Modi promises CMs’ meet on education in mother tongue
05/06/2014 1:54 amNew Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday promised Chief Minister Siddaramaiah that the Centre will consider convening a meeting of chief ministers to take their views on amending the Constitution to make mother tongue the compulsory medium of instruction in primary schools.
The chief minister, who met the prime minister here, told reporters that the latter responded positively to his suggestion to convene the meeting of the chief ministers at the earliest.
“The prime minister expressed his surprise over the recent Supreme Court order, quashing the State government’s 1994 language policy, making mother tongue or Kannada the compulsory medium of instruction in primary schools,” Siddaramaiah said.
The chief minister said that he had told Modi that the apex court judgement will have all-India repercussions and will be a major blow to regional languages.
The Centre must intervene and protect regional languages, he said.
Siddaramaiah, who had skipped the swearing-in ceremony of Modi, said that there was no need to attach any political significance to it.
On Tamil Nadu’s demand to constitute the Cauvery Management Board, the chief minister said that he requested the prime minister not to take any hasty decision on the issue, as a monitoring committee already existed to oversee the sharing of water between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.
On Tuesday, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalitha had requested the prime minister to constitute the Board to supervise sharing of the Cauvery water among the riparian states.
Allocate funds
Earlier in the day, Siddaramaiah met Railway Minister D V Sadananda Gowda at the Rail Bhavan and requested him to allocate maximum funds from the Railway Ministry to Karnataka to complete pending projects.
Gowda rejected Siddaramaiah’s request to reduce the State’s share in the costs of railway projects.
He said that in the interest of Karnataka, the State government should share the costs.
The Railway minister said several states were sharing the costs and Karnataka too should follow suit.http://kannadigaworld.com/news/karnataka/86736.html
Comment:
Dear Sri Kalyan ji:
This is an extremely important initiative. The early years of a child, all linguists agree, are the years of cognitive formation and development of the mind. In that process, the Mother and then the Mother Tongue are the imperatives. To teach through another medium is to stunt the mind, the thought formation, of the learner and to produce a translated mind.
The social and cultural role of one's own language is universally agreed to be equally undeniable. A people divested of their language 'lose theie voice' so to say. As Sri Aurobindo noted in his book
The Human Cycle,
“How much a distinct human group loses by not possessing a
separate tongue of its own or by exchanging its natural selfexpression
for an alien form of speech, can be seen by the examples
of the British colonies
...
Ireland had its own tongue when it had its own free nationality
and culture and its loss was a loss to humanity as well as to the
Irish nation. For what might not this Celtic race with its fine psychic
turn and quick intelligence and delicate imagination, which did
so much in the beginning for European culture and religion, have
given to the world through all these centuries under natural
conditions? But the forcible imposition of a foreign tongue and
the turning of a nation into a province left Ireland for so many
centuries mute and culturally stagnant, a dead force in the life of
Europe.
...
Modern India is another striking example. Nothing has stood
more in the way of the rapid progress in India, nothing has more
successfully prevented her self-finding and development under
modern conditions than the long overshadowing of the Indian
tongues as cultural instruments by the English language.
...
Language is the sign of the cultural life of a people, the index
of its soul in thought and mind that stands behind and enriches
its soul in action.”
kapil kapoor