NEW DELHI: The Constitution, Right to Education Act and National Education Policy, mandates imparting primary education to linguistic minorities in their mother tongues, but the governments recruit teachers only in 22 scheduled languages thus depriving instruction in mother tongues to crores of students who speak over 100 languages, which have written heritage.
This issue was raised by a scholar in “Rajasthani’ language, which is spoken by more than four crore people, before the Supreme Court on Friday. Appearing for Padam Mehta, senior advocate Manish Singhvi told a bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta that the mandate of the Constitution and other statutes are being violated as no person proficient in ‘Rajasthani’ is recruited to teach primary or elementary school students.
Not questioning inclusion of other languages as part of the Rajasthan Eligibility Examination for Teachers (REET), Singhvi said ‘Rajasthani’, spoken by over four crore people, has been excluded from REET but languages like Gujarati, Punjabi, Sindhi and Urdu, which are spoken by a very small population in the state, have been included in REET. The bench entertained the petition and sought response from the state govt.
The petitioner said, “If teachers speaking ‘Rajasthani’ are not recruited imparting of education in ‘Mother Tongue’ loses significance” and expressed concern that non-recruitment of teachers in “Rajasthani’ language would violate an important right of the elementary and primary school children to be taught in their mother tongue.
Apart from the 22 scheduled languages, there are 23 other languages with millions of speakers including Awadhi, Bagri, Bhili, Bhojpuri, Chhattisgarhi, Deccani, Kangri, Garhwali, Haryanvi, Ho, Kanauji, Khandeshi, Kumaoni, Kurux, Lamani, Magahi, Malvi, Marwari, Meitei, Mundari, Nimadi, Sadari and Tulu, according to Union ministry of education
As per the ministry, the concept of ‘mother tongue’ is defined by the Census as the language spoken in childhood by the person’s mother to the person. If the mother died in infancy, the language mainly spoken in the person’s home in childhood will be the mother tongue.
The petitioner said section-29(2) (f) of RTE Act categorically states that while preparation of curriculum and evaluation procedure for elementary education, the medium of instructions as far as practical should be in the child’s mother tongue.
The National Education Policy also states that the medium of instructions for the children at least till Grade-V or preferably till Grade-VIII will be the mother tongue/local language wherever possible, he said, adding the Rajasthan Assembly more than two decades ago had passed a resolution for inclusion of ‘Rajasthani’ in Eighth Schedule.
