For MPs from Tamil Nadu and West Bengal, these titles were symbols of Hindi imposition, an attempt to subsume regional identity into a monolithic “cow belt” idiom.
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ANI
Parliament buzzed with a rare, late-night industriousness this winter session, clearing a mountain of legislative business. Beyond procedural efficiency, it was also a display of contrasting ideologies. The ruling BJP’s cultural nationalism, literally inscribed in the titles of the new statutes, ran headlong into defiant Tamil and Bengali sub-nationalism, forcefully asserted by MPs from those States.
By pivoting from English-centric names to Sanskrit-inflected Hindi for the Bill titles, the BJP stamped its vision of a decolonised, culturally unified India into the statute book. For MPs from Tamil Nadu and West Bengal, these titles were symbols of Hindi imposition, an attempt to subsume regional identity into a monolithic “cow belt” idiom.
Political rebranding
Nowhere was this ideological pivot more apparent than in the renaming of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGA) as the Viksit Bharat – Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin). The acronym, VB- G RAM G, was classic political rebranding. It was delivered with theatrical flourish by Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, who opened the debate on the Bill in the Lok Sabha by folding hands in a traditional pranaam, punctuating the ‘G-RAM-G’ with a gesture synonymous with daily greeting in the Hindi heartland. To the advocates of Tamil and Bengali sub-nationalism, the symbolism was unmistakable: the welfare state being consciously tethered to cultural practices of North India. They responded in equally sharp terms.
“…In every Bill, you try to impose Hindi and Sanskrit on people of South India. Just try, why don’t you name one Bill in any South Indian language? You keep saying that you care about the Indian languages. Can you tell us about one Bill, which you named in Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, Marathi, Odisha?” asked DMK MP K. Kanimozhi.
Former Finance Minister P Chidambaram took his opposition to social media, targeting a slew of Hindi-titled Bills, including Sabka Bima Sabki Raksha (Amendment of Insurance Laws) Bill, 2025, Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan Bill, 2025, and the VB-G RAM G Bill. “I am opposed to the increasing practice of the government using Hindi words written in English letters in the title of bills introduced in Parliament,” he wrote on X.
Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra went further, branding the BJP “Bangla-birodhi”. Citing Rabindranath Tagore’s role in conferring the title of Mahatma on Mahatma Gandhi, she accused the government of dishonouring both figures by altering the scheme’s name. “Is it any wonder that Bengal and Bengalis call them Bangla-birodhi?” she asked.
Published on December 19, 2025