COIMBATORE: The Ministry of Human Resource Development, which faced stiff opposition from NDA allies in the State, besides the DMK, for its reported decision to celebrate Teachers Day as Guru Utsav, made announcements for an essay competition in all 22 official languages including Tamil, going out of the way from its normal practice of conducting the competition only English and Hindi.
This year, the ministry is planning to celebrate Teachers Day as ‘Guru Utsav 2014’ to express solidarity with the teaching community and celebrate the excellence of teachers. The ministry also organised an essay writing competition. The announcement about the same was also uploaded on the MHRD’s official website.
The competition was organised in three categories, for classes I-V, VI-VIII and IX-XII.
The topic for classes I-V was ‘The day my teacher gave me a good remark…’, while for classes VI-VIII the topic was ‘The year I got wonderful teacher’. Classes IX-XII can choose between topics ‘My friend told me about this teacher who was a change agent in his/her life’ or ‘I was a changed person after the intervention by my teacher’ or ‘I can never forget this particular teacher because…’.
The ministry had invited entries in English and all 22 scheduled languages including Tamil. The winners will be announced on Wednesday and will be felicitated on September 5 at Delhi.
In fact, probably for the first time in the history, the ministry had made the announcement inviting entries in all 23 languages, English and 22 scheduled languages namely Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri, Konkani, Malayalam, Manipuri, Marathi, Nepali, Oriya, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu, Urdu, Bodo, Santhali, Maithali and Dogri.
The DMK and BJP allies like MDMK and PMK already opposed the Central government’s move to observe Teachers’ Day as Guru Utsav.
Previously, Union HRD Minister Smriti Irani courted controversy by announcing that Teachers’ Day would be renamed ‘Guru Utsav’ and making Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s speech to school children on the day a compulsory event.
Irani later clarified on Monday that it “is not compulsory” for students to listen to the PM’s speech. Irani also clarified that the nomenclature ‘Guru Utsav’ was not coercive or meant to offend anyone.