Vaidya Rajesh Kotecha, the secretary of the Union Ministry of AYUSH, has sparked off a controversy on social media after he allegedly tried to impose the Hindi language on non-Hindi speakers.
In a virtual webinar where he was addressing the participants, Vaidya Rajesh told on camera that only those who can speak Hindi and also asked non-Hindi speakers to leave the training. In the video, he said,
“I want to congratulate people who have taken the time to attend this event in the past two days. I have got information that, for the past two days, there has been an issue…people can leave…I don’t speak English very well. So, I will speak in Hindi.”
Kotecha claims that the video that has been circulated on social media has been manipulated. He said,
“I was to give a 10-minute introductory speech and began speaking in Hindi, making it very clear that I would be speaking in both Hindi and English. A bunch of hooligans, who had come in as participants in the webinar, started shouting, disturbing the speech and demanded that only English be spoken. They have manipulated the video and have sabotaged the entire educational program.”
‘Another Attempt to Impose Hindi’
He also claimed that only 350 participants were invited but over 430 people turned up and disrupted the address. This has sparked up a debate on social media as non-Hindi speakers claimed that this was another attempt to impose the language of Hindi on the non-Hindi speaking state.
Over the last few years, there has been a reignited debate of how there has been an attempt to monopolize language and pushing 1 National, 1 language theory by the government. Many states, especially, the southern states have vocally opposed this. This move by the AYUSH ministry secretary is seen as another attempt to push this.
Source: The Scroll
