Zomato is a bit of a social media star – there is always some or other reason it stays in the news. #BoycottZomato has trended online for many reasons, ranging from the unnecessary to the absurd. This time around, there are people trending Reject Zomato – because a customer service executive schooled a customer by telling him that he should know Hindi. Here’s what happened:
A Zomato customer and Twitter user called Vikash seemed to be having some issues with his food delivery. In the screenshots of the chat with the customer care person, there seems to be some misunderstanding due to the language barrier. The customer care person seems to have said, “for your kind information, Hindi is the national language… everyone should know Hindi a little bit”.
Founder of Zomato, Deepinder Goyal tried to soothe ruffled feathers with this tweet. While he admitted that someone in customer care made an ‘ignorant mistake’, he also said that ‘level of tolerance and chill in our country needs to be way higher than it is nowadays’. In another tweet, he also said that customer care people are often young people who are “not experts on languages and regional sentiments.” He added, “Nor am I, btw.”
The official handle of Zomato tweeted this where they said they had dismissed the customer service agent. However later Goyal’s tweet confirmed that the person had been reinstated so they can “learn and do better going forward”.
Some are of the view that since Hindi is the most widely spoken language in India, people should prefer using Hindi to English, which they see as a foreign language.
However a lot of people, particularly Tamil speakers do not see Hindi as a natural link language. They feel that when people expect Tamil-speakers to know Hindi, this is the same as expecting someone from UP to know Tamil.
There has been a strong sentiment in the south of the country; particularly in Tamil Nadu, where the Hindi push is seen as an unwelcome imposition.
Soon this hashtag was trending, a call to reject Zomato. Such extreme reactions to any missteps and/or imagined insults are becoming tediously common in recent times.
Someone has a disagreement with a person or a problem with a brand /company and suddenly everyone is offended and asking for boycotts and app uninstallations.
It is well settled that while Hindi is the mother tongue of the largest number of Indians (an estimated 40% of Indians speak Hindi and its various dialects) it is not our national language. Expecting a Tamizh person to speak in Hindi is as unreasonable as expecting a person in Delhi to know Malayalam feel people. I tend to agree.
While Hindi and English are languages used for official communication in the country, Indian states are free to adopt any of 22 official languages as per the 8th schedule of the constitution. If someone feels that it should be Hindi and not English that ought to be the link language within India, they are entitled to their view. Equally, if someone in Tamil Nadu feels annoyed at the expectation of a Hindi speaker that ‘everyone should know Hindi’ they are entitled to their view as well.
But can we just have a conversation about all of this? Can we be civilized towards others and be willing to listen to a different point of view rather than calling to #Reject_Zomato for the boycott of some other brand or person at the drop of a hat?
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