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Indian Minister of the Interior Amit Shah here on August 24, 2019 re-launched the thorny debate on the country's linguistic unification / NOAH SEELAM / AFP

The Indian interior minister has revived the lively debate over the country's linguistic unification, saying that Hindi should become the Indian national language, which is not the case today.

With our correspondent in New Delhi, Sébastien Farcis

India is a mosaic of cultures and dialects. The country has 122 main languages, which have different alphabets and origins. Which makes this country more heterogeneous than Europe. To respect this diversity, there is no national language, but two official languages ​​of use, Hindi and English.

The ruling Hindu nationalist party, however, has as its ambition to unify India on the model of the North and turn it into a Hindu and Hindi-speaking country. " It is essential that the whole country has a language that becomes the identity of the nation," said Interior Minister Amit Shah . And this language can only be Hindi, which is the most spoken. "

45 % of Indians speak Hindi

A real outrage for regional leaders. " This is absurd, the head of the Kerala government insurgent. Hindi does not unify the Indians because it is not the language spoken by the majority. This is a declaration of war .

Same position in the southeast of the country. " Only 45 percent of Indians speak Hindi, " says a Tamil Nadu leader. Last June, New Delhi already tried to impose Hindi learning throughout the country, before having to withdraw the project because of similar opposition.