NEP 2020 and Language

 As we ponder and implement NEP 2020, the question of identity, culture, ethnicity, language, education and time-tested and research-based shreds of evidence formulates one aspect clear that teaching students in their mother tongue makes them much more comfortable and sharp than teaching them in any other language. however, UNESCO data confirms that around 40% of worldwide learners are educated in a language other than their mother tongue.

This leads to numerous problems. Students face setbacks and other social and educational hiccups. To address this issue, the government of India, through NEP 2020 took the revolutionary decision of giving education in the mother tongue. So Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) ordering to use the mother tongue for teaching is a needed and admirable move.

Singapore, Thailand, China, Israel, China, Taiwan, Japan etc got independence almost with India. However, their education system is much better than the Indian education system. One of the most important reasons for this high standard is teaching in mother tongues. 

Thomas Macaulay loathed India and the Indian education system and created a new English education system to produce a class to help the British govern and control India and the Indians. This was Indian in colour and blood but British in morals, opinions, taste and style. They were more British and less Indian. That was the metamorphosis, the English language brought into the lives of Indians.

Noticing this fall, Gandhiji and some other nationalist leaders expressed their deep distress over English education. Not only this, they realised that the English language is creating a deep divide and inequality between English-educated and non-English-educated people. This English has crippled the educated class mentally prejudiced and wounded, morally clumsy and disconnected from their land, society, culture and families. In other words, they are less patriotic and ready to leave their motherland, kith and kin at the first opportunity.

Nationalist leaders like Purshottam Das Tandon, C. Rajagopalachari, Govind Ballabh Pant, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Gopal Krishna Gokhale, Annie Besant, Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, etc understood the negative impact of English on Indians. These leaders and freedom fighters not only have a brilliant understanding of the people and culture of India but also its fabulous spiritual and literary heritage. They supported early education in Hindi or their tongue and English as a second language.

Interestedly leaders like Nehru, Ambedkar, Seth Govind Das, Abul Kalam Azad, T.T. Krishnamachari, and E.V. Ramaswamy (Periyar), advocated English. Now, it is a well-known fact that education in the mother tongue is highly beneficial for children. UNESCO, through its Global Monitoring Education report, has supported early education in the mother tongue. Mother tongue-based bilingual schooling is much more useful than any other language for pedagogical grounds.

There is a big delusion in India, that without good English, one cannot get a good job. They are made to believe that education in the mother tongue deprives students of a good career. However, researchers have different opinions. Students with their mother tongue at the schooling medium found it very easy to master English later. When students learn English or any other second language later in their career, the skills learnt while being trained in their mother tongue can be used.

Research at the University of Ontario and on Latin American-origin learners found that proficiency in English is directly related to the teachings of English at the school level. The students who have early education in their mother tongue were found better in English than those who have been introduced to English at the school level.

In India, school education has given birth to many educational and social problems. Education in a language other than the mother tongue has dropped the literacy rate by 18% to 20%. The college dropout rate is increased by 20% to 22%. It is high time that policymakers must renounce the idea that English education is essential for the career growth and progress of the nation.   

English-educated people in India are seen as very self-centred. Getting and chance, Convent educated and English medium learners are always ready to leave their families and the nation. They also found lacking in nationalism and family ties. Senior citizens can be seen living alone and their children settled abroad. This is the biggest reward of English medium education.

Apart from benefits, education in the mother tongue is a fundamental right of every child. Teachings in the mother tongue also lead to the upliftment of cultural, spiritual and value systems. Such education can strengthen society and the nation. So the NEP and CBSE policymakers should follow up on admissions, teacher recruitment, curriculum expansion and development and teaching material to cater for the need of Indian language students.

The Indian Education system is hijacked by English Education. Those methods represented in the past the value, culture and ethos are to be recaptured to enable students to focus towards free-thinking, rational approach, nationalism culture and value system. The nasty ghost of Maucauly went so deep into the psyche of Indian Elites and the policymakers that they could not visualize that the soul of their country has been mortgaged with the mortal and suicidal darkness. 

A tale of urban decay

 Plunder story without any problem in any city..." The big story is that reflections on disaster and dreadfulness stories are true to all the cities where most of the people rush to fulfill their unfulfilled dreams in the 21st century Nalanda, Hampi and Taxila.

These cities inescapably ellipsis in every country where ellipsing is a reaction edifying and economic pattern juggles up ideas of the forward-looking calculating artificially, dress-down super-rich tech expert, stylish nerd, eye pulling ultra luxurious restaurants with fabulous dishes on their carte du jour, and, for those with a political-sociological bent of wits, a fabulous unruffled artificially liberal-tolerant ridge, an inheritance of ages the cities were the worldwide epicenter of thriving supremacists. 

Now cities are the placard examples of urban decay in India and other parts of the world. Media is flooded with detailed stories of city rots, a pandemic of street crimes, use of narcotics and drugs, shabbily dressed and zombie-like drugs and sex addicts but pretend to be liberal, tolerant, cool secular and modern, empty ghostly malls and old buildings and a flood of people staring for freebies and generosities.

Millions and billions of people are addicted to narcotics and drugs to get short-lived but splendid highs. Children boost and introduce their sex partners without any shame and nervousness. Children come home after narcotic and drug sessions. They feel pride to rebel against their parents and seniors.

When the space is encroached by a drug-crime and encroachment problems. The justice system is almost non-functional or kind to wrong-doers, affluent, white-collar cool citizens, and business class try to leave the place and the number of worthless freeloaders, beggars, drug addicts, criminals etc swell.

