Playing with language

Sanskrit can't be made mandatory in schools

Last week, Union Human Resource Development (HRD) Minister Prakash Javadekar was forced to respond to the growing murmurs against a possible imposition of Sanskrit across schools in India in the wake of a Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) directive to implement a three-language formula up to Class X. Under the National Education Policy, the three-language formula means students should learn a “modern” Indian language, apart from a regional language, and English. A majority of the 18,000 affiliated institutions offer the mother tongue or Hindi, English and a foreign language such as German and Mandarin up to Class VIII. The apprehension was that students in non-Hindi speaking regions would be forced to read Sanskrit. Mr Javadekar did well to dismiss such apprehensions when asked if Sanskrit would become compulsory in CBSE-affiliated schools. “I have not gone through the board’s recommendation in detail but we are not going to impose any language on schools.”

This is not the first time that the incumbent government has been cornered on the issue of imposition of language. Early in her tenure, Smriti Irani, the former HRD minister, had directed Kendriya Vidyalayas (KVs) to stop teaching German as a third language in Classes VI to VIII. She did so arguing that it violated the three-language formula, which has been part of India’s education policy since 1968. But the more contentious part of her decision was to ask KVs to replace German with Sanskrit or any modern Indian language. Then again, in June this year, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam chief M Karunanidhi warned of an anti-Sanskrit agitation after the Union Ministry of Personnel, through a press statement, emphasised the importance of promoting Hindi among non-Hindi speakers, particularly in southern and eastern India. Mr Karunanidhi, a veteran of the anti-Hindi movement, which also helped his party come to power in Tamil Nadu in 1967, reportedly urged every Tamil to pick up a whip and chase the language away. Under fire, the HRD minister had retreated and reiterated that there was no effort to impose any language. But every now and then this government continues to rake up the language issue. In October, while addressing state ministers during the concluding session of the meeting of Central Advisory Board of Education, the highest advisory body on education, Mahendra Nath Pandey, the minister of state for HRD, extolled how Sanskrit was a unifying factor for the country. However, the Tamil Nadu education minister had reportedly raised objections over the alleged imposition of Sanskrit by the Centre.

These repeated misadventures show the government has not learnt any lessons from the past. Language was and continues to be an emotive issue, a fact that even the report of the Committee for Evolution of the New Education Policy, submitted to the government in April, acknowledges. Immediately after Independence, language had become a symbol of emerging collective identities. It later also formed the basis of reorganisation of states in the country. Often such calls for identity were accompanied by violent protests. Every time New Delhi has tried to force Hindi or Sanskrit over the non-Hindi speaking regions, especially in southern and eastern India, it has received a massive blowback. There is no reason why renewed attempts of enforcing a singular linguistic identity would not prove equally counterproductive.