Drawing parallels between India’s drain of wealth by the colonial rulers and the ‘brain drain’ in the post-Independence years, Home Minister Amit Shah credited Prime Minister Narendra Modi for turning this brain drain into ‘brain gain’ by enabling students to pursue medical and technical education in Hindi and other regional languages. Shah made the statement while speaking at Bhopal’s Lal Parade ground Sunday where he had come to inaugurate the newly transliterated books in Hindi on the subject of anatomy, biochemistry, and physiology for first-year MBBS students. Congratulating the hundreds of students assembled at Lal Parade ground to witness the event, Shah called the introduction of Hindi textbooks for medical education a golden day, a moment of reawakening and reconstruction in the field of education for the country. Talking about Prime Minister Modi’s vision to promote Hindi and regional languages, Shah said: “Prime Minister Modi has embarked on a mission of providing education for medicine and engineering in all languages from Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Gujarati, Malayali, to Bengali. As per the PM’s vision, our languages are being given importance and entrance exams… are being held in 12 languages.” Shah congratulated Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan for taking the lead in fulfilling the PM’s vision and providing medical education in Hindi. “It was one of the points in the manifesto of the 2018 assembly elections and when the government came to power, the state became the first to introduce it,” said Shah while referring to the initiative of the Madhya Pradesh government. While addressing the students, Shah quoted Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi to draw the importance of education in regional languages. “Everyman’s thinking process is in their mother tongue and, therefore, Nelson Mandela had said ‘If you talk to someone in a language, it reaches their brain. But if you talk to the person in their mother tongue it reaches the person’s heart and therefore countries have laid great emphasis on language’,” said Shah. Shah accused those interested in promoting English of wrongly conflating the language with intellectual ability. “There is no connection between language and intellectual ability. Language is only a means of expression while intellectual ability is given by God. If education is done in their mother tongue, then it enhances the child’s intellectual ability. If education is imparted in their mother tongue, I have complete faith that they will reach great heights across the world,” said the home minister. While Chief Minister Chouhan pointed out that the lack of availability of technical and medical education in regional languages meant that candidates belonging to poor and middle classes, Scheduled Tribe and Scheduled Caste groups who reached medical and engineering colleges got caught up in the cobweb of English. Taking a jibe at the Congress, Chouhan said: “Work for introducing education in Hindi should have been done immediately after Independence, should it not have been done? Those who had the responsibility of running the government after Independence, sinned by making India use the language of the colonisers. It led to a thought process that without English one cannot be successful. These people (government after Independence) had English in their heart, mind, and soul, they created an environment where speaking English will get you respect.” Chouhan further pointed out that “our children learned to say hello, hi, how do you do… thinking that using English words makes a good impression, even when they did not know anything else.” “English has also insulted our forefathers with abbreviations like TT Nagar for Tatya Tope Nagar, Motilal Vigyaan became MVM, Maharani Laxmi Bai college became (MLB) and Gandhi Medical College became GMV, is it not a crime?” asked Chouhan. Chouhan thanked the prime minister for making 130 billion Indians proud by speaking on the world stage in Hindi. Chouhan also said that soon six engineering colleges and the same number of polytechnic colleges will also begin education in Hindi while in the future Hindi will also be introduced in the IITs and the IIMs. Shah pointed out that eight states have started work to translate engineering books into their mother tongues and soon research and development work will also be available in these languages.
