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'Imposition' of Tamil angers students, teachers in Tamil Nadu

George Iypein Madras

Tamilians fighting against Tamil is the news these days in Tamil Nadu. Years after the anti-Hindi agitation rocked the state, it is now the turn of Tamil language to face the music, not from politicians, but from school going kids and their teachers.

The centre of controversy and the subject of a heated debate in the state is an order from the M Karunanidhi government that stipulates that Tamil -- not English or Hindi -- should be the medium of instruction up to Standard V in all matriculation schools in the state.

To be specific, the government has ordered that Tamil must replace English as the medium of instruction in all schools in the state except those affiliated to the Central Board of Secondary Education and minority institutions.

Managements have shut down schools for a day to protest the decision and teachers unions have filed a case in the Madras high court urging it to quash the order. Language is a highly emotive issue in Tamil Nadu. But the tone of students and parents in the state these days is: 'Don't impose language on us. Let our sons and daughters learn Tamil, English and Hindi.'

However, the debate has turned into a raging language controversy as opponents and supporters of the government move argue the state's right to impose, ignore and play politics with language which is as sensitive as the controversial Cauvery waters issue in Tamil Nadu.

"The state does not have the right to decide and impose that the young minds should learn a particular language and should not study any other. We are in a democracy and everyone has the right to learn, speak and write on any language of one's choice," K Rajasekhar, president of Tamil Nadu Matriculation and Higher Secondary Schools Associations told rediff.com.

He says the government order affects some 2,000 matriculation schools in the state and more than 6,000 nursery and primary schools in Madras city alone.

The controversy actually dates back to December 1976, when the Tamil Nadu government transferred all the matriculation schools then controlled by the Madras University and Madurai Kamaraj University to the state. To continue the high standards of the matriculation schools, the government stuck to the proposal that the medium of instruction in all these schools should be English.

Since then -- though no matriculation school is aided by the government -- their high and exemplary standards saw their numbers going up from 25 in 1976 to over 2,000 now.

Though successive governments since then have been contemplating to change the language curricula of these schools all these years, it was the Karunanidhi government that actually constituted a committee to study the functioning of the schools.

The committee headed by retired Supreme Court Judge S Mohan recently submitted a report to the government recommending that Tamil or the mother tongue should be the medium of instruction from Class I-V. The report argued that imposition of Tamil and the replacement of English in these schools is a must "to retain Tamil pride and to inculcate in students a sense of belonging to the motherland."

Curiously, the government also quoted claims and studies from psychiatrists that children would be able to learn better and faster in their mother tongue.

"Yes, there are many reasons why we are insisting that the medium of instruction should be in mother tongue, that is Tamil in Tamil Nadu. Those who agitate against the government decision have little respect for Tamil pride," the state Minister for Education K Anbazhagan told rediff.com.

The minister said the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagham government is not against English. "Let the students be taught in English only when it is not possible to teach them in Tamil," he insisted.

Anbazhagan explained that the government was forced to interfere after it got the feedback that many matriculation schools totally dropped Tamil teaching and even punished students who spoke Tamil, instead of English, within school premises.

The minister pointed out that Tamil Nadu is not the only state that insists on mother tongue. "In Andhra Pradesh, the local official language commission had directed that Telugu alone should be the medium of instruction from primary school to university," he said.

But the opponents of the move -- that include teachers associations and school management -- suspect the aims of the government. "It is not students' welfare but politics that is the motive behind this decision. Chief Minister Karunanidhi wants to proclaim at the end of his political career that he is the most famous of all Tamilians who stood and fought for our culture," says Shiv Karunan, an English teacher in a city school and an active member of the South Indian Nursery Primary and Matriculation and Higher Secondary Schools.

"We will launch an anti-Tamil agitation if the government does not withdraw its order immediately," Karunan told rediff.com.

He said the Mohan Commission was an "eye-wash." The commission members never sought the views of hundreds of thousands of teachers and students in matriculation schools across the state.

R Dinesh Kumar, a teacher with the Temple Park Matriculation School in the city termed the government decision as a "retrograde step." "It is very much against the interests of students in Tamil Nadu," he said.

Teachers like Kumar stress that the anti-Hindi agitation that rocked the state years back "has already put the children at a disadvantage in Tamil Nadu." "Imposing Tamil by ignoring English and Hindi will worsen the predicament of students in the state," he told rediff.com.

Thus, the petition from the Tamil Nadu Nursery, Primary and Higher Secondary education School Management Association before the Madras high court states that as long as English continues to be the primary language in universities, "it is impossible for us to reconcile ourselves to using Tamil as the medium of instruction."

The association said Tamil was already a compulsory language in all schools. "If the government remains firm on its decision to impose Tamil, it should then guarantee that preference should be given to those students educated in Tamil medium in all areas," its petition said.

If the court rejects their plea, the school management insist that they will take the next step. "We will then try our best to get CBSE affiliation so that our schools will never be under the control of the whims and fancies of the Tamil-crazy Tamil Nadu government," said an association member.

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