Daijiworld Media Network - Chennai (SHP)

Chennai, Oct 4: On Thursday, actor-turned-politician Kamal Hassan compared Hindi to a 'child in diapers' in comparison to other languages.

This statement came amid a language row where Shah announced the unification of India through a common language, Hindi.

"Hindi is a little child in diapers. Compared to Tamil, Sanskrit and Telugu, Hindi is still a young language. It is not with derision that I say this. I say with compassion that we have to take care of the language, but it should not be imposed or stuffed down our necks," Haasan added.

Earlier, Haasan claimed that forcing down Hindi will only cause fallout and trigger a fight bigger than the 'jallikattu' protest.

"We have said it before and we will say it again, Tamil language is our (people of Tamil Nadu) pride and we will fight for it. The unity in diversity is the promise we made when we made India a republic. We cannot change that," Haasan said.

"Now, no Shah, Sultan or Samrat should go back on their promise. We respect all languages, but our mother language will always be Tamil," Haasan hit out at Shah for his 'one language one country' statement.

Shah's idea behind one language for the entire country suffered severe controversy from most of the regional states. The state chiefs even asked Shah for more clarification on the matter.

However, in his week-long visit to US, Prime Minister Narendra Modi snubbed controversies and reiterated that India will always continue to celebrate diversity.