G. Babu Jayakumar | Sound, Fury Over NEP’s Three-Language Formula

The recent explosion of angry exchanges between political leaders from Tamil Nadu and Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan in diverse arenas like Parliament, media and social media threw up a political spectacle that many people failed to fathom. Pradhan’s nitpicking on the DMK like recalling the heckling of former chief minister J. Jayalalithaa in the Assembly and proclamations like “Tamil language, culture and pride is nobody’s hegemony” or the direct charge of “retrograde politics” for gaining political brownies and reviving the DMK’s political fortunes made no dent on the popularity of the party. Little realising that DMK’s storming of Fort St George, the seat of power, in 1967, was possible only because of a historic ‘language war’ it waged against Hindi imposition in 1965, Pradhan said “DMK’s latest cacophony on language imposition and its stance on NEP’s three language formula exposes their hypocrisy.” While it is debatable if it was a hypocritical act or not, it was a similar cacophony in 1965 that catapulted the DMK to power two years later. It was during the agitation that prolonged till the order on Hindi was withdrawn in 1940, Periyar first said: “Hereafter our cry should be Tamil Nadu for Tamilians.” The next agitation against Hindi imposition was in 1948 when the Madras Presidency government led by Omandur Ramasamy Reddiar tried to make Hindi compulsory in Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam speaking regions and optional in Tamil speaking areas. With Tamil Nadu students climbing great heights by occupying top positions in scientific establishments like the Indian Space Research Organisation and even going on to head Google without learning Hindi, people feel that it’s all hunky dory without Hindi.