Why Tamil Nadu won’t back down on NEP

Language, like religion, caste and land, has been a volatile issue in India. It is a useful tool for political parties to grandstand and confound their opponents and for the targeted parties to marshal their defences and craft a response. Had language only remained the subject of political discourse and debate, the country could have lived with what would be a small irritant. But over the decades before and after Independence, it has provoked agitations, caused blood to spill on roads, redrawn geographical boundaries (Maharashtra-Gujarat) and made and unmade provincial satraps as illustrious as C Rajagopalachari, who had to quit as the Prime Minister of the Madras Presidency.

Tamil Nadu has for long been a fertile ground for language fanatics to pursue their agendas, that once smelt of secessionism and now reek of unbridled political end, a means to retain power. The state votes next year. To counter the threat of anti-incumbency that inevitably catches up with a ruling party or coalition —which in this case is the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) — Chief Minister MK Stalin has seized upon the Modi government's National Education Policy (NEP) 2020. He has rejected the policy on pain of even forgoing funds of Rs 2,152 crore allocated to states under the Samagra Shiksha (SS) scheme. This is a Centrally-sponsored programme to upgrade 14,500 model schools, with a focus on holistic, inclusive and sustainable education.

The Centre cast the NEP's implementation in stone. For the DMK, the professed "ideals" enshrined in the policy were a Trojan horse. Although the NEP-2020 has reintroduced the three-language formula contained in the 1968 NEP, the DMK views it as a covert attempt to introduce Hindi — which is anathema to Tamil Nadu — and to potentially disrupt the state's long-established education model. The DMK government has alleged that the NEP violates cooperative federalism.

On paper, the NEP-2020 ostensibly offers more leeway than its predecessor. It claims that no language would be imposed on any state. The three languages the children would learn would be the choice of the states, regions and students as long as two of the three languages were "native" to India. That means, in addition to the state's language, children would be required to learn at least one more Indian language, which is not necessarily Hindi.

The genesis of the DMK-Centre confrontation did not stem from the seemingly reasonable phraseology of the policy. It lay in the provocative stance that the Centre adopted after the DMK rebuffed the NEP rather than finding a way for a dialogue with Stalin, especially knowing how opposition to Hindi has simmered in Tamil Nadu's political cauldron.

Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan led the charge against the DMK. This is ironical since Odisha, his home state, along with Andhra Pradesh, was at the forefront of the movement for the linguistic reorganisation of states after Independence. On February 15 this year, Pradhan told journalists in Varanasi that funds under the SS scheme would not be released unless Tamil Nadu accepted the NEP in its entirety. He said no state was above the Constitution and advised the DMK government to adhere to the constitutional norms.

On March 11, during question hour in Parliament's ongoing session, Pradhan accused the DMK of being "dishonest" and "deceptive", to which Stalin alleged that the minister was “arrogant”. Pradhan later withdrew his remarks but the battle lines were firmly etched. Tamil Nadu's Opposition leader Edappadi K Palaniswami supported the DMK.

The dissent against Hindi's "imposition" is neither a bogey nor a recent creation. In 1937, when Rajagopalachari (Rajaji), then Prime Minister of the Madras Presidency, proposed making Hindi compulsory in secondary schools, the Justice Party was up in arms. Two young agitators, Thalamuthu and Natarajan, were killed in the clashes with the police. They were hailed as martyrs to the cause of language and identity. Rajaji eventually resigned and the British government withdrew the order on Hindi.

In 1965, as the deadline for adopting Hindi as the official language approached, Tamil Nadu broke into violent protests, leading to the death of at least 70 persons in police firing and self-immolation. The agitation resurfaced when Parliament adopted the Official Languages (Amendment) Act, 1967, and the Official Languages Resolution, 1968. The Act permitted the continuation of English in addition to Hindi as the official language of communication and deferred an earlier policy of adopting Hindi as the sole official link language.

The Centre's moves spurred a backlash in Tamil Nadu and compelled the then DMK CM, CN Annadurai, to adopt a resolution in the Assembly on January 26, 1968, rejecting the three-language formula. The government contended that until Tamil and other languages were classified as official languages, English should continue as the only official language and the Constitution be appropriately amended.

While in the past, the Hindi-Tamil flap carried emotive and political resonances with Tamil voters, who perceived the Central interventions as a challenge to their identity and self-respect, today, economics has brought in a different dynamic. Tamil Nadu has taken full advantage of the economic reforms and it has emerged as a premier manufacturing hub. The development has attracted hordes of migrants from the north and east at all levels — unskilled workers, blue collar workers and highly qualified professionals, mainly in IT.

The political wars have not impacted social relations between the domiciles and the migrants. There's no "Marathi manoos" kind of jingoism. Yet, language remains sensitive.

Punjab is the other state to experience the challenges from an agenda to enforce linguistic homogeneity in India. Recently, Punjabi language was allegedly knocked off as a subject in the CBSE's draft policy for the proposed dual board exams for class X under the NEP-2020. Punjabi was not just found "missing" from the list of regional languages in the draft document but also reportedly removed from the list of five main subjects, forcing the non-BJP parties, especially the AAP, to cry foul.

Although the CBSE issued some clarification, schools in Punjab are restive over a failure to clarify if a regional language can be opted from among the five main subjects and if Hindi was mandatory across states.

Can the anti-BJP federal forces coalesce into a prospective front over the fear that the Centre will push through Hindi against their will?