OPPONENTS OF PM'S EDUCATION POLICY FUEL FIRE OF SEPARATISM

"A society must have one language for education. It should be Hindi. Hindi can bring millions of people together. Therefore, the longer it takes for Hindi to get its rightful place, the greater the harm to the country."

- ALOK MEHTA

Is this statement made by Prime Minister Narendra Modi regarding the new education policy? No, this statement was made by Mahatma Gandhi in 1917 when he sent a circular to his millions of supporters. Not only this, but a few months later, in 1918, he held a conference in Madras (now Chennai) under the presidency of C.P. Ramaswami, which was inaugurated by Annie Besant, and a proposal to celebrate the 'Hindi Year' was passed.

To further promote this campaign, he sent his son Devdas Gandhi, and then wrote a letter to his Tamil associate saying, "Unless the Tamil representatives are genuinely committed to Hindi, the boycott of English will not succeed in the General Assembly. I see that the movement for Hindi is becoming somewhat like the Khadi movement. Do all that is possible to spread the movement."

Mahatma Gandhi, realising the need for a national language to unite and organise a divided India, said, "Without a national language, a nation is mute."

In contrast to this, Maharashtra is witnessing protests from Congress, Uddhav Thackeray's Shiv Sena, Raj Thackeray's MNS, and some other groups regarding Modi's education policy, which includes making Hindi mandatory from classes 1 to 5 along with Marathi in schools. These organisations are unwilling to accept the fundamental principles of Mahatma Gandhi. It is ironic that Congress and its allied parties, through their dirty politics, are stoking the flames of separatism based on caste and language in various states. Initially, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M.K. Stalin and other DMK leaders strongly opposed the importance of Hindi and other Indian languages in the new education policy under the pretext of regional autonomy. Now, in Maharashtra, there is strong opposition from opposition parties regarding the inclusion of Hindi as the third language for students in Marathi and English-medium schools from classes 1 to 5.