Daijiworld Media Network - New Delhi (SP)
New Delhi, Jun 4: The leaders, organizations and institutions, which vociferously opposed imposition of Hindi as per the new draft National Education Policy, have succeeded in compelling the Union government to modify the policy. The Union government has made changes in the draft policy for 2019 as per which the recommendation made to make study of Hindi compulsory in states where there is no Hindi-speaking population. The clause making Hindi mandatory as per the earlier draft under the tri-lingual policy has been withdrawn in respect of such regions.
Even though the clause about the three-language policy has been retained, it has come with the modification that a student learning three languages, when he reaches sixth or seventh standard, can change one or more of these languages. When choosing the new languages, the student can choose any of the regional languages including Hindi.
The draft education policy prepared by a committee headed by former chairman of Indian Space Research Organization, Dr Kasturirangan for the year 2019 was published on Friday last and it had come across lot of protests particularly in Tamil Nadu. Anil Shidore, leader of Maharashtra Navanirman Sena too had tweeted to register his opposition to mandating Hindi as it is not a national language.
Minister for human resources in the Union government, Prakash Javadekar, had clarified that the government does not plan to forcibly impose any language on anyone, and that the draft would be submitted to the government after making changes after obtaining suggestions and opinions of the people.
The change brought has been welcomed by southern states including Telangana and Tamil Nadu. They have also thanked Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, for this gesture.
In spite of the clarification, several leaders including Karnataka chief minister, H D Kumaraswamy, have expressed apprehension. Kumaraswamy said that in the name of three-language policy, no language should be forced on others. He expressed the view that other than mother tongue, no other language should be made compulsory although they can be optional subjects. Higher education minister, G T Degegowda too echoed similar sentiments. Chairman of the National Education Policy Committee, Kasturirangan, said that the committee has not suggested any language as compulsory and that the committee had suggested to allow people to choose language of their choice when studying.