Chennai. Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) on Tuesday blamed a “technical glitch” for the problem in changing the language page on its website. The public sector insurance company gave this clarification to Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M.K. This comes after Stalin and other leaders strongly criticized LIC for allegedly trying to impose Hindi.
National Insurance Company said that its “corporate website was not able to change the language page due to some technical problem.” LIC India said in a post issued on its social media platform ‘X’, “The problem has been resolved and the website is available in English/Hindi language.” We are extremely sorry for the inconvenience – Team LIC.”
Earlier in the day, the insurance major had faced criticism for launching its home page only in Hindi. This made it difficult for customers to use the website due to not knowing that language. Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M.K. Stalin expressed strong objection to the use of Hindi language on LIC’s website. He said that the website has been made a propaganda tool to impose Hindi.
While sharing a ‘screenshot’ of LIC’s Hindi webpage on the social media platform ‘X’, the Chief Minister wrote, “LIC’s website has become a means of propaganda to impose Hindi. “Even the option to select English is displayed in Hindi!” He claimed that this is nothing but forcibly imposing culture and language and suppressing the diversity of India.
Stalin posted with the hashtag ‘Stop imposing Hindi’, “LIC was established to help all Indians. How dare it betray the majority of its subscribers? We demand immediate withdrawal of this linguistic atrocities.” Dr S Ramadoss, founder of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ally Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK), termed the move as a ‘blatant imposition’ of Hindi on other language-speaking people. He said that this effort of LIC is highly condemnable as it is an attempt to ‘impose’ a language among non-Hindi speaking people.
Dr. Ramdas said in a post on ‘X’, “Suddenly giving priority to Hindi only is not acceptable, because LIC’s customers are people of different languages in India.” He reminded that the Center and other institutions working under it belong to all sections of the society and not just to the Hindi speaking population. “Therefore, the home page of Life Insurance Corporation of India should be immediately changed to English and a Tamil version website should be started,” the PMK founder said. All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) general secretary E.K. Palaniswami criticized the move to make LIC’s website completely in Hindi and said that the revised website is currently unusable for those who do not know that language.
Leader of Opposition in Tamil Nadu Assembly Palaniswami posted on ‘X’, “The option to change the language on the website is also in Hindi and it is not possible to find it.” It is condemnable that the central government is going to any extent to impose Hindi.” Tamil Nadu Congress Committee President K. Selvaperunthagai strongly criticized the Center on this issue and asked it to immediately stop all activities of imposing Hindi language on non-Hindi speaking states.