Assam’s golden girl Hima Das on Thursday made the entire nation proud by becoming the 1st ever Indian to win a Gold in 400m race in the World U-20 Championships. People from all fields took to social media to congratulate her and express gratitude for the pride that the 18-year-old brought to the nation.
Amidst these, the Athletic Federation of India (AFI)’s Twitter handle made a remark on her “not so fluent English” which has landed them at the receiving end of flak on the internet.
The tweet made by the Athletics Federation of India read, “#HimaDas speking to media after her SF win at #iaaftampere20118 @iaaforg Not so fluent in English but she gave her best there too. So proud of you #HimaDas Keep rocking and yeah, try your best in final!”
People from the state and outside raised the question on the tweet made by the AFI and asked if was necessary to highlight about her English proficiency.
Expressing his dissatisfaction on the tweet, popular singer of Assam Zubeen Garg in a post of Facebook mentioned, “I shud say AFI shud check their spelling (speking) before putting about Hima’s diction. We north east people speak more english than other parts of India. We have more rock culture than others. We wore jeans in 50’s. Bless her dnt try to diminish. We r water. Whn we rise we break all walls.
The AFI soon issued an apology on Twitter, saying they were misunderstood. The tweet was written in Hindi, and loosely translated to this: