A high decibel marathi versus English debate is being conducted in Maharashtra on the eve of the winter session (postponed to the first week of December) of the state legislative assembly. It features Maharashtra chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh and a minister of his own cabinet — school education minister Vasant Purake — for and against the compulsory teaching of Marathi in all 86,429 primary and secondary schools in the state (pop. 97 million). While the chief minister is in favour of the motion, Purake intends making it compulsory for all education officers, schoolteachers, students and their parents to communicate only in English one day per week.
“In Maharashtra, there cannot be an option to Marathi. German or French cannot be an option. The option for Marathi is Marathi,” says Deshmukh. On the other hand Purake has reportedly said that unless English is made compulsory, Maharashtra will lose its pre-eminent position as India’s most industrialised state.
Politicking over the status of Marathi is not new to Maharashtra. The debate has been given a new impetus by the rise of Raj Thackeray’s (Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray’s estranged nephew) Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS), launched two years ago. With an eye on the Marathi vote bank, he propagated a new son-of-the-soil or the Marathi manoos campaign to reserve seats in academic institutions, and demand job quotas in industry. Not to be outdone, his uncle Bal Thackeray has also intensified the compulsory Marathi campaign reminding the public through the Shiv Sena newspaper Saamna, that Raj had stolen this campaign plank from him. The ruling Congress-NCP coalition, headed by Deshmukh, is running hard not to be left behind, given the perceived emotive appeal of the Marathi language learning issue.
Unable to resolve the major problems confronting India’s most industrialised state — food, clothing, housing, education, healthcare, law and order — the state’s politicians naively believe there’s an electoral dividend in sub-nationalism and the language issue. They hope to cash in on the growing resentment against Hindi-speaking people by Maharashtrians for ‘encroaching’ on their land and jobs.
But in this contest of electoral one-upmanship, school children have become hapless victims. Raj Thackeray has warned all English medium schools in the state that if they don’t introduce Marathi as a compulsory language from class I-X, they will be denied access to state resources including electricity and water. “I am writing letters to the authorities concerned in all English medium schools, appealing to introduce Marathi as a compulsory subject, as has been done in many southern states,” he said, citing a Madras high court judgement upholding the Tamil Nadu government’s decision to make Tamil compulsory in all schools in the southern state.
Not to be left behind, chief minister Deshmukh told a meeting of education officers in Amravati last month: “Knowledge of Marathi is essential in the state and one cannot accept that someone does not know Marathi.” Unsurprisingly Purake, who believes that the choice of second language should be left to school managements and parents, and who ironically has a Masters in Marathi and was a professor of Marathi before actively joining politics, is under fire from Deshmukh, and is on the chief minister’s list of non-performers in his cabinet.
Inevitably academics in the state are disturbed by this spillover of politics into school education. Comments Dr. Suhas Phadke, principal of the prestigious Ramnarain Ruia College, Mumbai: “There has to be a strong focus on learning English, the language of international business. Learning the regional language can always be of help, but it’s inadvisable to force the study of Marathi or any other language on students. India’s English language legacy gives us a clear edge over Russia and China, where communi-cation and trade is hampered because of little or no knowledge of English. China has realised its folly and is partnering with a plethora of international educational institutes to teach its workforce English. We shouldn’t let this historical advantage be squandered.”
There’s no doubt that phadke’s viewpoint is shared by the overwhelming majority of Maharashtra’s population. It’s a measure of how out of touch Maharashtra’s politicians are with the people, that they believe there’s an electoral dividend in linguistic sub-nationalism. They seem completely unaware that even the poorest people countrywide want English medium education for their children, and that there is a massive flight from Marathi medium schools in the state.
This is confirmed by Elementary Education in India 2006-07, an annual report published by the Delhi-based National University for Educational Planning and Administration (see special report p.70). Stating that the number of primary schools in India has increased from 601,866 to 779,482 between 2005-06 and 2006-07, the report comments: “Category-wise (sic) distribution of schools reveals that the majority of (new) schools (65.14 percent) are independent primary schools,” i.e. providing English medium education. As evidenced in the satanic (November 26) attacks on Mumbai, Maharashtra’s politicians are the last to know.
Harshikaa Udasi (Mumbai)