In the MK Stalin-led government’s annual budget for Tamil Nadu in FY 2025-26, the focus could have been on any aspect, such as its promise of 8 percent annual growth in the state’s GDP; a 1 percent concession on stamp duty if the property is registered in the name of women; the rising tide of women using the free bus travel scheme, saving an average of Rs 888 per woman per month; or the Rs 2,000 stipend offered to orphaned children for their education.

However, one aspect became the national outrage – the use of the Tamil symbol for the rupee instead of the widely accepted one. This provoked the likes of the union finance minister, Nirmala Sitharaman, herself a Tamilian, besides the BJP chief in TN, Annamalai, and other cheerleaders of the union government to come down on Stalin and his ministers, as if they were errant children in a classroom. This, in turn, led to the BJP’s social media ecosystem joining forces with them about how the state challenges the authority of the government of India, no less.

The state budget and its use of the Tamil to denote the rupee were not violative of any provisions but a challenge to the convention that all states of India use a common symbol. In fact, the TN government was being mischievous and, if it can be said, a tad childish in using the Tamil symbol; it intended to send out a message and get a rise out of the BJP, which it succeeded in.

It was in defiance of the centre’s will that the state include Hindi in the three-language policy under the New Education Policy. The use of that symbol was meant to be a flashpoint in the full-on state versus centre tension of the past few weeks over the language issue. The jury may be out on whether TN should have resorted to schoolboy-level mischief to prove its point, and this can be debated endlessly, but the fact is that the state managed to have its say.

It transpired that Sitharaman as well as Annamalai had reportedly used the Tamil symbol for the rupee in their tweets in the past, which only goes to show that native symbols are used all the time in speech and writing in a native context.

This underscored the point that the Stalin-led government has been making about Tamilians being fluent in their mother tongue, and English is sufficient with school children forced to learn Hindi too. The three-language formula has turned into a cover for the imposition of Hindi on southern and non-Hindi speaking states while the ‘cow belt’ states enjoy a natural advantage.

Language politics has led to wars and dismemberment of countries. India can do without this flashpoint. The centre needs to understand that it cannot steamroll its will all the way; states with strong regional identity and pride will push back.