It appears that for Arvind Kejriwal’s government, Malayali nurses speaking to each other in Malayalam in Delhi is an offense.
A Delhi government-run hospital on Saturday halted its nursing staff from speaking in Malayalam on the premises of the medical facility. It informed them of “serious action” if they do not talk in English or Hindi.
“A complaint has been received regarding Malayalam language being used for communication in working places in GIPMER,” ran a circular issued by the Govind Ballabh Pant Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education and Research. “Whereas maximum patients and colleagues do not know this language and feel helpless causing a lot of inconveniences. So it is directed all nursing personnel to use only Hindi and English for communication. Otherwise, serious action will be taken.”
This new “law” faced severe backlash with heavy criticism for its language diktat, and the Delhi govt-run GIPMER withdrew its circular forbidding its nursing staff from communicating in Malayalam on Sunday.
The nurses too at the hospital had criticized the new rule, and Jeemol Shaji, a nurse from Kerala, who is the general secretary of the nurses’ union in Lok Nayak Jai Prakash Narayan Hospital said that they speak to the patients in Hindi and only talk to other people from Kerala in Malayalam at the hospital,” she added, “It is our mother tongue. How can they say the staff cannot talk in Malayalam? Will they tell Punjabis not to talk in Punjabi among themselves?”
GB Pant nurses’ association president Liladhar Ramchandani said that the circular was the result of a patient’s complaint and claimed that there was “no issue among the nurses and the administration.”
“As a language’s name, Malayalam, has been inserted in the circular, many will take offense,” Ramchandani said.
In light of the circular, Malayali nursing officer representatives from various Delhi hospitals including Lok Nayak Jai Prakash Narayan Hospital, All India Institute Of Medical Sciences, and Guru Teg Bahadur Hospital, had formed a committee to denounce the order, and they have also decided to launch a social media campaign against it.
Many Congress leaders criticized the order. Party leader Rahul Gandhi called for stopping language discrimination.
Malayalam is as Indian as any other Indian language.
Stop language discrimination! pic.twitter.com/SSBQiQyfFi
— Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) June 6, 2021
Thiruvananthapuram MP and Congress leader Shashi Tharoor said that the order was “unacceptable, crude, offensive and a violation of the basic human rights of Indian citizens”.
It boggles the mind that in democratic India a government institution can tell its nurses not to speak in their mother tongue to others who understand them. This is unacceptable, crude,offensive and a violation of the basic human rights of Indian citizens. A reprimand is overdue! pic.twitter.com/za7Y4yYzzX
— Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) June 5, 2021
Absolutely, totally bizarre! This is unconstitutional, really… https://t.co/5icvPVs7uV
— Jairam Ramesh (@Jairam_Ramesh) June 5, 2021
Finally, the Delhi govt-run Govind Ballabh Pant Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education and Research (GIPMER) on Sunday, withdrew its circular forbidding its nursing personnel from communicating in Malayalam. T
Incidentally, in January, ahead of the 5 state elections, the Kejriwal-led Delhi government set up Tamil, Marathi, and Konkani academies in the national capital. On praising his move, DMK Supremo MK Stalin, CM E Palaniswami, and MNM chief Kamal Haasan had congratulated and thanked him. Kejriwal had replied to their tweets in Tamil, emphasizing ‘creating a multilingual Delhi’. However, election promises are soon forgotten and back in the daily grind of living, the AAP government revealed its anti-lingual prejudices.