NE students protest against compulsory Hindi/MIL course in DU

Students from the northeast today staged a protest outside the HRD Ministry here against Delhi University's proposal to introduce Hindi or a modern Indian language as a compulsory subject, saying it would lead to their exclusion.
The students under the aegis of North-East Forum for International Solidarity (NEFIS) gathered outside the ministry and demanded its immediate intervention to stop "imposition" of Hindi or a MIL course on them.
"We have submitted a memorandum to the HRD Ministry stating our concerns. This imposition of a compulsory language course amounts to nothing less than cultural chauvinism on part of the university administration directed against the communities from the northeast.

"The new DU syllabus, if it is allowed to come into force, would put the students of the northeast under serious disadvantage vis-a-vis students of rest of the country," NEFIS coordinator Chinglen Khumukcham said.
A delegation of five students met Senior Secretary of Higher Education in the HRD Ministry and handed over the memorandum.
Khumukcham said the official "told us that he has already been instructed by the HRD minister to look into the issue. We have received a positive response from the ministry and hopefully a decision is taken in our favour.

"From the coming academic year Delhi University is introducing a new four-year graduate programme in which it would become compulsory for students to do a foundation course of Hindi or one modern Indian language."

In this foundation course they would be required to opt for a language which would either be Hindi or one of the MIL listed in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution such as Assamese, Bengali, Bodo, Dogri, Gujarati, Kannada, Kashmiri, Konkani, Maithili, Malayalam and Manipuri.
"There would be problems even for the communities that speak MILs like Manipuri, Assamese, etc. Because the infrastructure and faculty strength for teaching these languages is inadequate to be able to cover the whole of university," Khumukcham said.
NEFIS has organised three similar protests at the university level.