Prakash Raj slams co-star Pawan Kalyan for asking southern states to learn Hindi

Prakash Raj has publicly criticised his OG co-star Pawal Kalyan for siding with the Hindi language imposition at a recent event. Kalyan, who is the Deputy Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, said during the ‘Dakshin Samvad’ Golden Jubilee celebration of the Official Language Department in Hyderabad, that the southern states must learn Hindi to improve discourse.

Raj was quick to react to the remark, and took to X (formerly Twitter) to post a video of the function, and captioned it, “ఈ range కి అమ్ముకోవడమా ….ఛి…ఛీ… #justasking (Selling (yourself/this) for this amount? Shameful!)"

In the video, Kalyan is seen asserting that Hindi is the national language and a means to communicate when home boundaries are crossed. "Telugu might be our mother tongue but our national language is Hindi. We have Telugu as a means to communicate at home but when we cross that boundary, we have Hindi.”

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Arguing that the use of Hindi could foster unity in a world increasingly leaning toward division, Kalyan says, “The world is looking for ways to split apart but today, we as a country are looking for ways to unite in Hindi. I welcome a language like that.”

He further linked the relationships the languages have with each other to a familial structure. “Be it the Dravidian languages, be it Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, or any other language in our country, we have to respect our mother tongue. If that's our mother tongue, Hindi is like our pedamma (mother's elder sister). For any progress in education, business or work, we need to cross all language barriers. At a time like this, we stall progress if we oppose Hindi. To learn Hindi is not to lose ourselves but to strengthen ourselves."

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OG, helmed by Sujeeth, also features Emraan Hashmi, Priyanka Mohan, Arjun Das, Subhalekha Sudhakar, and Sriya Reddy. The gangster film is slated for theatrical release on September 25, 2025.

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