New Delhi, India – Addressing a rally in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu last weekend, Prime Minister Narendra Modi mocked leaders from the state government of the regional Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) party.

“These ministers from Tamil Nadu talk about pride in their language but always write letters to me and sign off in English. Why don’t they use the Tamil language?” he said, adding “Where is their Tamil pride?”

It was no ordinary barb. Modi’s government is locked in a bitter language dispute with the Tamil Nadu government of Chief Minister MK Stalin over accusations that New Delhi is trying to impose Hindi on schools in the southern state – a charge that the federal administration denies.

The war of words between New Delhi and Chennai, Tamil Nadu’s capital, has escalated into a series of street protests and accusations that the Modi government is holding back education funds from the state. Against the backdrop of a long – at times violent – history of agitations against Hindi in the state, Stalin has issued ominous warnings.

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“I warn the [Modi government], do not throw stones at a beehive,” Stalin said, addressing a state event in February. “Don’t aspire to see the unique fighting spirit of the Tamils.”

So what’s the spat about? Is the Modi government trying to force Tamil children to learn Hindi? And why is Hindi so divisive – at least in Tamil Nadu?

Why is Tamil Nadu alleging Hindi imposition?

At the heart of the dispute is India’s National Education Policy, first introduced in 1968 and recently updated in 2020.

The original policy mandated a three-language formula. Hindi-speaking states in northern India were required to teach Hindi, English and a third Indian language in school – preferably a language from southern India. Non-Hindi-speaking states needed to teach the local language, Hindi and English.

Hindi comes from the Indo-Aryan language family while Tamil comes from a distinct and separate Dravidian family. Tamil Nadu’s neighbouring states also speak chief Dravidian languages like Telugu, Kannada, and Malayalam.

The idea behind the three-language formula was to push Hindi as a link language in a country that is home to arguably the world’s largest pool of languages: The Indian Constitution recognises 121 languages, including 22 as official ones. Hindi, one of the official languages, is widely spoken by 520 million speakers, or nearly 43 percent of the total population, as per the last census held in 2011. Tamil is in fifth place, spoken by 69 million people, or 5.7 percent of the population.

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Independent India’s founders viewed the country’s multiple languages and cultures they represent as a potential threat to its unity, argued Ayesha Kidwai, a linguist and professor at New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU).

“The three-language formula was not ever put in place keeping children’s education in mind but to address multilingual speakers that were considered a serious threat to the Indian Union,” Kidwai told Al Jazeera.

However, in reality, while most non-Hindi speaking states taught Hindi, most Hindi-speaking states picked Sanskrit – another Indo-Aryan language that Hindi and many other languages are drawn from, but that is not in everyday use any more – as the third language.

“Sanskrit is a dead language,” which has largely been taught in Indian schools in a formulaic manner that makes it a high-scoring subject, said Kidwai, now 57, who went to school in New Delhi, and studied the language from grade six to eight.

When revised in 2020, the new education policy retained the three-language formula but allowed more flexibility for regions to choose the three languages, with at least two native to India. Hindi does not need to be one of the languages.

But even that is unacceptable to Tamil Nadu, because unlike the rest of the country, it never accepted the three-language formula to start with: It has always only taught two languages, Tamil and English, in its schools.

And the Stalin government is now accusing the Modi government of using the national education policy – and the state’s refusal to accept the three-language formula – to deny it education funds. That, Tamil Nadu claims, shows that Modi’s education policies are a smokescreen to impose the three-language formula on the state and create a backdoor mechanism to push Hindi.

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Is the Modi government holding back $232m in education funds?

Tamil Nadu has long argued that its children need just two languages: Tamil – their mother tongue – and English, a global language of communication to help them thrive in an international environment.

Until recently, federal governments across party lines – while disagreeing with Tamil Nadu – turned a blind eye to its refusal to accept the three-language formula.

That has now changed.

Modi’s Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan has said the government would hold back more than 2,000 crore rupees ($232m) of education funds to Tamil Nadu under the Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan, a central government scheme aimed at ensuring universal schooling.

Pradhan has insisted that Tamil Nadu must implement the National Education Policy and its three-language formula if it wants the funds.

Tamil Nadu has argued that by holding back funds, the federal government is hurting the state’s education system – one of the most successful in the country. The southern state has a literacy rate of more than 82 percent, higher than the 73 percent national average, and is considered a pioneer in education. It was the first in the country to introduce government-funded midday meals that were adopted nationally four decades later, an idea that is credited with dramatically increasing enrollment rates.

So is the Modi government pushing Hindi over other languages?

Under the new education policy of 2020, Hindi is an optional third language for non-Hindi-speaking states – and not mandatory – for the first time.

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The Modi government also insists that it has promoted the use of non-Hindi languages. Responding to the debate over school languages in Tamil Nadu, India’s home minister Amit Shah – widely seen as Modi’s deputy – has pointed out that the government has allowed the use of regional languages, including Tamil, in examinations for central administration jobs.

