Page 20 - EW December 2025

Education News

Following the arrest of the four line news magazine The
accused medical practitioners for Print, Dr. Ashutosh
terrorist activities including the Varshney, professor of
deadly November 10 blast, almost all international studies at
Central and state regulators — in- the high-ranked Brown
cluding the UGC, National Medical University, USA, rebuts
Commission (NMC), NAAC, Associa- Modi’s contention that
tion of Indian Universities (AIU), knowledge of English
National Commission for Minority compels adoption of a
Educational Institutions (NCMEI), “slave mentality”.
and the Haryana Education Depart- “Knowledge of English
ment — have gone into overdrive provided plural possibili-
to ascertain how despite being a ties. For instance, three
convict, Siddiqui was permitted to of the biggest influences
register his engineering college and PM in Ayodhya: middle class dismay on Mahatma Gandhi’s
expand its operations to provide idea of civil disobedience
highly prized medical education and treats foreign/Western ideas and lan- came from English texts: Henry David
receive university status.. guages as superior. Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience (1848),
At bottom, the arrest of the four Although Modi’s revivalist speech John Ruskin’s Unto This Last (1860)
— more are likely to be arrested — enthused his audience and made and Leo Tolstoy’s The Kingdom of
Al-Falah University medical practi- headlines countrywide, it has dis- God is Within You (1894),” he writes,
tioners has exposed deep corruption mayed the country’s large and grow- describing Gandhi’s views on English
and misgovernance of the higher ing middle class whose number is as “cosmopolitan rootedness,” worthy
education system. All the alphabet estimated at 430 million. Within this of emulation.
soup of regulatory commissions and class, an estimated 100 million is com- vidently while making these re-
organisations are evidently deeply fortable and fluent in English/Inglish Emarks about the history of English
compromised. And tragically, rather while the remainder aspires to become in India, the Prime Minister has for-
than confer autonomy and account- fluent in this language of national gotten that the status of English and
ability upon higher education institu- communication and international the initiative to install Hindi as the
tions, NEP 2020 has multiplied the trade and commerce. But even within national language in the 1960s had
number of regulatory agencies. the middle class, Modi’s anti-English ignited fierce resistance in the states
Autar Nehru (Delhi) rhetoric has support. of peninsular India. Almost all the
According to M. Jagadesh Ku- southern states opposed this initia-
Endless debate mar, former professor of engineering tive even though it had constitutional
legitimacy. Violent anti-Hindi riots
at IIT-Delhi, former Vice Chancellor
of the top-ranked Jawaharlal Nehru broke out in the southern states and
ddressing a massive public rally University and former chairman of there was a possibility of Tamil Nadu
on November 25 in the tem- the apex level University Grants Com- seceding from the Indian Union.
Aple town of Ayodhya, where mission, scientific research has con- Within the educated middle class
a spanking new Ram Janmabhoomi sistently demonstrated that children there is general agreement that the
temple complex spread over 70 acres think and absorb knowledge best in Prime Minister’s populist remarks
was constructed in record time on the their native language. “When schools rubbishing English were shorn of nu-
ruins of the Babri Masjid (estb.1528) use a foreign language, the worlds of ance and out of date. The plain truth is
vandalised by Hindu extremists in home and classroom drift apart. Ma- that English is necessary for national
1992, Prime Minister Narendra hatma Gandhi warned that English unity as the common language of a
Modi called upon the citizenry to education made Indians ‘foreigners country with over 22 major languages.
shed their “colonial mentality” and in their own land’. There is a strong Moreover with English having estab-
learn in their mother tongues. He need to remove this colonial mindset lished itself as the major language of
contended that almost eight decades and regain pride in one’s roots,” says international business and technol-
after independence from exploitative Jagadesh Kumar. ogy, it would be foolish to throw away
British rule of almost two centuries, However, heavyweight public in- our historical familiarity with this lan-
India has been slow to shed the belief tellectuals who value the country’s guage. It’s also important to note that
“that everything foreign is superior, English language heritage built up Hindi language chauvinists have done
while our own legacy is inferior”, and over a century, are pushing back. In little to modernise the language and
discard “the mentality of slavery” that a brilliantly argued riposte in the on- translate complex STEM textbooks

20 EDUCATIONWORLD DECEMBER 2025