Gopalika Antharjanam: ‘It is our right to learn or teach any language’

Gopalika Antharjanam taught Arabic in a Kerala school from 1986 until her retirement in 2017. In the pluralist society of Kerala, a Brahmin woman hailing from a family of priests, teaching Arabic was not considered blasphemous. In 1982, when she first joined a school as a teacher of Arabic for five months, a section of students protested, and the school asked her to leave. She feels Prof Feroz Khan, whose appointment to the Sanskrit Department of Banaras Hindu University has sparked a students’ protest, must take this route. Today, the word circulates quickly, but I would say it is his right to learn or teach whatever subject or language he chooses.