Caught in the crossfire - are Indian school children the hapless victims of language politics spurred by North Indian imposition of Hindi and attempts by our Tamil politicians to make Tamil a compulsory subject as a bulwark against such unwanted Hindi imposition?

    Along the lines of the previous topic that we discussed, I felt that it is the need of the hour to share my thoughts on language learning at Indian schools across the board...or need I say across various boards!. The boards that I am referring to are those of education in India varying from CBSC to international board and stateboard. While there are many other education boards out there, since our current topic deals with imposition of Hindi language at school level by the Central government as a compulsory subject. We need to understand that the moment the Central government ventures to make Hindi a compulsory subject for school children across various boards and different states in India, the implicit idea is their wish to somehow get Tamilians to learn Hindi and start using Hindi from school level, since the possibility of language learning across all cultures drops significantly as people age. It is one thing if people choose Hindi of their own volition in which case they are by all means free to do so as they are entitled to their choices but in most cases in Tamil Nadu, it is quite the opposite because our people understand such steps taken by the Central government to make Hindi a compulsory subject in schools as an attempt to impose Hindi on us against our choice.

     Our Tamil politicians are well aware of the pulse of us Tamilians in our state and hence seek to make Tamil a compulsory language so that children and their parents can walk away from such an attempt at imposing Hindi on us spearheaded by the Central government with the excuse that our children cannot be overburdened with the need to learn another language which is Hindi because they already have English and Tamil (language of the state) as important subjects. English is vital in the job market and Tamil is the language of our state which represents our cultural and linguistic identity. When we see that parents in Tamil Nadu know Tamil much better than any new language unknown to them making it easier for them to teach their children Tamil, aside from their heart's longing to pass on their linguistic and cultural values carried across by our ancient mother tongue, then it becomes abundantly clear why Hindi has 0 chance of pervading our lives, given that knowing it is not going to be beneficial to us in any way, unless we travel to the North for business purposes or settle there.

   Whilst I wholeheartedly agree and commend the underlying motivation of our Tamil Nadu government in considering the thoughts and deepest yearning of our people to avoid Hindi imposition at all costs - to which end Tamil has been made a compulsory subject in schools in Tamil Nadu and at the same time, I am starkly opposed to the imposition of Hindi against our people's wishes by forcing our children to learn it. It can be agreed by all parties that both Hindi (in the rest of India where it is spoken) and Tamil (in Tamil Nadu) can be learnt separately by children at home or by their own endeavours during their free time aided by their parents, I cannot help but think that this row of having national and state languages as compulsory subjects at school has muddied the waters of what it actually means to learn a language and use it - a question of personal choice which should ideally be left not just to the parents of children but children themselves... and while I am fundamentally opposed to Hindi imposition on Tamilians especially at school level on our children by the Central government which seeks to make Hindi compulsory for our school children, I also disagree with the idea of making Tamil compulsory for all our children at schools in TN. This is not because I lack any respect or disregard the richness of my ancient mother tongue Tamil, it is because I am more in favour of the idea that school is a place that prepares our children to face the world from a professional point of view, hence provision must be made to have a greater diversity of foreign languages for our school children to choose from which would later come in handy when they seek jobs in multinational companies from other European countries like France or Germany, hence French and German can be options aside from Spanish as these are languages that are spoken in many countries owing to colonialism in the past, French and German in particular are quite helpful in securing jobs in the numerous multinational companies from France, Switzerland and Germany that have set up shop in Tamil Nadu which can further help boost the GDP of Tamil Nadu because professionals with knowledge of these languages are much sought after by companies from these European countries. To this end, it would be beneficial for the Central government of India and the State government of Tamil Nadu to set aside their language feud - the first step of which would entail the Central government to renounce its idea of imposing Hindi on the school children of our state and backing off from applying pressure on the State government to use Tamil imposition on our children as a shield against their political onslaught. While some school boards have these foreign language options, the compulsory nature of Hindi and local languages in such schools, waters down the quality of linguistic knowledge of children in those foreign languages which are already 3rd languages for them, hence they cannot fully reap the benefits of learning them, also because they have other subjects to focus on.

         It is noteworthy that learning of Japanese as a foreign language is being promoted by the TN government (for those interested in that language) to help those people secure jobs in Japanese companies, as a follow-up, I am convinced that language learning at school must have a greater variety of choices for our children to choose from (not just in TN but across India at a later stage) like French and German and no language should be compulsory at schools (at the national or state level). This would not just help countless people across India to get to fine-tune themselves to a job market which is increasingly globalised in this day and age and contribute to the GDP of India but also get out of the proverbial "frog in the pond" mindset of thinking that everything is about ourselves (as if India is the only country in the world) whereas the world is a larger place and there is so much for us as Indians to discover and imbibe from others. In the end, the world is a family, every nation is like a family member, the uniqueness of which cannot be understated and the greater our humility in admitting that we do not have it all, whether we are Indians or Americans or Europeans, the more we can appreciate and acknowledge the need for increasing collaboration between nations and people to bring about progress for the common and shared welfare of each other and humanity in general. The first step towards this shared endeavour, is to acknowledge that language learning is a personal choice and to widen our horizons by providing a greater diversity of choices for our school children to choose from so that they can make choices that would prove to be instrumental to them in securing a better future for themselves both on a personal and professional level.

       Finally, I would like to sum up my thoughts on language learning with 2 quotes, first one is Nelson Mandela's quote which challenges the traditional mindset of most people in the world that English per se, is enough to secure a good job and encourages us to learn other foreign languages as well which not just helps us individually but significantly improves diplomatic relations between countries, both at international level but also at grassroots level between people of various countries and helps achieve world peace.

"If you speak to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart" - Nelson Mandela 

The second quote is that of German writer and poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe which challenges the idea of most people in our country that one needs to learn one's own language well to know other languages. Goethe's quote further reinforces Tamil poet Bharthiar's statement on Tamil being the most beautiful language that he knew, among many others (and he knew many others!). It is one thing for our Tamil people to vaunt the beauty of Tamil while knowing only English and Tamil, yet it is another thing for them to learn many languages as Bharathiar did and make the same statement about Tamil as he did.

 "He who does not know foreign languages does not know anything about his own" - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.