BJP’s allies in Tamil Nadu questioned on Monday the Union Government’s move to rename Teachers’ Day as Guru Utsav. PMK founder Dr S Ramadoss and MDMK general secretary Vaiko issued statements condemning the move and termed it as a subtle attempt by the BJP to ‘Sanskritise’ the country. The statements came at a time when the Tamil Nadu unit of the BJP is busy preparing to contest the by-elections to the mayoral posts of Tirunelveli, Coimbatore and Thoothukudi.

“It is not proper for the Central Government to have changed the name as Guru Utsav. This is a discreet attempt to impose Sanskrit which is not acceptable,” Ramadoss said in a statement. Equally disturbed was Vaiko, a rabid Tamil activist, who warned the Union Government that national integration would be destroyed if Teachers’ Day is renamed as Guru Utsav.

“The Central Government should realise that national integration will be strengthened only if the identities of various languages and cultures are promoted,” said the MDMK leader.

M Karunanidhi (92), the DMK chief termed the move as an attempt to sabotage Tamil by the north Indian based Aryans. “The Aryans have started their game to undermine Tamil culture and language,” Karunanidhi had said on Sunday.

But a team of international scientists, including researchers from Hyderabad based Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, has established that there was no Aryan or Dravidian divide in the subcontinent. “We have found that Indians, from Kanyakumari to Kashmir and Surat in the west to Silchar in the east have the same DNA traits,” said Dr Kamaraj, a team of the international team, which probed the DNA constitution of people in the subcontiment.Students from various corporation schools in Chennai had an interesting observation to make. “The name Guru is common in Tamil. We all know that the word Guru means teacher. So naming Teachers’ Day as Guru Utsav is not going to make any difference,” said Malini, a tenth class student.