I felt déjà vu as I observed the controversy over the “imposition of Hindi” and its retraction through the new Narendra Modi authorities over the previous few days. Seven years ago, I had seen and suffered a comparable controversy over “objectionable cartoons” within the NCERT textbooks in Political Science. I was one of the chief advisers at the side of professor Suhas Palshikar.
The controversy exploded in May 2012 with a short, heated, and sick-informed debate at the grounds of Parliament regarding a remarkable animated film in the Magnificence XI textbook that allegedly denigrated Dr. Ambedkar. That was accompanied by a similarly heated countrywide media trial wherein essential records about the textbook had been the biggest casualty. Faced with this political warmth, the UPA government surely capitulated. Kapil Sibal, then HRD minister, provided an abject apology in Parliament and got pliant lecturers to get the NCERT to drop the “offending” cartoon. Professor Palshikar and I resigned in protest. Professor Palshikar changed into attacked in his office.
The sample is eerily the same this time. The Modi government launched the new National Policy on Education [DNPE] draft submitted in December 2018. Almost right now, a controversy erupted about the BJP’s alleged attempt to impose Hindi on non-Hindi-speaking states. The allegation becomes politically very touchy, as it emanated from Tamil Nadu. Now, conquering Tamil Nadu features excessively in the BJP’s future electoral roadmap. The significant impediment is, of a path, the BJP’s photograph as a “Hindi-domination” birthday celebration. To date, This is echoed in a quite unwell-informed debate in the media. Almost all media reviews and commentaries have centered on paragraphs inside the 484-web page file and assumed that the DNPE had advocated something new.
Comments on the dominance of the English language in Para 4. Five.4(on pages eighty-one-83) has excited some editorials inside the English media. And they were spelling out the standard 3-language formula in para 4. Five. Nine (on web page eighty-four) invited the price of imposition of Hindi. If the commentators had studied the entire phase four.5 of the DNEP on “Education within the nearby language/mom’s tongue; multilingualism and the energy of language” and chapter 22 on promoting Indian languages, they might have seen that the rate of an excellent layout for the imposition of Hindi is unfaithful. I am afraid the temptation to incorrect-foot the Modi authorities has led many competition leaders to take an unwell-cautioned, if not irresponsible role, on something that issues a crucial difficulty of countrywide importance.
