The Federal begins a series on the ugly spat that has broken out over the NEP and its 3-language formula; part 1 examines why TN sees Hindi imposition as a constitutional affront
Another “language war” appears to be brewing on the horizon, with Tamil Nadu stridently refusing to implement the New Education Policy (NEP) 2020 with its revised three-language policy.
The first salvo was fired by Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, who asserted that states like Tamil Nadu that did not comply with NEP 2020 would not receive Central assistance under the Samagra Shiksha scheme.
Not to be outdone, Chief Minister MK Stalin responded that Tamil Nadu would not bow to the Centre’s pressure and implement the three-language formula just to get funds, even if the state were offered Rs 10,000 crore instead of the Rs 2,000 crore due to it.
Stalin clarified that Tamil Nadu has no objection to anyone learning Hindi but that it was only fighting its unilateral imposition. He also upped the ante, asking what will happen if Tamil Nadu declined to pay its share of taxes to the Centre in retaliation.
What NEP says
Strictly speaking, the NEP does not insist on Hindi being taught everywhere. In fact, it states: “The three-language formula will continue to be implemented while keeping in mind the Constitutional provisions, aspirations of the people, regions and the Union, and the need to promote multilingualism as well as promote national unity.
"However, there will be a greater flexibility in the three-language formula, and no language will be imposed on any state. The three languages learned by children will be the choices of states, regions and of course the students themselves, so long as at least two of the three languages are native to India.”
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On paper at least, this means that apart from the mother tongue/local language and English, the states have the choice of teaching any other Indian language as the third.
So, what is the controversy all about, when apparently it is a policy initiative to promote multilingualism with students being given opportunities to learn another Indian language when they are young and thus foster greater understanding of other regions and cultures of the country? Is it merely the usual war of words that has of late come to describe the relations between the BJP-led Centre and Opposition-led states?
A long struggle
A closer look will indicate that this “war” has a larger context and a longer history, one that goes back to pre-Independence days and to the beginnings of the national language policy.
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As people with immense pride in their language (which has rightful claims to be one of the oldest extant languages in the world), the Tamils are highly averse to any linguistic incursions that smack of enforcement and have a long and successful history of resisting the imposition of Hindi.
The first anti-Hindi agitation in Tamil Nadu arose in 1937 when C Rajagopalachari, the then Chief Minister of Madras Presidency, issued an order that made Hindi mandatory in schools. Led by stalwarts like EV Ramasamy (Periyar), Somasundara Bharathiar and Maraimalai Adigal, the agitation lasted more than two years till February 1940.
Nearly 1,200 people were imprisoned and two lives lost in the agitation, which was finally withdrawn only after Governor Lord Erskine rescinded the order.
What happened in the 1960s
Popular protests broke out again in 1948, when the then state cabinet under Omandur Ramasamy Reddy made Hindi a compulsory language. Again, the decision had to be withdrawn.
The third major agitation took place in 1964-65 after the Official Languages Act, 1963 made Hindi the sole official language with the allowance that non-Hindi speaking states can continue to use English as an associate language.
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The agitation eventually spread all over the state with more than 70 people losing their lives and hundreds being jailed. The agitation subsided only after then Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri assured the nation that the law would be so amended to allow English to continue as an official language for as long as the non-Hindi states wanted.
What changed
The Official Languages Act was eventually amended in 1967 by the Union government to guarantee the indefinite use of Hindi and English as official languages. Following this, the Official Language Resolution, 1968, implemented a three-language formula (local language, Hindi or any Indian language, and English) across the country.
However, in continuation of the spirit of the earlier agitations, the Tamil Nadu government decided to follow a two-language policy — Tamil and English — ensuring that Tamil students were not compelled to learn Hindi. Since then, the state has been following a two-language policy, with Hindi being offered only in CBSE schools.
Even as it may appear that the present controversy is only another chapter in the long saga of Tamil Nadu’s resistance to Hindi, there is more to it than a language issue. A quick recap of some recent related events will serve to place it in context.
Unity vs uniformity
In April 2022, presiding over the 37th Parliamentary Official Language Committee, Union Home Minister Amit Shah announced that it is time for Hindi to completely replace English as the official language of the country.
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“Prime Minister Narendra Modi has decided that the medium of running the government is the official language, and this will definitely increase the importance of Hindi. Now the time has come to make the official language an important part of the unity of the country,” Shah said.
Quick to respond, Stalin retorted that unity is not uniformity. “The BJP leadership is continuously working to destroy India’s diversity. Is Amit Shah thinking that ‘Hindi state’ is enough but not Indian states? One language for all does not ensure unity. Uniformity also does not create unity. You are repeating the same mistake. But you will not succeed in it,” he said.
Amit Shah’s charge
It is also worth noting that hardly two days earlier, Amit Shah had accused Stalin’s party, the DMK, of being “anti-national” for its stance on the subject of delimitation of parliamentary constituencies. Stalin had expressed reservations about delimitation because it would significantly reduce the number of MPs from Tamil Nadu and other south Indian states.
