Coimbatore Medical College Hospital Drops Hindi from Medicine Covers in Language Policy Row
Coimbatore Medical College Hospital removed Hindi from its medicine dispensing covers on 6 October, reverting to Tamil and English only after the trilingual packaging triggered criticism from a DMK politician and drew attention to Tamil Nadu's two-language policy. The controversy spread to include at least one other state-run hospital in Karur, where similar trilingual covers had been in use. Both facilities moved to issue corrected packaging within hours of the story becoming public.
🗳️ Hospital withdraws trilingual medicine covers after two-language policy criticism
The Coimbatore Medical College Hospital instructed its pharmacists to withdraw medicine dispensing covers carrying dosage information in Tamil, English, and Hindi, replacing them with covers printed in Tamil and English only. The move came on Tuesday, 6 October, after the existing trilingual covers attracted public criticism on social media. Tamil Nadu has maintained a two-language policy for decades, under which official communications at the state level are restricted to Tamil and English; the inclusion of Hindi on medical packaging at a government hospital was seen by critics as a lapse in administrative compliance. The News Minute reported that photographs of the covers, showing handwritten dosage markings alongside trilingual printed text, circulated widely before hospital administrators issued the corrective instruction to pharmacy staff. The hospital framed the reversal as a prompt administrative correction. The episode is a reminder that Tamil Nadu's language policy reaches into the operational details of public institutions, not only into education and legislation. For patients receiving medicines at CMCH, the practical impact of the change is minimal, but the symbolic weight of the correction was significant in the context of Tamil Nadu's long-running resistance to any normalisation of Hindi in state-administered settings. [5]
🗳️ Karur hospitals also implicated as language row prompts calls for wider compliance audit
The medicine-cover controversy at Coimbatore Medical College Hospital was accompanied by a parallel row at a government hospital in Karur, suggesting that trilingual packaging had been adopted more broadly across state medical facilities. The New Indian Express reported that DMK politician TRB Rajaa drew attention to the Hindi text on social media, criticising its inclusion as a violation of Tamil Nadu's two-language policy. His intervention quickly generated political attention and prompted both hospitals to act. Tamil Nadu's two-language formula has been a cornerstone of the state's identity politics since the language agitations of the 1960s, and successive state governments have been careful to defend it against central pressure to elevate Hindi in government functions. The fact that medicine covers printed with Hindi reached public hospitals without internal challenge raised questions about oversight mechanisms within the state health administration. Critics argued that procurement and printing standards should explicitly bar trilingual formats, so that future compliance does not depend on social media scrutiny. The episode, while resolved quickly, highlighted the ongoing need for systematic enforcement of the policy at institutional level, particularly in public-facing healthcare settings where every piece of printed material carries the implicit authority of the state. [6]
Sources: [5] The News Minute · [6] The New Indian Express