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Journalism of Courage
The Centre may have dropped the contentious provision of compulsory teaching of Hindi in non-Hindi speaking states but the controversy refuses to die down in Tamil Nadu.
In a tweet, Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami Wednesday requested Prime Minister Narendra Modi to include Tamil as an optional language of study in other states. The post was later deleted as the Opposition questioned the meaning of his tweet. Senior DMK leaders also started asking him on Twitter whether he had agreed to Centre’s three-language policy or not.
Being part of NDA, AIADMK was in a fix after the Centre faced allegations of imposing Hindi in Tamil Nadu with a mandatory three-language policy against the state’s long standing two-language policy. The Centre recently dropped the contentious clause in the draft National Education Policy that proposed to make Hindi mandatory in schools following an outcry, especially in Tamil Nadu.
Tamil Nadu has been following the two-language formula of Tamil and English since 1968. According to Tamil Nadu Tamil Learning Act, 2006, a student studying from Class I to X has to study Tamil as the first language and English as the second language, while Hindi is not mandatory.
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On Wednesday, DMK chief M K Stalin demanded that Tamil be made an official language in central government offices. “The DMK will support this cause,” he said. Stalin, who has been attacking and warning the Centre against the alleged agenda to impose Hindi in Tamil Nadu, said the Centre was forced to withdraw the idea of a three-language policy due to opposition by Tamils.
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