CHENNAI: Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Saturday appealed to the Tamil Nadu government to introduce Tamil as the medium of instruction in medical and technical education.“Making mother tongue Tamil the medium of instruction would help Tamil medium students understand lessons better and will help them pursue higher education and conduct further research in their subjects,” said Shah at the platinum jubilee celebrations of India Cements held in Chennai.
“Tamil is one of the oldest languages in the world. Preserving and promoting Tamil language is the responsibility of the entire nation. If the Tamil Nadu government takes steps to provide medical and technical education in Tamil language, it will in itself be considered a great service to the promotion of the language,” he said. Shah said several states have already initiated steps and students have started deriving educational benefits from the move.
Shah’s Tamil push comes a month after Chief Minister MK Stalin expressed strong displeasure over the recommendations of the Parliamentary Committee on Official Language, which promoted the use of Hindi in higher education institutions such as IIT, IIM and other Central institutions in A category states.The report also proposed to make knowledge of Hindi mandatory in recruitment exams for jobs in the Union government.
Terming the recommendations as imposition of Hindi on non-Hindi speaking states, Stalin in his letter to the prime minister dated October 16 said the Amit Shah-headed panel’s recommendations are against the democratic principles of the country. He said attempts to “impose Hindi are divisive in nature” and said it would be unacceptable not only to Tamil Nadu “but also to any state that respects and values its mother tongue”.
Stalin said the proposal of mandatory Hindi paper (removal of English in exams) went against federal principles of the Constitution and would only harm the nation’s multi-lingual fabric.DMK, VCK, MDMK and a few other parties and organisations also staged demonstrations against the alleged imposition of Hindi.