CHENNAI: Chief Minister MK Stalin on Monday announced that the 2,739 student hostels run by various departments of the state government will be renamed as ‘Samooga Needhi’ (Social Justice) hostels by removing the caste and religious identifiers, presently part of their names depending on which departments they come under.
The move is a continuation of various measures being implemented by the present government to eradicate caste and religion-based differences among students, with an aim to build a future society that is egalitarian in nature, he said.
Stalin, in a statement, said the government’s decision followed careful consideration of the Justice K Chandru committee’s key recommendation that all caste identifiers in government and private schools be removed. The committee was constituted to recommend measures to eradicate caste-based differences among students in educational institutions.
The statement said that in government-run student hostels named after eminent leaders, ‘social justice’ will be appended to their names.
Stalin assured that the change of names would not have any impact on the existing infrastructural and monetary support offered to these hostels for school and college students.
Existing names of hostels act as caste identifiers
The 2,739 hostels include 727 hostels under the Backward Classes Welfare department, 455 under the Most Backward Classes Welfare department, 157 for Denotified Communities, 20 hostels under the Minorities Welfare department, 1,332 hostels by Adi Dravidar Welfare department and 48 by the Tribal Welfare department. A total of 1,79,568 students study in these hostels, the statement said.
It is to be noted that almost all these hostels bear the name of their department, which acts as an identifier for different caste categories.
Reiterating his “Dravidian Model” government’s commitment to social justice and ensuring ‘everything for everyone’, Stalin recalled his announcement in the Assembly that the term ‘colony’, which has socially become an identifier to predominantly denote the place where Scheduled Caste people lived, would be removed from government records.
Efforts would be taken to eliminate it from common usage as well, he added.
He further pointed to his demand to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to amend the names of some of the castes in Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes list by replacing the suffixes ‘N’ and ‘A’, considered lacking respect in Tamil, with ‘R’ to ensure respect for them.
In June this year, the School Education Department also issued a government order, stipulating measures to be taken to prevent caste-based violence in schools, he said.