Hindi imposition: Centre's RTI answer gets flak

An RTI response was sought to know why Kannada was missing from Union Home Minister Amit Shah's recent event in Shivamogga

Only the bilingual policy - Hindi and English - is applicable in Central government offices, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has said in an RTI response that sought to know why Kannada was missing from Union Home Minister Amit Shah's recent event in Shivamogga.

Goutham Ganesh had filed an RTI with the MHA on why the three-language policy was not followed during Shah's foundation stone laying for the 97th battalion of Rapid Action Force at Bhadravathi on January 16. The foundation stone consisted of Hindi and English.

"As per the provision of Official Language Act, 1963 and Official Language Rules, 1976, the provision of the bilingual policy is applicable in the office of Centre Govt. Since CRPF comes under the administrative control of Central Govt, i.e. MHA, hence, questions of applicability of three languages policy do not arise (sic)," the MHA said in its response, which Goutham shared on Twitter.

"If there is no place for Kannada in Karnataka, then what's the point of having linguistic states? The motto of all these language policies is to emphasize Hindi by ignoring non-Hindi languages," Goutham said.

Pro-Kannada activist Arun Javagal said that the three-language policy was "a big bogus" and a way to mislead people.

"3 language policy is part of a parliamentary resolution to covertly force non-Hindi people to learn Hindi in schools," Twitter user Sandeep Kambi said. "There is no such thing as a 3 language policy in administration. That phrase is simply used to deviate non-Hindis from the truth."