A couple of days ago, Home Minister Amit Shah said that when citizens of states speak to communicate with each other, it should be in the language of India and also that Hindi should be used as an alternative and as the common language by the people from different states of India and not English. This caused a major uproar and commotion among many people, communities, and even politicians who went on and dubbed it a Hindi imposition. This led to the hashtag #StopHindiImposition to start trending on the social media platform Twitter. It has since then gained a lot of traction and is still being discussed as a topic of conversation.

World-renowned Indian music composer, record producer, singer, and songwriter A.R. Rahman is also one of the many people who has responded to the Home Minister's statements. After he had tweeted a picture of Goddess Tamil as his response to the issue, his response went viral all over social media platforms. Now a video of him addressing Tamil as the connecting language is going viral on social media. On Sunday (April 10) night, as he was leaving CII's Media and Entertainment Summit in Chennai, a reporter had asked him to comment on Amit Shah's controversial statement for which Rahman said, "Tamil is the connecting language".

This is not the first time Rahman has been a part of the language debate. Back in June of 2019, when there were plans to make a three-language policy mandatory for all states, Rahman had tweeted: “AUTONOMOUS | meaning in the Cambridge English Dictionary,” with a weblink of the word’s meaning in the dictionary. His tweet triggered the popular hashtag #autonomousTamilNadu by his fans all over the world.

Rahman has often expressed his love for the Tamil language. He had even included a line of Tamil on the Oscars stage after he had won his award for Slumdog Millionaire, uttering the now famous 'Ellaa pugazhum iraivanukke'. He has also composed two anthems highlighting the glory of the language - the 2010 song 'Semmozhiyaana Tamizh Mozhiyaam', which was penned by Kalaignar Karunanidhi and the music video Moopilla Tamizhe Thaaye which came out last month as an ode to the Tamil language, with its lyrics written by popular lyricist Thamarai.