Imposition of Hindi on Tamil speakers in Yoga webinar: Secretary, AYUSH Ministry insisted on speaking in Hindi

Weeks after DMK leader K Kanimozhi alleged her nationality was questioned at Chennai airport because she does not speak Hindi, an incident has come to light in which people from Tamil Nadu alleged that Hindi was imposed on them in a seminar organized by the Union AYUSH Ministry.

The three-day virtual training programme for Yoga master trainers was conducted between August 18 to 20 and around 350 people from different states participated in the webinar, which included 37 from Tamil Nadu.

According to Tamil participants, Rajesh Kotecha, Secretary, Ministry of AYUSH, tried to impose Hindi on them, as during his address, he said those who don’t understand Hindi can leave the webinar.

To support their claim, these participants have shared an audio clip in which Kotecha can be heard saying, “I congratulate you all for attending the meeting. Those who don’t have interest can leave the meeting as I will speak in Hindi only as I don’t know English very well.”

Tamil participants said since they do not understand Hindi, they could not understand what was discussed in most of the sessions as Hindi was spoken predominantly during the seminar.

Tamil participants said when they tried to reason out with Kotecha, he said he would identify the “problem creators” and take up the matter with the government for initiating action against them.

However, when contacted by the media, Kotecha tried to downplay the controversy. “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 languages – 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,” The Hindu quoted Kotecha as saying.