The politics of language: Only-Kannada policy of Karnataka is a gift to private school cartels

The politics of language in schools is back yet again — this time in Karnataka. The state government on Tuesday amended the Right To Education (RTE) Act to make Kannada the mandatory medium of instruction from classes one to five. Through another bill, the Kannada Language Learning Bill, the government has also made learning Kannada mandatory from classes one to ten. The amended RTE Act also provides for one’s mother tongue as the medium of instruction, instead of Kannada. But it is unlikely to work because it’s practically impossible to equip schools with the necessary infrastructure — mainly teachers and text books — to train students in different mother tongues. The result, therefore, is that if you are in Karnataka and are in a school affiliated to the state board, primary education must be in Kannada. [caption id=“attachment_2182897” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Representational image. AFP[/caption] The amendment has been necessitated by the verdict of a Supreme Court division bench in 2014 against the Karnataka government that imposing mother tongue as the medium of education violated one’s fundamental rights. Since 1982, Karnataka had tried to impose the mother tongue rule in the state, which was finally struck down by the Karnataka High Court in 1994. The state government took its case to the Supreme Court, which also ruled against the decision. The government has now taken the route of legislation to counter the Supreme Court verdict. However, the new rule cannot be applied to CBSE and ICSE schools because they have nothing to do with the Karnataka Board. Whether it still makes sense to meddle with school education or not, language is a politically volatile issue across India. That the DMK rose to power on the back of anti-Hindi agitation in Tamil Nadu and the Congress was permanently booted out of the state for backing Hindi is a potent reminder of the emotional inflammability of language in regional politics. Language is an integral part of one’s culture and hence any effort to preserve and nourish it is justified. However, as the Supreme Court noted, dictating a particular language as the medium of instruction violates one’s fundamental right. The medium of instruction, that too in a liberalised economy, is now a determinant of one’s career prospects. The medium of instruction pitted against the mother tongue here is obviously English. And the debate about which is superior is not new. The proponents of both have convincing arguments. Supporters of mother tongue have a point when they say that native language carries with it thousands of years of thought processes, and certain concepts, cultural constructs and thoughts can be expressed appropriately only in one’s own language. They also quote principles of linguistic relativity and research to show how mother tongue is important for strong cognitive skills. The backers of English don’t necessarily counter these arguments, but take a utilitarian position that in the globalised world, English is the passport to a good career and the gateway to opportunities overseas. Their argument is supported by the growing preference of parents for admitting their children into English medium schools. For instance, according to a report by the Sarva Siksha Abhigyan (SSA) in Karnataka in 2014, the number of English medium schools had nearly doubled in five years since 2006-07 while the number of Kannada medium schools went down. The number of children opting for Kannada medium also went down by about nine percent. With the states imposing local languages either as mandatory medium of instruction or as a compulsory subject, students are also shifting to CBSE and ICSE schools . As this report from Pune says, year after year, the demand for English medium schools is on the rise along with non-state Board schools. Children are forced to abandon their state boards because they are not allowed to pursue English as the medium of instruction. The situation is the same everywhere — English medium has a huge aspirational value and even poor parents prefer to send their children to private schools because government schools teach in mother tongues. The opponents of the mandatory mother tongue policy also express concern that the children might find it difficult to shift to English as the medium of instruction in higher classes besides the disadvantage of language non-proficiency. For the politicians, stoking the language passion is standard formula. That they do nothing to improve pedagogy and infrastructure in government run schools clearly betrays their political vile. If they were really serious about the importance of culture and cognitive skills that local languages alone can aid, they should have had a bigger plan, where learning and not the language, takes precedence over everything else. In this setting, learning can certainly be in one’s mother tongue, but the choice should be left to the children and parents. If they see value, they will choose their mother tongue. Instead, successive governments in states, including in Karnataka, have withdrawn from education, leaving it to private profiteers, except exploiting language for narrow political ends. As this report shows, the enrolment to private schools in the country is on a constant rise, which is a terrible sign because this education causes a huge drain on poor families. Eighty percent of the schools in India, and about 70 percent in Karnataka, are still government-run. This should make governments feel responsible. Instead, if what they offer is only limiting the choices of children, what they are willy-nilly doing is driving more and more children into private schools, a large number of which are illegal, and retaining only those who are helpless. Why can’t the governments promote local languages without dictating the choice to our future generation? First they opened up everything without preparing a level playing field, now they are making it worse by making personal choice impossible for the poor.