2 time Oscar winner and one of India's top and most prolific music composers A.R. Rahman has tweeted a poster shining a spotlight on the significance of Tamil and what the language means to Tamilians. Home Minister Amit Shah had demanded that people from different states should speak Hindi with each other and that Hindi should be accepted as an alternate language to English. The tweet that Rahman had posted on Friday (April 8), is being seen as a strong response to that specific statement made by Amit Shah on Hindi being an alternative to English.

The musician took to his social media accounts including Facebook, Instagram and Twitter sharing an illustration of “Thamizhanangu” of “Goddess Tamil”, a word from Tamil Thai Vaazhthu or the Tamil national anthem, penned by Manonmaniam Sundaram Pillai and composed by M.S. Viswanathan. It is a poster of a woman holding a staff with the Tamil letter 'a' (lazha) on it. Interestingly, the letter is unique to Tamil language. He also included a line written by modern Tamil poet of the 20th century Bharathidasan from his ‘Thamiliyakkam’, a book of Tamil poems, which read: "Inba Thamizh Engal Urimai Sempayirukku Vaer" (Beloved Tamil is the root of our existence).

This is not the first time A.R. Rahman has commented on the language debate. Back in June of 2019, when the plan of making the three language policy mandatory for all states arose and became an issue, Rahman had taken to his social media once again posting the following along with a web link of the world's meaning in the dictionary attached to it, “AUTONOMOUS | meaning in the Cambridge English Dictionary”. His tweet triggered a popular hashtag, ‘#autonomousTamilNadu’ by his fans worldwide.

All this started at the 37th meeting of the Parliamentary Official Language Committee on Thursday (April 7) when Shah was quoted by the Ministry of Home Affairs as having said, “Now the time has come to make the Official Language an important part of the unity of the country. When citizens of States who speak other languages communicate with each other, it should be in the language of India.”