Paths of education opens in mother tongue, Is self-reliance on languages equally important ? – Times of India

Today the country is moving on the path of self-reliance under the leadership of our PM Modi ji. So we need to understand the meaning of this word. The word self-reliant is of equal importance not only to production and commercial institutions but also to languages.
Amit Shah: A historic chapter was written on 16th of this month in the direction of realizing Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s resolve of education in mother tongue. On this day, the Government of Madhya Pradesh started medical education in Hindi. This date will be remembered as the renaissance of India’s education system in the Amrit Mahotsav year of independence. Mahatma Gandhi, the Father of the Nation had said, “Scientists and experts who have studied in Indian languages will be true servants of the country and they will speak the language of the common people, not foreigners.” The knowledge they will acquire will be within the reach of common people.
The new education policy promoted by the Modi government is in line with this thinking of Bapu, in which efforts are being made to make education from primary to technical and medical education available in mother tongues. Under this, Madhya Pradesh has become the first state in the country to start MBBS studies in its own language. Under the National Policy on Education, Prime Minister Modi aims to make higher education in medical, engineering and law available in all Indian languages. The Modi government is making efforts in this direction with full devotion and dedication.
The dream of self-reliant India will come true only when our languages are strong. Keeping this in mind, the government has given special emphasis on education in Indian languages in the new education policy. Today efforts are being made to study engineering in eight languages namely Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Gujarati, Marathi, Bengali, Hindi and Assamese. Arrangements have also been made to give examinations conducted by NEET and UGC in 12 languages.
In the 19th century, Dadabhai Naoroji called the British taking away Indian wealth abroad as ‘drain of wealth’. Today in the 21st century, the situation has become ‘drain of brain’ i.e., brain drain. If our children get opportunities for education in their mother tongue, then this condition of ‘brain drain’ will start turning into ‘brain gain’. Education in Indian languages will enable their mind to develop by increasing expression and research power in their own language instead of being a slave to a foreign language. Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore had said, ‘Indian culture is like a developed centipede lotus, each petal of which is our regional language. The loss of any petal will destroy the beauty of the lotus. I want that the regional languages should sit in the provinces as queens and Hindi should sit among them as Madhyamani.
All the languages of the country are our own languages. There is a great tradition of these languages in the roots of India and Indianness. Language connects a person with his country, culture and origin. In such a situation, we should understand without any bias regarding Hindi that Hindi has no difference with any local language. There is often a misconception about Hindi that it is opposed to the local Indian languages. There is no truth in this at all. Hindi is the official language of India and is the friend of all Indian languages. I believe Hindi and all Indian languages will have to be a bit flexible. If there is any difference from other languages, then instead of avoiding it, efforts should be made to incorporate it in our own language. This will remove the contradictions in all languages and develop them with mutual interaction.
Such a sense of superiority about English among some people is such that a person who knows English is generally considered to be knowledgeable. The truth is that any language knowledge has nothing to do with intellectual ability. Language is only a medium of expression. If education is given in the mother tongue, then the intellectual ability develops better. A person does not get the full benefit of intellectual ability when he is educated in another language, because a child can think best in his mother tongue only.
When primary education takes place in a language other than the mother tongue, it hinders the development of its original thinking. Today we are able to tap only five percent of our potential in research, science and arts etc. With the present efforts, when education will be in the mother tongue and the country will be able to utilize its full intellectual potential, then the journey of self-reliant India will get an important impetus. That is why academics all over the world have considered education in the mother tongue as important, because the process of thinking, analysis, research and conclusion is done by our mind in the mother tongue itself.
Whenever the BJP has got the opportunity, it has done the work of taking forward the Indian languages. Even after the era of slavery had passed, in our establishments for a long time the inferiority complex about Indian languages continued to grow. The leaders of the country used to give speeches in English in foreign forums, but Atal ji gave glory to the Indian language by giving speeches in Hindi in the United Nations. Today, Prime Minister Modi also gives speeches in Hindi on global forums, taking forward this tradition of Atal ji. Giving speeches in Hindi not only gives recognition to the Indian language at the global level, but also increases the confidence of Indians.
Today, under the leadership of Modi ji, new avenues of higher education are being opened in Indian languages, which will not only be beneficial in the development of our languages, it will also increase the research capacity of the students qualitatively. I have full faith that for ages, India will preserve and cherish its languages and we will continue to give new dimensions to their development by making them flexible and people-friendly.