Decoding the NEP with Pallam Raju, TKS Elangovan & Rakesh Sinha

The new National Education Policy (NEP) does not impose Hindi but only proposes to teach the children in their mother tongue, said BJP Rajya Sabha MP Rakesh Sinha in a conversation with Prabhu Chawla, Editorial Director, The New Indian Express, and author and senior journalist Kaveree Bamzai on TNIE’s Expressions, a series of live webcasts with people who matter. Sinha was debating the pros and cons of the NEP with the Congress leader MM Pallam Raju and DMK’s Rajya Sabha MP TKS Elangovan. Sinha said Hindi does not pose a threat of imposition on any Indian language, rather the real threat is from English.“No Indian language is threatened by Hindi and neither is Hindi threatened by them. But they are all threatened by the domination of English. We are not against English — it is a very important means of communication but that does not mean you will impose it right from a child’s birth. Education in the mother tongue is considered most scientific,” he said.Explaining why Tamil Nadu does not find the three-language set up very exciting, Elangovan said: “In 2006, we faced this problem. Kalaignar (M Karunanidhi) was the CM and he worked out a method — education will be in Tamil, but children with different mother tongues will also learn that language in the school. Everyone accepted that. We are not against any single language. We do not want one language to be imposed on us which is different from learning a language or studying in a language,” he said.