Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav has once again raked up his pet anti-English agenda, this time calling for a ban on his Parliamentarian colleagues from making their speeches in the language inside the House.
“The leaders of the country have double character as far as Hindi is concerned. They ask for vote in Hindi but give address in Parliament in English. This should be stopped,” he said.
“There should be a ban on English address in Parliament. Countries, which use their mother tongue, are more developed. It’s the need of the hour to promote Hindi,” Mulayam said.
He made the comment while addressing a programme at Etawah organised by Etawah Hindi Sewa Trust to felicitate persons involved in promotion of Hindi on Saturday. The SP leader, however, clarified that he was not against English language per se.
Maintaining that MPs from non-Hindi speaking States should be encouraged to speak in Hindi, Mulayam said they should try to promote Hindi apart from their regional languages. In his address, the SP chief also cautioned the Centre about China, saying the country could not be trusted.
Mulayam had, ahead of the lok Sabha polls in 2009, kicked up a controversy when his party’s manifesto called for abolition of schools imparting expensive English education and banning computerisation. Following widespread condemnation, he had sought to clarify that he and his party were opposed to English as a compulsory subject. “There is a lot of difference between banning something and opposing it,” he had said.
The SP had held computerisation to be the reason for increasing unemployment due to reduced manual work and maintained that reducing the usage of English would create a level playing field.
Interestingly, three years down the line, in 2012, the SP rode on its promise of giving free laptops and tablet PCs to students to wrest power from the BSP in Uttar Pradesh.