Today (20th March 2012) I had to visit a police station in Noida (U.P.). While I have nothing against the police personnel whom I had to interact with, what I found shockingly surprising was how every official work in a Noida police station is conducted in Hindi, with absolutely no option for English (even if a work entails a visitor who is not conversant in Hindi).
Despite being not very fluent in Hindi, I was forced to communicate with the officers in that language, as I was flatly told that I was not permitted to speak in English as "Noida comes in UP". Despite telling the officers that I cannot read Hindi, I was made to read a document written in that language, which I had to read with the help of an officer. Finally I had to write and submit a statement, and the officers told me that they could not permit me to write it in English, as they would then need somebody to translate it into Hindi (are those police personnel even unable to read English?) Ultimately I again had to take the help of a policeman who prepared my statement on the basis of what I said.
Do the Noida police people have any idea how terribly inconvenient the situation is for people with no or little command of Hindi? Even if it is OK to have verbal communication in Hindi, isn't it too much to expect a person from a non-Hindi speaking region to be able to read a document in Hindi, and then prepare his own statement in that language as well?
I just have one dream. One UP police officer needs to visit a Calcutta police station for some reason, and he is forced to read and write documents there in Bengali, while being told that neither English nor Hindi is permitted, as "Calcutta comes in West Bengal".
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2 comments:
It's sad. Cops don't talk in any language apart from Kannada in Karnataka. At any police station in Kerala, they speak only Malayalam though some of them know English. UP is worse for some reasons though.
Actually what you experienced is true for other parts of India as well.
Policemen in Karnataka do not speak anything other than Kannada. I once had the misfortune of going to a police station.They spoke to me only in Kannada even though I told them that i do not understand the language. In fact even before they could hear me out they gave me a lecture on how we north indians have ruined the peace in Bangalore and how he has to work more now a days because of northies like me.
This is a sorry state of affairs but i guess it is true of any state in India.
-Opal Joy
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