A video reel posted on the Facebook timeline of the Indian Railway Railfans Association has piqued the interest of netizens in general and railfans in particular. The reel shared by Natarajan Chandra Sekaran shows a train rolling into Kodaikanal Road, but the name board at the end of the platform has the name of the station written only in Hindi and Tamil.
The reel was originally posted on an account named NKCS Rail Moments, which has over 38,000 followers. And, the responses to the reel from Facebook users reflect the touchy times we live in.
“Yes, why give importance to a foreign language?” asked Facebook user Aayush Parashar. To which Aniket Biddu Ganguly responded, “English is not a foreign language anymore. This is the 21st century we are living in.”
Going beyond the linguistic muscle flexing, the board is in breach of regulations. A Press Information Bureau brief dated May 15, 2023, says that Union Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw was making efforts to standardise signages at railway stations and had released a booklet to guide this process.
At the ceremony to release the booklet, Vaishnaw said, “It was felt to issue standard guidelines on signages at stations that will be consistent and adequate. Today, I am delighted to release the booklet on Standard Signages at Stations on Indian Railways. Indian Railways will adopt modern, standard signages which are divyang friendly.”
Page 50 of the booklet says that the primary station name board should be provided at both ends of each platform at right angles to the track, and the board should have the station name in the local language, Hindi and English. All languages should be in the same font size (300mm).
A cursory search online by THE WEEK throws up a more innocent possibility, too. An old photograph of the station name board shows the board having two parts. A wider plank with Hindi and Tamil lettering, and a narrow plank with English lettering tacked under it. Perhaps, the narrow plank fell off and was never replaced.
The joke being shared on WhatsApp groups is that at the height of the anti-Hindi agitation in Tamil Nadu, protestors were known to black out Hindi lettering on railway station boards. But here it is English that has fallen off the board.
