If you are on the Indian side of social media, you may have probably seen instances of people getting picked on for their English pronunciation, grammar, or even spelling. This, despite English not being the first language of the majority of the population. But now, it is happening to the newly appointed Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya. Following his appointment, people started digging up the BJP MP’s old tweets and started taunting him for his grammar in some of them.
Mansukh Mandaviya is our Health of Minister pic.twitter.com/mpYMEgI0DQ— Joy (@Joydas) July 7, 2021
Big Umar Akmal vibes from the new minister pic.twitter.com/vE5PajfDcJ— Ganesh Ranganathan (@ganeshran) July 7, 2021
Amidst the trolling, police officer Arun Bothra tweeted how his learning English quite late in his life did not interfere with his professional success and slammed people for trolling someone’s English.
He said, “Coming from a govt school in a small town, I learnt English pretty late. Have done well in my professional and personal life so far. Better than many wokes who are busy judging people on their English language skills."
Coming from a govt school in a small town, I learnt English pretty late. Have done well in my professional and personal life so far. Better than many wokes who are busy judging people on their English language skills.— Arun Bothra 🇮🇳 (@arunbothra) July 8, 2021
Soon, people started discussing on the micro-blogging platform how they succeeded in life despite coming from non-English-medium schools. “Criticise him for his work, don’t mock him for his English," was the common sentiment among many.
I can relate to this, Sir ji. Growing up in rural Bengal, non-English schooling and college, I learned basic English communication using a Reader’s Digest Guide to Spoken English & self-conversing in mirror. At 23, I graduated from a US College. Happy with the journey so far.
— Sangeet Kothari (@SangeetKothari) July 8, 2021
Likewise my schooling was in vernacular. It was only the informal learning and listening and rubbing shoulders with my baba’s theatre walas and literary folks and later the Indian Army that sharpened my English. Not done bad either😊— Medha Oka🇮🇳 (@medhaoka) July 8, 2021
I had to meet IAS bureaucrats after doing https://t.co/q0aD6QbhpI (IITD) in connection with a enterprenurial project. English speaking was quite deficient, Zero compared to the bureaucrats, I decide to use high flown Hindi words to make them acknowledge me .— Sushil Kumar (@SushilGsl) July 8, 2021
My school was a Punjabi medium govt school, college a Punjabi medium govt college, yet cleared many competitions where only 2 or 3 candidates passed out of 100s or 1000 candidates— Anju Juneja🇮🇳 (@junejamkanju) July 8, 2021
My father failed in English in 10th as he ws from a Telugu medium school. He’s a btech, MTech from iit Kharagpur, doctorate in engineering from imperial college of science and technology, London 😊— Rajeshwari 🇮🇳 (@wordsandviews) July 8, 2021
Such a response from people only proves that good English speaking skills aren’t a prerequisite to succeed in life.
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