MUMBAI, July 23 -- Amid the ongoing row over the 'imposition' of Hindi in primary schools, Maharashtra governor C P Radhakrishan said that linguistic differences and the hatred spread on account of these could harm the state in the long run. Radhakrishnan was speaking at Raj Bhavan on Tuesday at the release of the coffee-table book 'Maharashtra Nayak' on CM Devendra Fadnavis. The governor said that if "this kind of hatred" was spread, nobody would invest in the state. "I gather from newspapers that people are being beaten up for not speaking in Marathi," he said. "We should understand that in the long run, this attitude is harmful to Maharashtra's interests. We should not indulge in this political game." Radhakrishnan's remarks pertained to the cases of MNS workers assaulting people for not speaking Marathi. Claiming that the prime minister had brought down the Below Poverty Line (BPL) population from 30% to 5% to 7%, Radhakrishnan said that the BPL population was mostly Hindi-speaking. "If we have to understand these downtrodden people, we will have to understand their language," he said, adding, "We should learn as many languages as possible. There should be no compromise on the mother tongue but it does not mean that we should be against the mother tongue of others." The governor admitted that he knew neither Hindi nor Marathi and felt bad about this. Narrating an incident from when he was an MP in Tamil Nadu, he said that he once saw some locals beating up outsiders for not speaking Tamil. "I stopped the car to ensure that the miscreants were dealt with. I apologised to the victims. I could not understand their language-Hindi-either and had to get a nearby hotelier to translate. My not knowing Hindi has proven to be a hurdle." Water resources minister Girish Mahajan, who conceptualised the Fadnavis book, also spoke on the subject. "Although Marathi is our mother tongue, it is improper to beat someone for not speaking it," he said....