English a disease, says Vice President

Yeh bimari jo angrezi wala chhod kar gaya, is bimari se hamein mukt karna chahiye (We must get rid of this disease of English that we have been left with)

NEW DELHI: Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu on Friday termed the English language a ‘disease’ left behind by the British, stressing that Hindi was the symbol of “socio-political and linguistic unity” in India.

“Yeh bimari jo angrezi wala chhod kar gaya, is bimari se hamein mukt karna chahiye: (this disease that English left behind, we should rid ourselves of this disease),” he said at an event organised on the occasion of ‘Hindi Divas’ at Vigyan Bhawan in New Delhi.

Naidu said the Constituent Assembly (which framed the Constitution) had accepted Hindi as one of the official languages of the country on September 14, 1949.

“Have we been able to fulfil the wishes of the Constituent Assembly?” he asked.

Interestingly, the assembly also adopted English as an official language at the same meeting.

Naidu, who usually begins speeches in various states in the local language before reverting to either Hindi or English, also said it is “very important that we encourage our mother tongue.”

Naidu said language and emotions “go together”. “If you want to reach out to people…understand them, then you have to properly express your emotions. It is easier to express your feeling in one’s mother tongue, in an Indian language. This is everybody’s experience.”