Yet another controversy erupted on Friday, after the NGO All India Women’s Conference (AIWC) failed to recognize Nepali as an official Indian language and barred a participant from performing a Nepali song in a program celebrating ‘Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav’ to mark 75th anniversary of India’s independence.
The Gorkha community and local elected representatives from Darjeeling are demanding an unconditional apology from the NGO and removal of officials who made the claim. They have also threatened legal action.
“It is shocking that an esteemed organisation like the AIWC has members who seem to be absolutely ignorant that Nepali/Gorkha is spoken by the 10.5 million Indian Gorkhas, duly recognised as an Indian language under the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution of India,” Ramesh Bastola, the general secretary of the Bharatiya Gorkha Yuva Parisangh, said.
AIWC executive member Chandra Prabha Pandey had rejected contributions sent by artistes from West Bengal's Kalimbong district for an “Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav” event while stating that the performances cannot be showcased in “non-Indian languages”, according to the Bharatiya Gorkha Yuva Parisangh.
When artists from Kalimpong in West Bengal had sent in their contributions, they were allegedly rudely told by Pandey “we cannot showcase performances in non-Indian languages”, the Bharatiya Gorkha Parisangh (BGP) alleged.
She further insisted that the artistes cannot send the National Anthem sung in Nepali as it is “not a language from India”, the group said.
The AIWC said its management has been apprised of the matter and that it condemns the remark by its member.
“We strongly oppose and condemn the ignorance shown by the member. On behalf of all the members of AIWC, we extend unconditional apology to our dear Gorkha brothers,” said the statement issued by AIWC president Sheela Karkde.
Nepali is a widely used language in the northeastern part of the country. The Eighth Schedule to the Constitution of India contains a list of 22 scheduled languages. Nepali happens to be one of them.
It appears that AIWC was unaware of this, even though it is quite literally printed on every Indian banknote.
