Key Takeaways
- PM Modi accused the Congress of clinging to English, limiting opportunities for native‑language speakers.
- He emphasized that patients and professionals should be able to communicate in their mother tongue without needing English.
- The speech was delivered in Bishrampur, Chhattisgarh, underscoring regional concerns ahead of elections.
Bishrampur (Chhattisgarh): Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday used the importance of the mother tongue to slingshot an attack on the Congress by quipping that the country attained Independence but “the spectre of English is yet to be exorcised from that party’s collective psyche.”
Addressing a public meeting in this town of election-bound Chhattisgarh, the visiting dignitary averred, “The Congress dispensations drafted such peculiar rules that if an indigent individual’s child obtained knowledge in his or her native, tribal or state language then that child could never assume the mantle of doctor or engineer. If you desired to enter those professions then knowing English was compulsory. Fortunately, that is no longer the case in Bharat.”
The Prime Minister posed several rhetorical queries to the gathering.
“Is it necessary to know English to become a doctor or an engineer? Tell me brothers, when you approach a physician with a complaint of stomach ache, headache, chest pain or aching feet; does the doctor ask you for details in English? Does he not pose queries in your own language? When you respond in your mother tongue, does the doctor comprehend or not?” he asked.
