Dravidianists turned a simple case of ignorance into an opportunity to harass Zomato’s customer care agents. In an attempt to show their strength against “Vadakkans” aka North Indians, Dravidianists sent messages to the customer care agents harassing them about the issue and revealing their names.

A Twitter user named Vikash had posted a tweet on October 18 saying that the customer care agent of Zomato said that his money can’t be refunded because he didn’t know Hindi. He went on to tag Kanimozhi, Udhayanidhi Stalin, Twitter MP Dr.Senthil Kumar, the office of CM along with the twitter ids of journalists and influential Dravidianists.

Within an hour the tweet went viral and Dravidianists started trending #RejectZomato. They also started harassing other customer care agents sending them messages asking “Is Hindi our national language?” and mocking them. They put out screenshots of these conversations and exposed the names of the agents as well.

Curiously Vikash, who had tweeted about his ‘bad experience’ with Zomato initially, joined Twitter in May. Yet he had no interaction on the platform to the extent that he didn’t even like any post. However he tagged all the Dravidianist handles righyaway to make his tweet go viral.

Claims

• The agent tagged Vikash a liar
• Agent said that the amount can’t be refunded as Vikash didn’t know Hindi.
• Agent taught him lessons that “being an Indian he should know Hindi”

Facts

• Nowhere in the screenshots of the conversation tweeted by Vikash the agent calls him a liar
• The agent had tried communicating with the restaurant 5 times before saying that he cannot do anything from his end to compensate Vikash’s loss. Nowhere is it mentioned that amount cannot be refunded because “Vikash doesn’t know Hindi”
• The agent said “everybody should know Hindi little bit” in common. Not that Vikash should learn Hindi being an Indian. The agent had trouble communicating with the restaurant, not Vikash

However these facts were ignored and media had a field day misreporting and slandering the poor agent. OneIndia twisted the agent’s words and reported that he/she said “Hindi is national language, everyone should know it”. The affected person Vikash, whose original issue was that he couldn’t get a refund, later wanted a “clarification statement regarding the claim on Hindi as the national language” from Zomato.

At first Zomato announced that they will terminate the agent. However later the founder, Deepinder Goyal, tweeted that the agent made an ignorant mistake and everyone need to be tolerant and chill about it. He also announced that he is reinstating the agent. 

As the gloating of Dravidianists about harassing the agents through Zomato chat invited negative criticism, they started to target Deepinder about paying his employees properly. Vikash who had earlier demanded only that Zomato should clarify that Hindi is not a national language, later tweeted that he didn’t want revenge and so the agent must be reinstated.

Some prominent handles even issued threats to him saying “you’ve not seen the worst yet”. Kanimozhi tweeted “No one has to teach us Tamils on who is an Indian” with a Tamil hashtag meaning ‘Go away, we don’t know Hindi’.

Many Dravidianist handles posted the screenshot of their conversations with Zomato customer care agents harassing them. One even suggested that everyone should order on Zomato and cancel it in teh last minute not realising that it will infact affect the Tamil youngsters.

The customer care agent was by no means arrogant about knowing Hindi albeit being ignorant that it is not a ‘national language’. The conversation shows that the agent was clearly very polite and frustrated as the restaurant couldn’t properly communicate. The restaurant could have connected someone who could speak atleast a passable form of English if not Hindi. After all Dravidianists feel that English is enough to communicate with non-Tamils. But Zomato should also keeps its employee force diverse to cater to the needs of all sections of the society.

That apart, the affected person in question here wasn’t in such a position as he easily conversed with the agent in English. He could have been a little understanding and helped the agent get through this. Instead he decided to make it an issue even though the agent didn’t ask ‘him’ to learn Hindi. At the end of the day poor customer care agents who couldn’t even have known about the issue till it was blown had to face harassment at the hands of Dravidianists who preach tolerance to the world