalgam incident, terrorists they could neither catch nor stop,” he said.“It’s been three months since that attack. No one knows whether the terrorists fled to Pakistan or joined BJP,” he added, calling the comparison an example of BJP’s “malice.”The controversy erupted after the Devendra Fadnavis-led government issued a GR on April 16 under the New Education Policy, mandating Hindi as a compulsory third language for Classes 1 to 5 in English and Marathi medium schools.After widespread criticism and political backlash, including from both Uddhav and Raj Thackeray, who held a joint rally on Saturday, the government announced the formation of a committee under educationist Narendra Jadhav to re-evaluate the policy. The panel has three months to submit its recommendations.Meanwhile, the issue has led to sporadic violence in the state, including assaults on Hindi-speaking individuals by political workers, intensifying the debate over Marathi identity.
