Page 24 - EducationWorld May 2022

Education News

THEY SAID IT

“Our states have been formed on linguistic
basis. So, the concerned state language or
mother tongue is supreme. Everyone should
understand and respect that.”
Basavaraj Bommai, Karnataka chief minister on
the controversy about making Hindi the national
language (April 23, Times of India)

“ e party line across the secular universe, is,
you can’t afford to be seen close to the Mus-
lims or a Muslim cause. It’s suicidal in today’s
electoral politics. Hypocrisy and cowardice
Ponmudi (left) & chief minister Stalin: Hindi imposition opposition
in the name of discretion is the better part of
Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) government has declared secular valour.”
war against the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 ap- Shekhar Gupta, editor The Print, on rising Islamophobia
proved by the BJP/NDA government at the Centre. in India (Business Standard, April 23)
The DMK government finds NEP 2020’s three-language
formula, common entrance test for undergraduate courses, “And even more than Jawaharlal Nehru,
and the introduction of a four-year degree programme with Narendra Modi seeks to be “an overwhelming
options of multiple entry and exits, objectionable. On April force by himself”, his desire to build a person-
5, the state government constituted a 13-member commit- ality cult around himself aided by the sort of
tee chaired by D. Murugesan, a former chief justice of the propaganda machine not remotely conceiv-
Delhi high court to formulate a State Education Policy able in the 1950s.”
(SEP) exclusively for Tamil Nadu (pop.68 million). Historian Ramachandra Guha on the dangers of one-
“The state government will come out with a state ed- party dominance (April 24, Scroll.in)
ucation policy within a year. Though education is on the
concurrent list (of the Constitution), in practice it is being “ ere is a kind of rush to send children to
treated as if it belongs to the Central list. NEP 2020 was schools. Parents want to start as soon as their
prepared without consulting state governments,” said K. children are two years old. is may not be
Ponmudi, the state’s higher education minister in a state-
ment issued on April 15. conducive to their psychological health. Don’t
et the main reason for Tamil Nadu’s rejection of NEP push the child too much. It may impact his
Y2020 is an old issue: the BJP government at the Cen- ability to grasp and read.”
tre has revived a dormant campaign to impose “Hindi lan- Supreme Court of India, hearing an appeal by parents
guage imperialism” on TN and non-Hindi speaking states challenging the minimum age condition of six years
of peninsular India. Opposition to Hindi as India’s national for admission into class I of Kendriya Vidyalayas (April
language by Tamil Nadu’s entire political class is not new. It 26, Hindustan Times)
dates back to the 1930s when the founder of the Dravidian “For Twitter to deserve public trust, it must be
movement Periyar E.V. Ramasamy (1879-1973) opposed
this proposition mooted by the pre-independence Congress politically neutral, which effectively means
party and leaders of India’s freedom movement. upsetting the far right and the far left equally.”
Although it also boasted stalwarts such as C.R. Rajago- Elon Musk, billionaire entrepreneur, after purchasing
palachari and K. Kamaraj, India’s freedom movement was Twitter for $44 billion (April 28, Twitter)
dominated by Congress party leaders from the subconti-
nent’s northern states, and Uttar Pradesh — India’s most “Due to proliferation of breadth requirements,
populous Hindi speaking state — in particular. Moreover, Four Year Undergraduate Programme (FYUP)
the leadership of the Congress party tended to be over- students will study an extra year and yet
whelmingly from the upper castes, a phenomenon which emerge with much less knowledge than pre-
was viewed with suspicion by the iconoclastic Periyar Ra- ceding batches.”
masamy. This revered leader of Tamil Nadu’s Dravidian Amber Habib, maths professor at Shiv Nadar
assertion movement was bitterly opposed to domination University, on UGC’s draft FYUP curriculum (Times of
and oppression of the lower castes by peninsular India’s India, May 5)

24 EDUCATIONWORLD MAY 2022