MUMBAI: With an eye on the forthcoming assembly elections in the state in October, the Maharashtra state government has made teaching Marathi in all schools compulsory.
In an attempt to hijack the Marathi person, pride and language issue of the Shiv Sena (SS), Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the ruling Congress-National Congress Party-led Democratic Front government, has issued a circular to all schools in the state to teach Marathi compulsorily to students from nursery to high school level effective from this academic year, without any exception.
The state government directive will be applicable to all — the State Secondary Education Board (SSC), the federal Central Board of Secondary Education Board (CBSE) and the Indian Central Secondary Education Board (ICSE). The decision is going to hard hit the children of Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) and of government employees who are transferred from one place to another in different states of the country.
Students studying in CBSE and ICSE classes, particularly in the Gulf countries, and whose parents would return anytime after their contact period is over, would face major difficulties as the students would not be getting admission without passing the Marathi language test in schools in Maharashtra.
An adamant state Education Minister Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil, has transparently made it clear in the directive that it was the state’s mandate that those who want to study in Maharashtra would have to learn Marathi. “There would be and is no exception whatsoever in this government’s policy,” he said.
The latest diktat from the government has come as a bolt out of a blue for both the parents and students, who are now in a state of panic and confusion.
Upset with the government’s decision, an angry Sultan Sayed, a resident of Ratnagiri in Konkan region and general manager in a company in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, told Arab News that the decision was a hasty one and for political reasons. “My daughter had a hard time to cope with Arabic, and French subjects in a school in Riyadh, and now she will have to cope with additional burden of learning Marathi, Hindi and Sanskrit in school in Pune.”
