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Editor: Md. Ibrahim & Vivek Gupta
Camera: Sumit Badola
Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s renewed push for Hindi as the national language, on Hindi Divas on Saturday, 14 September, has encountered a thorough pushback.
The outcry raged on social media with hashtags like #StopHindiImposition, capturing a snapshot of the palpable opposition and anger among Indians.
It is worth noting that Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Kerala, West Bengal and Maharashtra which have seized upon the hashtag and got it across to to 482 million have a combined population of 265 million or 26.5 crore people.
Figures from states in the south, west, and east appear like different-sized battalions leading the resistance on social media. The figures on the states reveal the number of times the hashtag has been deployed in their conversations across social media.
Delhi-NCR, however, emerged as lone red oasis in north India’s heat map depiciting engagement with the hashtag. In fact, the capital region was the second highest user of #StopHindiImposition, only behind Tamil Nadu
Nearly 90 percent of all social media engagement with the hashtag was either in English or in Tamil.
The hashtag appears to have been used overwhelmingly by men. As of 7 pm on Monday, over 73 percent of all those who engaged with the hashtag were men.
So, what other keywords did people use while deploying #StopHindiImposition? #StopHindiImperialism, Amit Shah, #HindiDiwas, #Kannada, #Tamil featured most commonly.
While #StopHindiImposition has prompted and includes much negative sentiment, three spikes over the last 48 hours show that the hashtag has also been used in a positive vein to promote Hindi.
Between 5 pm on Sunday and 5 pm on Monday, sparks of positive sentiment accompanying the hashtag made brief appearances in an overwhelmingly negative sentiment towards the proposal of Hindi as the national language.
As expected, the hashtag has been used in conjunction with a variety of languages and key words. Tamil, Kannada, English, and Hindi feature prominently among other terms that found mention along with the hashtag.
Along with English and Tamil as the most commonly used languages, 25 to 34 was the most common age bracket which engaged with the hashtag.
Therefore, according to the figures, a Tamil male in his late twenties, who is fluent in English, would be the most common entity to use the hashtag StopHindiImposition.
Finally, emojis are as a much a potent tool for gauging public sentiment as words. A list of the top seven emojis employed alongside the hashtag illustrate a sense of. . . well, emotions that evoke opposition to the aggressive imposition of the Hindi language.
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