Imkong Walling
Asserting, taking a stand has certainly not been the Nagaland state government’s greatest strength. Sitting by the fence and letting things pass by, when it comes to policies concerning the North-eastern region of India, has been a characteristic of the state government, irrespective of the party in power.
It becomes all the more evident when any move or comment by the bosses in New Delhi is greeted with servile obeisance or utter silence. The recent controversy raked up by a comment made by the Union Home Minister, Amit Shah with regard to making Hindi a compulsory subject till the Secondary level has been one such instance.
Shah was quoted, by the Press Information Bureau, commenting that the North-east states, including Nagaland, have agreed to make Hindi compulsory in schools up to Class 10. He purportedly made the statement at the 37th meeting of the Parliamentary Official Language Committee, in New Delhi on April 7. It was not until the next day when the perplexing comment hit home generating quite a debate.
The greater concern though was a clearly silent posturing of the state government, including the 60 MLAs and the 2 MPs, who made no effort to clear the air. It was an IAS bureaucrat, who had to serve as the state government’s mouthpiece, clarifying to the media, only the next evening, that there was no such directive from the Centre.
None of the legislators has had the gumption to clarify, rather passing on the responsibility to a bureaucrat, thereby reasserting a submissive predisposition towards Delhi even when it was clear that the onus was on the states and not the Centre to decide on the language of choice. The indifference only served to stir up perceived anti-Hindi sentiments in a politically sensitive region.
Coming back to the controversy over Hindi as a medium of learning in Nagaland, it would be prudent to refrain from giving it an ethnic undertone. It is clear the Modi-Shah electoral combo has its own agenda but nowhere in the New Education Policy is it declared that Hindi has to be mandatorily adopted as a language of learning by the states. The choice rests with the states.
Besides, Nagas are not new to Hindi and one might as well view it from a multilingual perspective and the advantages that come with learning a new or multiple languages.
Language is power and mastering a new lingo, be it Hindi or any other, does not imply that one has to restructure beliefs or be consumed by the culture from which it originated. It would only serve as a force multiplier, an instrument of empowerment, adding to the repertoire of languages that are there already.
Did borrowing Assamese and giving it a Naga twist make the Nagas any less Naga? Did learning in English push one into abandoning the Naga identity?
The writer is a Principal Correspondent at The Morung Express. Comments can be sent to imkongwalls@gmail.com
