Orlando Dasilva
The BBSM leadership should realize that their agitation to promote MoI in regional languages in primary schools across Goa has failed to impress the vast majority of parents. In spite of their long agitation for the past four years the enrollment of children in government schools where either Marathi or Konkani is used as a MoI has failed to take up and one can notice several government schools closing down for want of required minimum strength. It is now time ripe for the BBSM leadership who mostly are in the retired stage of their life and whose strength is numbered to occupy the school benches to make up for the strength and pass their time.
Leaders of BBSM like Uday Bhembre could not even convince his own children to admit his grand children in Konkani schools and today he is in the forefront to criticize the Government for the judicious decision taken by it where by the communal and cultural harmony of the state is sought to be maintained. Bhembre should re-study the constitution of the country if he has forgotten due to his age and study the laws framed by parliament as per the constitutional mandate before unleashing the tirade of hatred against the Minority-run aided schools.
If RSS organization or RSS members are running English school elsewhere in the country and even when their tall leaders like Advani have studied in Convent-run English schools one cannot understand why the RSS men in Goa such as Subhash Velingkar are in the streets for opposing the issue of grants to Minority-run aided schools. Is it to only polarize the poor and the middle class of the majority community which of late has distanced from the BJP for their U-turns in governance, and regroup them on communal lines for electoral gains of the BJP? The latest move of the BJP on the eve of election to appoint yet another committee to study the MoI issue smacks of the polarization agenda hatched.
Goa for centuries is known all over the world for its secular tolerance where all communities lived in perfect peace and harmony and I am confident that today’s true Goans both young and old who lived and enjoyed the peaceful life will very well understand and read between the lines the hidden agenda of the senile old warriors in the streets which if allowed to propagate and succeed will only lead to disturbance of peace in the state.
