An executive at Zomato has kicked up a storm after her remarks that Hindi is the national language of India. A conversation between a customer and service executive has been going viral on Twitter since Sunday after one Vikas from Tamil Nadu ordered food from the popular food delivery app, which is one of the two main players of this market in the country.

There was an issue with the order regarding which Vikas called up customer care, following which the executive said that she was having problems assisting him due to the language barrier. The executive even went as far as to tell him that Hindi is the so-called ‘national language’ of the country and it is very normal that everyone ‘should’ know it.

Vikas, the customer, shared the screenshot of this chat to social media and soon enough there was a big furore and criticisms of Zomato. Following this, the company was forced to issue an apology.

This is not the first time that people have advocated for or opposed the designation of Hindi as a ‘national language’. A hospital in Delhi issued a notice to its nurses hailing from Kerala that they should stop speaking in Malayalam since most of the staff and patients did not understand it, and to use Hindi or English instead. This too, was opposed and the hospital had to withdraw that notification as well.