The father of a second-grade student in Dehradun recently filed a complaint with the district magistrate regarding the use of "abbu" and "ammi" as father and mother in his son's English textbook. The boy's father, Manish Mittal, claimed that his seven-year-old son had started using these words to address him and his mother after learning them from the textbook.

He requested that the words be replaced with English equivalents as he felt that "abbu" and "ammi" were not a part of Indian culture.

District Magistrate Sonika confirmed that she had received the complaint and referred the matter to the chief education officer. The words "abbu" and "ammi" appear in a caricature in the book, where the main character Amir addresses his parents using these words. The book, published by a Hyderabad-based publisher, has been approved by the ICSE board for several years and has thousands of copies in circulation.