Tamil Nadu rejects 3-language formula proposed in New Education Policy 2020

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami on Monday rejected the three-language policy proposed by the Union government in the National Education Policy (NEP) and said the state will not deviate from its two-language policy, being followed for decades.

Calling the Centre’s plan “painful and saddening”, Palaniswami said Prime Minister Narendra Modi should reconsider the three-language formula and allow states to implement their own policies on the subject.

Key Highlights

• The NEP states: “The three languages learned by children will be the choices of States, regions, and of the students, so long as at least two of the three languages are native to India.”
  
  
• On why the state cannot agree with the three-language formula, Palaniswami recalled political history of Tamil Nadu and pointed out that then chef minister C N Annadurai had declared the two-language policy in January 1968, followed by an anti-Hindi agitation against the imposition of Hindi.
  
  
• Recalling that M G Ramachandran – known as MGR, who founded AIADMK – and his successor as the AIADMK chief and former chief minister, late J Jayalalithaa, had safeguarded the state’s two-language policy, Palaniswami recalled a statement from Jayalalithaa asserting that Hindi cannot be imposed on a population that doesn’t use that language.
  
  
• He said when the NEP had come for discussions, Tamil Nadu had opposed the idea, and he had written to Modi about this. He said the entire state and almost all political parties in the state are supporting the two-language policy.
  
  
• Anti-Hindi agitation had given birth to many top politicians in the 1960s and Dravidian parties continue to fight any attempt by the Centre to impose Hindi as a mandatory subject in the state’s school curriculum.
  
  
• Since 2014, Tamil Nadu has seen public protests on several occasions against the BJP-led Union government’s alleged attempts to impose Hindi and Sanskrit on Tamil people. Stalin at one point had accused Prime Minister Modi of trying to relegate people who don’t speak Hindi to second-class citizens in their own country.

SOURCE: The New Indian Express

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