ELECTION 99
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Keeping a population in purdah

In the south of Tamil Nadu in Tirunelveli district there is this man who everybody calls panniar. It means that he is a landlord. The truth is that he is the biggest landholder in that district. This panniar built a primary school in his village. You'll think he is a noble soul but that is if you did not know what he told the new school teachers on their first day in school.

He told them, ''This is a village where simple people live; now, if you make them very knowledgeable they will lose their innocence, so you teach them the minimum possible knowledge.'' As it was the panniar's school the teachers had to listen to him. In this way the panniars have kept the villagers innocent for many generations up to the present.

Recently, I was watching Star News. They were interviewing our honourable minister Murosali Maran about the World Trade Organisation talks in Seattle. He was replying in perfect English though the accent was definitely Tamilian. I remember hearing Karunanidhi on TV. He too spoke good English and with a better accent than Maran. Their opponent Jayalalitha has the best accent if you are impressed with convent English. You know the Mayor of Madras, Stalin -- he is the chief minister's son and did his schooling in a Christian school.

Now, what is the similarity between the panniar and the politicians? The first wanted to keep one village illiterate and the second wants to keep the entire state so. We all know that if you know only Tamil you have to stick to Tamil Nadu. If you know Hindi you can go anywhere in India and if you know English you can go anywhere in the world. Alas, this will not be the case with future generations in Tamil Nadu. On the 25th of November the Tamil Nadu government, at the initiative of the increasingly fanatic Tamil Minister Tamil Kudimagan, issued a government order saying that from the academic year 2000-2001 only Tamil will be the medium of instruction in all schools in the state. The exceptions are the Anglo-Indian schools, which are too few to make a difference.

First, let me tell you about this minister for Tamil. His name is Tamil Kudimagan which literally means 'son of Tamil.' And the man takes this very seriously. He wants to make everybody a 'son of Tamil.' In the past he came up with weird orders like having your vehicle's number plate in Tamil. The result is that vehicles with Tamil number plates cannot go anywhere else in India without being stopped and abused because the cops there cannot understand what your number plate says.

So Karunanidhi and his family have decided to preserve the Dravidian culture by making sure that the Dravidians do not learn anything else. And their front man is Tamil Kudimagan.

And to add to the problem of the next generation of Tamilians we have Dr Ramadoss of the Pattali Makkal Katchi supporting these retrograde steps. He is of course puffed up by his party's success in the recent Lok Sabha elections. He is a staunch supporter of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and believes that they should be given a separate homeland. They of course will stay in their separate homeland all their lives because they will know no other language. And these maniacs exist in a time where the European Union has broken all national barriers and the Internet is bringing global knowledge to our living rooms. These ministers of course do not want us to benefit from this knowledge explosion so they use Tamil on the Internet too! So the knowledge that we have on the net will be limited to the knowledge these selfish people put up there for us to read.

Me, I am happy that I finished my schooling much before these guardians of Tamil appeared on the horizon. My child will not suffer for I can bring her to Bombay but what about the millions who do not have the money or the means to move out of Tamil Nadu? Well, they still have their vote to drive such retrogrades out.

A Ganesh Nadar