Team Herald
PANJIM: Over 4,000 persons of the Bharatiya Bhasha Suraksha Manch (BBSM) marched from Mahalaxmi temple to Azad Maidan, Panjim on Friday demanding revocation of grants to English medium schools.
Speaking at the protest meet, BBSM leader Subhash Velingkar said, “Let the government fall, we will not back down on our decision. The Congress gave temporary grants to English schools, the BJP have carried on with them. Grants may be given in Nagaland, but this is Goa not Nagaland.”
The Manch demanded that the government stop grants to English medium primary schools after the end of the current academic year, that cases be booked against all persons that participated in the FORCE agitation rasta roko on July 30 and that concession be given to all Konkani and Marathi schools by October 2.
BBSM also condemned FORCE saying, they were misleading and instigating the people of the State and that Diocesan schools were only politicising education in the State.
MLAs Vishnu Wagh, Naresh Sawal and Lavoo Mamledar were present at the meet.
Uday Bhembre said English led to decentralisation and denationalisation pointing to Environment minister Alina Saldanha as an example.
“People who study in English have a complex and feel embarrassed to speak in the local language. Alina Saldanha is a product of this decentralisation. Whenever she goes for a function, she only speaks in English even if none of the audience understands what she is saying,” he said.
He added that the 11 MLAs, who assured FORCE of taking up the bill in the next Assembly session, had no right to make the assurance. “In any case, the assembly has 40 members. They are only 11, with what majority will they pass the bill?” he asked.
Fr Mousinho de Ataide said he was not in favour of primary education in English as it wasn’t their mother tongue. “Parents who put their children in English medium schools do not enhance their children’s chances but hamper them. We are not Anglo Indians, we do not have English in our blood,” he said.
