Rise above politics, Pradhan tells Stalin; DMK won’t give up 2-language policy

The language row involving the BJP-led Centre and the ruling DMK in Tamil Nadu intensified on Friday with Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan asking the southern state to rise above politics, while the regional party hit back saying it won’t budge from its two-language policy and warned against “throwing stones at beehive”.

Pradhan attacked Chief Minister MK Stalin over the implementation of National Education Policy in TN and accused him of “spinning progressive reforms into threats to sustain political narratives”. The DMK indicated Tamil Nadu was being asked to implement NEP and the three-language policy involving Hindi in return for its due share of Central funds.

Stalin, also DMK president, said he would not permit any activities inimical to Tamil language, the state and its people, on the soil, so long as he and his DMK existed.

Alleged Hindi imposition has been a sensitive subject in Tamil Nadu, and the DMK successfully led a massive anti-Hindi agitation in 1965 during which a number of pro-Tamil activists killed themselves, mostly by self-immolation, against imposition of the language.

Main opposition AIADMK also hit out at the Centre over NEP. On Friday, Pradhan wrote to Stalin, asking him to rise above political differences and think about the interests of young learners who will benefit from the new NEP.

He was responding to a letter Stalin wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday. The CM had said linking two centrally sponsored initiatives — Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) and PM SHRI Schools — with the NEP was fundamentally unacceptable.

Pradhan said, “The letter sent to PM is a complete negation of the spirit of cooperative federalism promoted by the Modi government. Hence, it is inappropriate for the state to view NEP 2020 with a myopic vision and spin progressive educational reforms into threats to sustain their political narratives.”