The tragedy and the queer irony of the arguments against giving grants to English medium schools in the “defined” by the education policy, flies in the face of specific acts and legislations made in Parliament. Every reasoning, every argument laced with liberal doses of falsehood perpetrated by the Bharatiya Bhasha Suraksha Manch (BBSM) and echoed by people like Congress MP Shantaram Naik, who wonder why parents should have a choice on the medium of instruction for their children, is untenable.
It is shocking how any state government can draw a policy on the Medium of Instruction which vitiates the mandate of “The Goa Daman and Diu Official Language Act 1987”, The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act 2009 and the 86th Constitutional Amendment Act 2002, which inserted Article 21-A as an addition to the Section on Fundamental Rights. The Goa government is in utter contempt of the constitution by stating in its policy that it is the mother tongue which should be the medium of instruction alone and schools teaching only in the mother tongue should be entitled to grants. And Shantaram Naik a Member of Parliament made a statement which goes against these acts passed by the same Parliament of which he is a member by making this absurd remark. Read it to believe it. “The concept of given right to parent to choose MoI for their children is wrong. I don’t understand this concept. How can a parent decide? If tomorrow parents want their children to learn French at the primary level that means government will have to open French medium primary schools in the State”. He and the BJP need some basic education and let us try and give it to them.
Section 3 of the Goa Daman and Diu Official Language Act 1987 while making the Konkani the official language and use of Marathi in Goa and Gujarati in Daman and Diu permissible for official purposes, states explicitly, “Provided further that the government SHALL NOT, in granting aid to any educational or cultural institution discriminate against any such institution only on the ground of language.
Section 4 makes a specific reference to the English language. Section 4 states Notwithstanding anything in Section 3, the English language shall continue to be used in addition to languages in that section for ALL OR ANY of the official purposes of the Union Territory.
The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act 2009, (normally referred to as the RTE Act) has been literally scoffed at by the BJP and Congress MP Shantaram Naik. The underlying tenet of this Act is that education should not only be compulsory, it should be free for all children from the ages of 6 to 14. Chapter II Section 3(1) states ‘Every child of the age of six to fourteen years shall have a right to free and compulsory education in a neighbourhood school till completion of elementary education and (2) For the purposes of sub section (1), no child shall be liable to pay any kind of fee or charges or expenses which may prevent him or her from pursuing and completion the elementary education”
The guiding principle here is that the government has to ensure education, and to ensure education, the government has to grant aid to institutions so that the children are not charged fees. And since this has to be read with Section 3 of the Official languages act, the government cannot discriminate against any institution in the grant of aid only on the grounds of language.
The contours of this issue are so well defined and coloured that there is no space for a single shade of grey. The BBSM movement to deny grants to schools imparting education in English, is bad in law and each member of the BBSM should be prosecuted by law for carrying on a campaign which defies a State Act, a Central Act and an important constitutional amendment.
Meanwhile, the government’s decision to send the issue to a Select Committee has no constitutional and legal validity. No select committee has the power to recommend and no cabinet has the power of overruling legislations passed in the Assembly or Parliament. Moreover the right to free and compulsory education is a Fundamental Right and inserted as Section 21-A in the 86th Constitutional Amendment, 2002. It states “The State shall provide free and compulsory education to all children of the age of 6 to 14 years in such manner as the state by law determine”.
Therefore, the decision of the Parsekar government to flash a cabinet decision in this regard and refusing to pass a law, is not valid. Here it has no choice. It is taking decisons without a constitutional mandate. The select committee cannot decide whether grants have to be given for schools imparting English because the Official Language Act has settled this. And the RTE act has further sealed this because this Right to Compulsory Education has to be ensured through free education by giving grants.
The choice of language, even if not explicitly said so, is naturally left to parents or natural guardians, irrespective of what Shantaram Naik or elements like BBSM’s mouthpiece Arvind Bhatikar feel. The latter had spoken almost the same lines as Naik in questioning why parents should have the right to decide on the language of Education. Somebody should bring Shantaram Naik’s remarks to the notice of AICC president Sonia Gandhi and ask her if this is the party’s line and whether her Goa MP is speaking for the party or himself. The party, when we last checked, was completely in sync with the RTE and the Official Languages Act, unlike Shantaram Naik. Neither Naik or the BBSM which is a RSS backed organisation, have any legal leg to stand on. And Naik has to answer his party and the people of Goa, why is he on the same side as an RSS-backed organisation in questioning the right of parents to decide on the language of education for their children.
Therefore if the Government does not introduce a bill and make its MoI policy a law underlining the allotment of grants for all languages recognised by the Constitution of India, the FORCE need not to head to Azad Maidan. All it has to do is head to Court. This government will have a lot to answer and pay for. And so will Shantaram Naik too.
