Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin on Wednesday said that the Bharatiya Janata Party should not attempt to “turn India into Hindia”, NDTV reported.

He made the statement in response to a speech by Union Home Minister Amit Shah at the All India Official Language Conference in Surat. Shah, while speaking on the occasion of Hindi Day on Wednesday, remarked that Hindi is not a competitor but a friend of other Indian languages.

Stalin, however, said that the country should celebrate Indian Languages Day instead of Hindi Day. He added that Hindi is neither the national language nor the only official language.

“The Centre should bridge the huge difference in resources spent for development of Hindi versus other languages,” the Tamil Nadu chief minister said. “The Centre only imposes Hindi and Sanskrit via the NEP [National Education Policy].”

Under the New Education Policy, the Centre has proposed to impart education up to Class 5, and preferably until Class 8, in the students’ mother tongues. Classical languages like Sanskrit have also been proposed at all levels, while foreign languages will be offered at the secondary level.

Stalin said that all Indian languages should be made official at par with Hindi.

“Apart from imposing Hindi as a language, the BJP government has been imposing the false notion that only Hindi can unite the people of India,” he said on Twitter. “If anything, the preferential treatment towards Hindi creates unwanted disgruntlement among the people of various states and divides them.”

On Wednesday, Shah said that regional languages will only prosper when Hindi thrives, and vice versa.

“Some people are spreading disinformation that Hindi is a competitor to regional languages,” he said. “I want to say that Hindi is not a competitor but a friend of all regional languages.”