For a state that has kept the language fire burning furiously it was no surprise that both the ruling and opposition parties of Tamil Nadu joined hands yet again to shoot down the three-language formula proposed by the National Educational Policy (NEP). They quickly dubbed the policy as yet another attempt to impose Hindi or Sanskrit on unsuspecting Tamils and swore by the two-language formula implemented since 1967.
Only this time contrarian voices against the two-language formula are ringing out loud and clear, raising questions if the concept has outlived its political utility. For the first time the chief minister’s stand that the two-language formula would persist has been openly questioned by a well-known educationist. “The two-language formula deprived poor and rural students of government schools of learning an additional language while the rich and urban students of CBSE, Central and private schools have the freedom to study any language they wish,” said E. Balagurusamy, former vice chancellor of Anna University.
Balagurusamy went on to trash the hypocrisy of leaders opposing the three-language formula by pointing out that their children and grand children had studied or were studying Hindi happily. And that many these leaders or their kin were running CBSE schools where Hindi was compulsory. He was apparently referring to a CBSE school in Chennai being run by M.K. Stalin’s daughter Senthamarai and similar schools run by senior politicians elsewhere in the state. And he went on to sell Hindi as the language that would facilitate mobility across states, employment trade and help join central services.
His wasn’t the lone voice as Solomon Pappaiah, an iconic scholar with a huge following among Tamils across the globe too felt that denying Hindi to the Tamils was unjustified any longer. The 84-year-old former Tamil professor who has moderated over 12,000 Tamil debates, many of them televised, opined that agitation against Hindi had been stretched for too long and beyond its use by date. “The choice should be left to the students. Just as we encourage students here to learn English they should be allowed to learn Hindi if they wish. You need English to conquer the world and Hindi to conquer India,” he said.
Speaking to Outlook Pappaiah insisted that TN MPs must learn Hindi which would help them command greater respect among the officialdom and get things done. “When they become ministers they cannot be fooled by officials by exploiting their lack of Hindi. Fighting Hindi imposition is one thing but giving the freedom of choice to students—from government to private schools—is another thing.”
Another educationist, a former parliamentarian, blames the continued insincerity of successive Central governments in implementing the three language formula in schools in North India for the persistent misgiving among rulers in Tamil Nadu. “Even if by the previous three-language policy, if they had actually taught South Indian languages in schools in the North, there would not have been such opposition here,” observed G.Viswanathan, chancellor of VIT University who was a Lok Sabha MP for a decade.
A major collateral damage of the language battle in Tamil Nadu has been the concept of Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas (JNV), a visionary residential school proposed by Rajiv Gandhi in every district of the country. While the centrally-funded schools aimed at giving top class education almost free of cost to poor rural children has been established in each district of all the states, only Tamil Nadu opposed them because Hindi is being taught there.
Though the Centre assured the Madras high court that Tamil would be taught as a compulsory subject from class six to ten and as an additional subject from class ten to twelve, the state refused a no-objection certificate to establish JNVs in Tamil Nadu. “Even in other JNVs the medium of instruction from class six to eight has always been the regional language, which is also the first language in classes nine and ten,” pointed out P. Ramachandran, principal of JNV Puducherry.
Congress leader Peter Alphonse, a former MP, wants the TN government to open doors to JNVs as the biggest beneficiaries would be rural students belonging to SCs and OBCs. “Even West Bengal shed its opposition and opened these schools after they realised that regional language was getting the due importance. We cannot keep denying such an opportunity to our children when we allow Central schools, where Hindi is taught. In fact every MP wants one Central school in his constituency but the state is unjustly keeping out JNVs using the Hindi bogey,” he complained.
By G.C. Shekhar in Chennai
