Ajit Pawar backs Hindi in schools, criticizes opponents

Mumbai: As the issue of making Hindi as a compulsory language in the schools across Maharashtra is taking ugly turn, the deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar has swung into action and lambasted the opposition parties including the MNS.

The Devendra Fadnavis-led state government’s move to introduce Hindi as a compulsory language in Classes 1 to 5 in Marathi and English schools has not gone down well as opposition leaders targeted the government. The MNS chief Raj Thackeray has warned the government, saying that “the party will not allow the Centre’s current efforts to ‘Hindi-fy’ everything to succeed in Maharashtra". He also announced that the MNS will not tolerate this compulsion while appealing to the state government to immediately withdraw this decision.

Against this backdrop on Friday Ajit Pawar entered the arena in support of making Hindi compulsory. He said, “those opposing the decision are raking up unnecessary disputes for lack of real issues. Marathi is our mother tongue and will always have first preference in the state. Some people are creating disputes over the Hindi language only because they have nothing else to do. English is widely used across the country, and similarly, Hindi is spoken in many states. While there is a dispute over whether Hindi is the Rashtra Bhasha', I don't want to get into that”.

Pawar asserted that all three languages Marathi, Hindi and English are important, but Marathi will always hold primacy in the state. Marathi must remain intact and continue to grow.

Highlighting the Centre's role in promoting the language, Pawar said, “It was Prime Minister Narendra Modi who granted Marathi the status of a classical language, a decision that had been pending in Delhi for years. The NDA government showed the courage to make it happen”.

He added that plans are underway to set up a Marathi Bhasha Bhavan in Mumbai to further promote the language.

The three-language formula for classes 1 to 5 is a part of the new curriculum implementation under the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020. The state school education department has declared a phase-wise implementation plan of the new curriculum framework designed as per the NEP 2020 recommendations for school education.