MK Stalin’s DMK government opens with a salvo against NEP

MK Stalin (File image: Twitter/@arivalayam)

As soon as the Muthuvel Karunanidhi Stalin-led Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) took over the reins of Tamil Nadu government, a confrontation between the Dravida party and Right-wing groups, to which the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) belongs, was widely anticipated. But, the prevailing situation of rising COVID-19 cases forced the DMK government to be on the back foot and carry all the parties together in its battle against the second wave.

However, even such a difficult situation did not stop the Tamil Nadu government from raising the banner of revolt against the BJP-led central government’s new education policy.

Tamil Nadu’s School Education Minister Anbil Mahesh Poyyamozhi fired the first salvo against the Centre when he declared on May 17 that the state Education Secretary will not take part in the meeting of school education secretaries convened by the Union government. He also came out strongly against the new education policy calling it as ‘kula kalvi thittam’ (caste-based policy).

The term ‘kula kalvi’ which the young minister, a close friend of DMK youth wing president Udhayanidhi Stalin, chose was used almost seven decades ago by EVR Periyar, the founder of the Dravidian movement, when he opposed the education policy introduced by the then Madras Presidency premier C Rajagopalachari, in 1953. According to the plan, elementary education was divided into two shifts. In the first shift, the students would attend regular classes and in the second session, they would be sent home to learn the occupation of their parents.

The Dravidar Kazhagam, led by Periyar, vociferously opposed the scheme, pointing out that students of backward and scheduled castes will be forced to learn and take up manual jobs like scavenger, barber, cobbler and so on based on caste, since Hindu professions were caste-based. The protests that swept Tamil Nadu forced Rajaji to quit and K Kamaraj, who succeeded him, withdrew the scheme. Since then successive governments, whether it be the Congress, the DMK or the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) were following the policy of ‘education for all’.

One wonders how the term links with the National Education Policy (NEP), hailed by a section as an education policy for modern India.

First, the proposal to conduct school examinations in Grades 3, 5, and 8, and that too by a National Assessment Centre, is seen as a ploy to filter students from oppressed sections and those from a rural background. Though those in favour of the NEP argue that this is only for an assessment purpose, the policy note does not provide clarity on whether the students who do not live up to the standards of assessment will be promoted to the next level or not. The question then arises: what stops the Union government from coming forward with an official declaration that this assessment will not affect the chances of promotion to the next class?

The policy of filtering students does not stop at the school level. Again, the policy comes with a National Testing Agency (NTA) for higher education, which will be ‘a premier, expert, autonomous testing organization to conduct entrance examinations for undergraduate and graduate admissions’. This is again viewed as a ploy to deprive students coming from the oppressed classes accessing higher education.

The policy strongly opposes ‘numerous very small schools’ and aims at centralised school education. It also wants to end ‘fragmentation of higher education by transforming higher education institutions into large multidisciplinary universities with 3,000 or more students’. For the last seven decades, successive state governments in Tamil Nadu have opened schools and colleges in even remote places to make education universal. But, the NEP speaks of moving in the opposite direction.

On top of everything, the NEP speaks of offering Sanskrit in the three language formula at the school level and higher education. The NEP describes Sanskrit as an ‘important modern language’ and says it possesses a classical literature that is greater in volume than that of Latin and Greek put together.’ While magnanimously admitting ‘India also has an extremely rich literature in other classical languages, including classical Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam and Odia’, the NEP does not say anything about their place in education.

It is as easy as ABC to understand how a state like Tamil Nadu, which protested against Hindi imposition, will react to offering Sanskrit education. The Keezhadi excavation has proved that Tamil had a written dialect in 600 BC, while Sanskrit is written in Devanagari script. The NEP’s high praise for Sanskrit clearly raises the question of how a classical language like Tamil, which is a living language spoken by millions of people, does not deserve similar respect.