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#StopHindiChauvinism has taken over Indian Twitter

Language wars again.

Sohini Mitter

on April 5, 2017

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

India, a country of 1.3 billion people, has 22 official languages. Its most-spoken language (Hindi) is sometimes mistaken as the national language.

But it's not. India has no "national language" though Hindi has become the unofficial leader of the pack. And that is a problem.

People hailing from India's four southern states are ranting about the imposition of Hindi in their lives. They say that a uniform language isn't a requirement for a unified nation.

The #StopHindiChauvinism hashtag has exploded on Twitter.

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Interestingly, one of the southern states — Tamil Nadu — is home to Google's India-born CEO Sundar Pichai, who on a recent visit to the country had spoken about his problems with Hindi during college days.

Hindi is the most-spoken Indian language in the U.S. Hindi is also the language of the world's biggest film industry, Bollywood.

While the Hindi supremacy is likely to stay, for now, angry South Indians have their say.

Here are some tweets.