New Delhi: Eight women MLAs from Kerala on Tuesday (September 8) walked out of a National Commission for Women (NCW) workshop in Faridabad, Haryana protesting the use of Hindi and content which they alleged were “fit for schoolchildren”.“The problem is that the syllabus they have put forward is not for the legislators. It included, for example, what self-help groups are, and how we can give a petition to the police station. We have come up from the ground level of politics, and all MLAs know all this. Also, they were totally using the Hindi language. We also know Hindi…. Then the problem is that all south Indian and northeastern legislators cannot understand the language well. So, we made this petition to the leadership of the NCW that diversity must be addressed,” Kerala deputy speaker Shanimol Osman told The Telegraph. As per the report, when Kerala’s women and child development minister, Bindu Krishna, raised the issue at the workshop titled She Is a Changemaker — Capacity Building Programme for Women Legislators, unidentified persons started sloganeering. All the eight MLAs from the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) left the two-day event which concluded on Tuesday.Also read: Is Hindi India’s National Language? Bengal Governor Amplifies Oft-Repeated Falsehood“We did not plan this. We just walked out as they clearly did not want to have any discussion,” Osman said, adding around 50 other participants supported them.Speaking to reporters Krishna said while they raised the issue of the use of Hindi and their inability to understand these sessions and if the NCW was taking any stand with respect to women’s reservation in assemblies and parliament, a woman raised the slogan ‘Bharat Mata Ki Jai’.“Of course, ‘Bharat Mata Ki Jai’ was a slogan raised by freedom fighters and Congress leaders of that era, and we love and respect it. We are debating and asking about the women’s reservation Bill, and then they try to raise this like an attempt to heckle. So, after a moment, we started raising slogans about upholding the constitution and respecting India’s diversity. This is the NCW; it is not a proxy for the BJP,” she added.In September 2019, several political leaders particularly from South India protested after Union home minister Amit Shah said that the Hindi language could possibly become the unifying factor in India.“India is a country of different languages and every language has its own importance but it is very important to have a language which should become the identity of India in the world. If one language can unite the country today, it is the widely-spoken Hindi language,” Shah had written on X on the occasion of Hindi Diwas. After facing backlash, Shah backtracked saying he never advocated giving preference to Hindi over other languages.The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 requires students to learn three languages including at least two native Indian languages. Subsequent governments in Tamil Nadu have rejected the three language formula calling it a “covert mechanism to expand Hindi into non-Hindi speaking regions”.Notably, the constitution of India does not specify any language as the national language of the country.