Three language policy is dangerous, says TNCC president

Tamil Nadu Congress Committee (TNCC) president Manickam Tagore on Saturday said the Centre’s three-language policy was “dangerous” and would undermine the country’s integrity, social justice, and secular fabric.

“If the Centre imposes Hindi or Sanskrit in the name of the three-language policy, it will have to pay a heavy political price,” he said in a statement.

Urging the Union government to withdraw the compulsory implementation of the three-language policy in CBSE schools, Mr. Tagore said education should be moved from the concurrent list to the State list. “Only State governments can understand the aspirations of local people and frame a curriculum that reflects their needs,” Mr. Tagore said.

The Congress MP, who was recently appointed the TNCC president, described as “deception” the argument that if non-Hindi-speaking States taught Hindi, Hindi-speaking States could, in turn, teach languages such as Tamil.

“There is neither the infrastructure nor the necessary facilities to teach non-Hindi languages in most Hindi-speaking States. This argument is only a means to impose Hindi and Sanskrit. As far as the TNCC is concerned, no language should be imposed. People should learn a language out of interest. But the three-language policy will disproportionately affect non-Hindi-speaking States,” he said.

Mr. Tagore said that while learning foreign languages such as German and French opened up employment opportunities, making an Indian language compulsory as a third language would, in practice, pave the way for the imposition of Hindi or Sanskrit.