North-South divide over Hindi forces Govt to roll back policy

North-South divide over Hindi forces Govt to roll back policy

PUNE: While the recently released draft of National Education Policy (NEP) has received flak over its attempt to bring back the three language policy that makes Hindi mandatory at school level across the country, several linguists have spoken up about domination of Hindi over the other Indian languages. 

Immediately after the NEP draft was opened to public scrutiny, senior Congress leader and Thiruvananthapuram MP Shashi Tharoor criticised the three language formula saying that while the formula was not bad, it is unfortunate that South Indians are made to learn Hindi as a second language. “But nobody in North is learning Malayalam or Tamil,” he said.

SOUTH INDIA’S ISSUE
“While inculcating the three language formula, the north Indians cleverly got away with teaching English, Hindi and Sanskrit as the compulsory languages but kept on insisting that South Indian schools must teach Hindi,” said Pune-based Hindi teacher Shrikant Mishra.

“This has been one of the aggravating factors. While the Hindi speakers got employment opportunities in South India, the same was not reciprocated,” added Mishra.

Speaking to Sakal Times, linguist Ganesh Devy said, “Hindi aspires to be the national language of India. However, we fail to realise that the Schedule VIII of the Constitution of India identifies around 22 languages and sees them as equal. Then why do we always try to portray Hindi as superior to the rest?”

He further said, “If we make Tamil compulsory at the schools in Lucknow or Patna, would that be accepted? No. So how can we expect the South Indian states to accept Hindi as a second language in schools?”

MULTILINGUAL STATUS
According to Devy, South Indians are weak in Hindi because the origin of the Dravidian languages (South Indian languages) is different than that of the Indo-Aryan languages like Hindi. “India is a multilingual country. Although, we say that Hindi serves as a link language, not many states in the country are comfortable with this language. Apart from South India, North-Eastern states too are not very familiar with Hindi, neither are Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir. Hardly one-third of the Indians are most comfortable with Hindi, then why to impose it on the rest of the majority?” questioned Devy.

However, Mishra said, “Language is a medium of connection, which is of utmost importance in a country like India. So, when the local language must be taught importantly at the primary level, the South Indian schools could think of teaching Hindi at secondary level at least.” 

As a solution to the problem, Pune-based Anil Gore, fondly known as Marathi Kaka, has suggested that as a language, only local language must be taught compulsorily as the child would certainly need it for his/her day-to-day activities.

“Instead of being adamant on teaching languages, the schools should instead teach scripts to the children. Indian languages are consolidated into 10 scripts altogether. It is not very difficult to introduce these to the students. It will be the students’ choice to learn whatever languages they wish to, whenever they want to,” Gore said.

Mishra asserted that as a solution to this, the North Indian schools should probably introduce their students to one of the South Indian languages. 

TWITTERATIS REACT
TN is not against Hindi, it is against forcing Hindi. Knowing many languages is a strength. But that should be by choice and not by imposition. And here is a deleted scene from #LKG ???? #HindiIsNotTheNationalLanguage
— Kotesh (@koteshtn)
#HindiIsNotTheNationalLanguage.
As a Maharashtrian, I chose to take Hindi as a subject in school because I was already learning Marathi at home. It made sense to know a common language. Now I want to learn Tamil or Kannada. Is that wrong? #LanguageFluidity
— Madhura Palit (@sweet_sundry)
#HindiIsNotTheNationalLanguage but tell me what language do we immediately use when we visit another state? Do we speak Tamil in Punjab or do we speak Bengali in Gujarat? NOPE! You speak HINDI! 
Hindi is the language that unifies all of us, no matter where we come from. #MakeIt
— Kushagra D Vashisht (@iam_kdv)

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