But critics of the Modi government argue that though it is supposed to represent India – and all of its myriad languages – its focus has primarily been on pushing Hindi, both in the country and outside it.

“The union government is investing heavily in Hindi and promoting Hindi unlike any other language,” said Apoorvanand, a Hindi professor at Delhi University.

For instance, he pointed out, all of the Modi government’s new policies bear Hindi names. A scheme to bring cooking gas connections to poor homes is called the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana [Prime Minister’s Brightness Scheme]; a financial inclusion initiative is called the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana [Prime Minister’s People’s Wealth Scheme].

The Modi government has a dedicated Hindi Division to promote the language overseas, including through translations of all speeches and statements through the country’s embassies and consulates.

In 2022, Shah also announced the recruitment of 22,000 Hindi teachers in the Northeastern states – where the language is not common.

“Language is a game of power. And when it’s that game, it’s not about communication,” said Peggy Mohan, a linguist who has authored books on the evolution of languages over generations in South Asia. “We are not talking about better communication. We are talking about the power to impose your code. Like, you don’t know this language therefore you have less power than me. It is about power.”

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Kidwai, the linguist teaching at the JNU, said the Modi government “understands this power of language”.

Those battle lines are especially sharp in Tamil Nadu, one of a handful of states in India where Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party – which has traditionally been strongest in the country’s north and west – has never come to power.

Why is Tamil Nadu particularly sensitive about Hindi?

The largest and most populous of India’s southern states, Tamil Nadu largely retained its Dravidian identity after independence.

That identity – which positioned Tamil Nadu as distinct from the rest of India, and especially the north – was forged through popular movements in the early 20th century, led by leaders like EV Ramasamy, who was popularly known as Periyar, or the “respected one” in Tamil.

That campaign was carried forward by CN Annadurai, who founded the DMK that Stalin now leads.

“Tamil Nadu developed for a long time, from the 1930s, into what could be called Tamil nationalism. People want to be proud of their language and that helps to mobilize people,” said E Annamalai, a prominent Tamil linguist, who has studied and taught the language for more than six decades.

And while the BJP and Modi might be the targets of the anti-Hindi movement today, the Congress – now an ally of the DMK – was long accused of also trying to push Hindi in Tamil Nadu.

In Tamil Nadu, the first major anti-Hindi protests broke out in 1937, when, while still under British colonial rule, the Congress-led provincial government made Hindi mandatory in schools. The protests lasted in excess of two years, with more than 1,200 people imprisoned, before the British rescinded the order that made Hindi mandatory. This sequence was repeated in 1948 – this time in independent India, with the Congress in power both provincially and federally.

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And again in 1963, when Annadurai, the leader of the DMK, was arrested for “conspiring to burn” a part of the Indian Constitution “as a mark of protest against the introduction of Hindi” in schools. He was released shortly afterwards. But two years later, Annadurai was again arrested on the eve of an anti-Hindi agitation. Two young supporters immolated themselves, Hindi books were burned and clashes followed with security forces. Regional parties still observe January 25, 1965 as a “Day of Mourning” marking Annadurai’s arrest.

“For political mobilization, language becomes a tool, an identity marker. So, the so-called language wars are not linguistic per se but a tool to address political or economic grievances,” Annamalai told Al Jazeera.

To be sure, language is a sensitive issue in other parts of India too.

In 1953, an agitation by speakers of the Telugu language – roughly 81 million Indians speak the language – led to the state of Andhra Pradesh breaking away from Tamil Nadu. That set the template for a linguistic reorganisation of all Indian states a few years later. State borders were redrawn, mostly on the basis of who spoke which language.

And many states other than Tamil Nadu also opposed the mandatory teaching on Hindi under the 1968 education policy.

But only Tamil Nadu broke with the national decree and pursued a two-language formula – Tamil and English.

Is this really about Tamil and Hindi?

Yet experts say that for both sides of the political battle, language is just a tool.

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The Modi government, Apoorvanand said, views Hindi as a weapon in its efforts to create a singular cultural identity for India, overriding the diverse practices that have shaped the country’s landscape for centuries.

But Tamil Nadu’s approach hasn’t necessarily helped Tamil’s popularity either.

Comparative analysis from censuses reveals that in Tamil Nadu, the percentage of people who spoke only Tamil dropped from 84.5 to 78 percent between 1991 to 2011, while English speakers rose.

“Unfortunately, this has stopped in at a kind of political solidarity, not in terms of functionally increasing the use of language,” said Annamalai, speaking of Tamil Nadu’s language policy.

“Unless a language is used, it’s not going to live, no matter how much you praise it.”

“The use of Tamil is getting less. It is largely used in the political domain, but when comes to education, you find there’s a demand for English-medium schools,” the linguist said.