“Delimitation isn’t just about Tamil Nadu; it affects all of South India. A democratic process should not penalise states that have successfully managed population growth, led in development, and made significant contributions to national progress,” said Stalin.
Here, as in the earlier quoted query on what would happen if Tamil Nadu declined to pay its share of taxes to the Centre, Stalin was referring to the inequalities in the sharing of tax revenues between the Centre and the states, which leaves some states, especially the southern ones, having to bear the burden of funding the less developed northern states.
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Unfair dispensation
This disparity in the allocation of funds by the Centre is growingly being perceived by southern states as an unfair dispensation in which they are penalised for their higher development and better life indices, while the northern states are being rewarded for their misgovernance and underdevelopment.
It becomes clear here that for Tamil Nadu and Stalin, even as the NEP and the issue of language are quite grave, it is not so in itself but as part of a much larger political and ideological struggle, with several substantive and interrelated issues inscribed in it.
First, in terms of language itself, it is an undeniable fact that the three-language policy was never implemented in its true spirit all over India. The formula as enunciated in the 1968 Official Language Resolution provided for the study of Hindi, English and a modern Indian language (preferably one of the southern languages) in the Hindi-speaking states, and Hindi, English and the regional language in the non-Hindi speaking states.
However, not a single Hindi-speaking state introduced South Indian languages to their curricula, but opted for Sanskrit, Urdu and other North Indian languages, leading finally to the removal of the clause “preferably one of the southern languages” from the resolution. On the other hand, Hindi came to be taught in all the states of India, except Tamil Nadu.
Bias toward Sanskrit
It is most interesting that the NEP does not envisage any change in this system, despite its eloquent advocacy of unity and multilingualism. There is no requirement for any Hindi-speaking state to teach any language other than the ones that they already do.
Apparently, the noble aims of unity and multilingualism are unidirectional, with only some states — the non-Hindi speaking ones — required to make efforts at fostering them while the “superior” Hindi-speaking ones generously permit them to feel unified.
Another less mentioned but dubious feature of the NEP is its thinly veiled North Indian/Sanskrit bias that treats the cultures, languages and knowledges of the South, the Northeast and of non-Sanskrit traditions as mere afterthoughts.
Little room for other cultures
While there is a long, celebratory litany of authors and intellectual streams that belong to the Sanskrit tradition, as pillars of a hoary past that students should be acquainted with as part of Indian knowledge systems, the entire rest is limited to two names, those of Thiruvalluvar and Sankar Dev; there is no Sangam poetry, no Tolkappiyam, no Sramana literature, no Nagarjuna, no Vacana Sahitya, no Sufi poets, no Islamic writings, nor any of the innumerable other traditions and authors — a telling piece of evidence to the narrow, ideological and even sectarian nature of the policy.
No doubt this too has contributed in some measure to Tamil Nadu’s reactions to the policy.
Threat to federalism
The most important question, however, is that of federalism and how there is a calculated, steady erosion of the country’s federal structure under the BJP government at the Centre.
Education, including technical education, medical education and universities, is on the Concurrent List of the Constitution, thereby making it a subject that both the Union and state governments can legislate on. However, it has become a settled practice with the BJP-led Union government to undermine the powers of state legislatures and state governments through unilateral acts, regulations and measures that seldom seek the opinions of the states, especially Opposition ones, let alone their concurrence.
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The latest University Grants Commission (UGC) Regulations is a case in point, as is the use of the office of the Governor-Chancellor for the Centre to wield total control over state universities, both of which have raised the ire of opposition states.
In this light, Tamil Nadu’s anxiety that the uniform national policy proposed by the NEP will lead to further weakening of the state’s valid powers and aspirations in the field of education is well grounded.
Inimical to social justice
Further, the apprehension that the NEP will be inimical to social justice and disadvantageous to students from marginalised sections is also legitimate in that the policy has little to say in terms of concrete measures for ensuring social justice in education.
This is thus not a new version of the old North-South divide as it may appear. The fault lines are much deeper and intensely more political in nature.
A new set of binaries have been added to the earlier equation under the auspices of BJP politics: BJP versus the Opposition, Hindutva versus secular/non-Hindutva, Hindu versus non-Hindu, Sanskrit/Hindi versus Dravidian/non-Sanskrit, Brahminic versus non-Brahminic, and most importantly national versus anti- national.
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Process of othering
Amit Shah’s description of the DMK as anti-national acquires tremendous significance here, in that all those who are not willing to toe the Hindutva line are condemned as anti-nationals. It is a process of othering, a dangerously blinkered vision of the nation where all difference and opposition are regarded anti-national.
Hindi becomes a convenient trope in this discourse of ultra-nationalism, gathering into it the collective force of all the other binaries that serve the same purpose.
One cannot help but shudder at the thought of a violent agitation breaking out in response because, if recent history is anything to go by, that may exactly be what the BJP wants and wishes for.
