Opposition parties on Sunday slammed the now withdrawn order of the Govind Vallabh Pant Institute of Post-graduate Medical Education and Research (GIPMER), barring the nursing staff from speaking in Malayalam, and described it as “discriminatory, racist and unconstitutional”.
“A small victory for decency and common sense over parochialism & bigotry!!” tweeted Congress leader and Lok Sabha member from Thiruvananthapuram Shashi Tharoor after the order was revoked.
Before the controversial order that directed nurses only to speak in English and Hindi was withdrawn, top Congress leaders, including former party president Rahul Gandhi, took to Twitter to criticise the Delhi government-run medical institution.
“Malayalam is as Indian as any other Indian language. Stop language discrimination!” tweeted Mr. Gandhi, who is now a Lok Sabha member from Kerala.
Priyanka tweets in Malayalam
To make a point, Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra posted her tweet in Malayalam.
Attaching a copy of the order, Ms. Vadra said, “This order is a violation of basic values of our country. It is racist, discriminatory and utterly wrong to the millions of nurses and health workers who have risked their lives to save us during this time of COVID pandemic”.
“It is also an insult. We owe them a debt, gratitude and respect. It should be withdrawn and an apology should be tendered,” she added.
A functionary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) shot off a letter to Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal in which the order, issued by the Nursing Superintendent of GIPMER, was referred to as “unconstitutional and atrocious”.
“The ostensible excuse for this appalling order is that patients, the majority of whom do not know Malayalam, are inconvenienced by nurses conversing with each other in this language. This is a specious plea as Malayalam-speaking nurses communicate with non-Malayali patients in Hindi and English and not in Malayalam,” wrote K.M. Tiwari of the Delhi State Committee of the CPI(M).
“So there are no grounds to say that patients are being inconvenienced. Conversing with each other in their mother tongue by Malayali nurses cannot be an excuse to penalise them,” he added.