Branded food stores are shut. Luxury retail chains also try to flee. Businesses try to find new addresses. After March 2020, when the Covid lock-down hit the world, cities suffered the most. However, the tendency and attraction of freeloading benefits crossed all the limits.

Pandemic-period remote work system got acceptance, and the office buildings, railway land, temple land, public land and parking spaces and vacant land were encroached on by illegal migrants and intruders. This system pushed many working people out of the system. Some left for their native places. Thomas Hardy's "The Return of the Native" type story.

All this did not stop the march of ruthless slayers. The unstoppable march of illegal intruders, criminals and land grabbers and authorities and the helpless police due to much-hyped human rights and their peddlers, soft and lethargic justice system give immense power to these nihilist bosses. For them, poverty, backwardness, illiteracy and incompetency are status symbols to boast with pride and fanfare.

All are worried and scared of this urban rot. However, the worry is only limited to the drawing room chat. Nationalist right-wingers are haunted and bullied by the judiciary, right activists, and left-winger toolkit branded as inclusive liberal and tolerant. The celebrated liberals blame the inequalities, the meritorious hard-working class and the political and social system of rich and poor divide and gap. In return, they advocates more free-loading schemes, goodbye to merit and talent to give employment to these huge vote banks.

The urban decay is like 'Cocktown' of "The Hard Times" by Charles Dickens.

Manipur violence: Violence for unlawful trade and benefits

 The recent violence in Manipur has its roots in an over-a-decade-old demand by the Meitei Hindus for a Scheduled Tribe category. Manipur High Court also supported this demand and directed the Union Tribal Ministry to give ST tag to the Meitei community. Before the merger with the Indian Union, the community enjoyed the ST tag.

Against this order, on May 3, Kuki tribals organised a very aggressive solidarity march in which provocative slogans were raised. Meitei also organised counter-protests. These resulted in clashes and violence. Kuki used women and children as shields to stop or chase away the security forces.

Through the newspaper reports and the people who have also served in Manipur and know the ground realities quite well, one can safely say about the conflict in Manipur is not between Manipuri Hindus and Christians.  it is an attempt made by the powerful foreign-aided Christian Church, Christian missionaries and anti-Hindu toolkit and ecosystem to defame the Hindus and the nation and send a false message to the West that Christians are being massacred in cold blood. This propaganda is only one of the tactics employed by them on the path towards their end.

According to General M M Naravane (retd), involvement of  foreign agencies "cannot be ruled out." China and Myanmar have been fueling the violence and the insurgencies in the northeast. illegal intruders from Bangladesh and Rohingya Muslims are also responsible for the escalation of violence.

The Church and the Christian missionaries have been systematically converting tribals in large numbers by luring them in a variety of ways -supplying liquor and money, building houses and providing education to their children in Christian convent schools. A recent alarming development is the involvement of the Church in arming the Kukis with smuggled Chinese arms, in their fight with Meitei Hindus in the light of the HC order on granting ST status to Hindu Meiteis. Christian Kukis want to grab all the benefits and reservation.

Drug trafficking, smuggling of narcotics and poppy cultivation have been major problems in the northeast states. Opposition leaders wanted an issue to dilute the bad name after the Bengal violence, foreign countries and the press want to bludgeon Brand Modi, NGOs and other bodies that have had either the authorization to get foreign funds/donations or their registration cancelled or left-oriented academics and 'Khan Market Gang' of media wanted a space. So tragic violence of Manipur soothed their deprived ambition. 

The successive Central Governments are to be blamed for not doing anything for the sizeable Hindu population in Manipur. They always kept on appeasing the Christian missionaries and foreign-funded NGOs. The attitude of the Central government and its officers posted there have alienated both Hindus and Christians in Manipur.

The Hindi-speaking officers posted from North India behave as if they are the real masters/Indians and that Manipuri speakers are less Indian and are destined to serve the real masters/ Indians. It is this condescending attitude of North Indian politicians and bureaucrats which created resentment among Hindus in the North East. They are also doing the same in the Hindu majority states of South India and also in the Hindu kingdom of Nepal.

This resentment has made conversions easier for the missionaries. Due to this attitude, the missionaries have been successful in turning Nagaland, Mizoram and Meghalaya into Christian-majority states. The Christian population in Manipur has grown to 42%. Conversions on a large scale are taking place among tribes in Arunachal and in the Bodo-dominated areas of Assam too.

The present violence in Manipur is fuelled by the Christian clergies to succeed in their first step - carving a Christian majority state out of Manipur by including the hilly areas of the state. The divisive and tactful strategy of the Christian missionaries is to wait and watch till the whole of the North East turns into a Christian-majority region. They will then, with the help of their Western counterparts, play the victim card like the Muslims in various international forums and demand the creation of a separate country for Christians encompassing the entire North East. The riots in Manipur are only the beginning of a well-planned/long-term strategy. They are following the calculated method that the Muslims and Jinnah adopted in 1947.

The cultivation of narcotics is a big source of income for these Kuki Christians. They are very well supported by the Church and the Christian missionaries in this narcotics cultivation. Narcotics cultivation and trade, massive intrusion of Kuki Christians from Myanmar, the tension of native Meiteis about the encroachments on their land and other resources by the Kukis, mass conversion by the Christian missionaries toolkit and ecosystem and other intruders are major issues for the unrest and violence.