Chennai: Issuing a stern warning to the Union Government against stirring a hornet’s nest and forcing the people of Tamil Nadu to reveal their quintessential rebellious nature by insisting on the adaptation of the National Education Policy (NEP) or the three-language system, Chief Minister M K Stalin swore to resist the entry of anything that was detrimental to the interest of the Tamil language, Tamil people and Tamil Nadu into the State as long as he and the DMK were there to protect them.
Speaking at a government event to launch projects and distribute assistance to beneficiaries at Manjakuppam ground in Cuddalore on Friday, Stalin told Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, who had written to him enumerating the BJP government’s efforts to develop Tamil, not worry about taking care of Tamil but speak to the people who had lost their mother tongues because of Hindi to know the conspiracy behind making Hindi compulsory.
Tamil language was not waiting for the BJP to come and nurture it and the NEP itself was brought in not to develop education in the country but only nourish Hindi language, Stalin said in uncertain terms, hitting out at Pradhan and the Union Government for not releasing the funds due to the State on the pretext that the State had not followed the NEP and then telling the State government to not play politics with education.
Shooting direct questions to Pradhan, Stalin said that while it would not take a moment for the State government to stop the Union Government from collecting the tax money from the people of the State, it believed in federalism that forms the basis of the Constitution enjoining the practice of ‘giving and taking.’ It was a curse to the nation that people who did not understand such basics were ruling the country, Stalin said.
Retaliating to Pradhan for his ‘don’t play politics’ remark, he asked whether it was the State government or the Union Government that was denying the release of funds for one project by citing noncompliance on another project that was playing politics with education. He asked: Was it not the blackmailing of the State to adopt the three-language formula by handing out the threat of cutting out the funds playing politics?
Wondering if trying to turn a multilingual country like India into a single language speaking nation would not amount to playing politics, he asked what it was when Hindi was imposed on others in the guise of an education policy.
While the State utilized the public funds to carry out welfare schemes, the Union Government was misusing them to realise their agenda borne out of communalism and to promote Hindi and Sanskrit in the nation surreptitiously, he said.
Since the Dravidian Model government knew how to break the obstacles thrown at it and also take care of the people’s welfare, which it had been doing all along, the cutting out of the funds was not new to it and it could handle it with the sustained support of the people, the Chief Minister said.
Recounting the history of the Dravidian Movement that broke the shackles of the people who were prevented from entering schools a century ago, Stalin said that the latest moves to put up roadblocks on the development of the State and the people were aimed at bringing back those days of confining education to a privileged few.
While the movement through its struggles had ensured social justice to help people from the Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribes, Most Backward and Backward Classes gain education leading to a situation in which people from the marginalized communities were doing well, he erstwhile oppressors wanted to reverse the situation and hence were throwing the obstacles to providing education to the people of the State, he said.
