Toxicity has been infused in the minds of people of Tamil Nadu, says Governor

Governor R.N. Ravi addresses the issue of language imposition and education quality in Tamil Nadu.

Governor R.N. Ravi said on Friday that there had been a consistent attempt to isolate Tamil Nadu from the rest of the country and a lot of toxicity had been infused in the minds of people over the past 50 years.

Speaking at the valedictory function of the Hindi Month celebrations and the golden jubilee of Doordarshan Chennai, he said that over the last three years, he had visited every part of the State and interacted with school and college students. While doing so, he observed a growing enthusiasm among people for learning Hindi. “The students of Tamil Nadu speak more refined Hindi than me,” he added.

According to him, Hindi is not a language of imposition and every language in India should be celebrated with people taking pride in each one. Some of the oldest universities, like Alagappa and Annamalai, were established by great philanthropists with the intention of teaching students Tamil and Sanskrit simultaneously, but today that department was closed at these institutions, he said.

Tamil Nadu, he said, had always been a spiritual and cultural capital and other parts of the country are inspired by Tamil Nadu, he said. “Toxic policies cannot separate Tamil Nadu from India and in the last 50 years, a lot of toxicity has been infused in the minds of people of Tamil Nadu,” he alleged.

“Out of 28 States in India, 27 have the three-language policy and Tamil Nadu is the only State which does not follow it; they do not want any other Indian language to enter the State. They want to break the communication of people of Tamil Nadu from the rest of the country,” he said.

He reiterated that according to the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER), 78% of government high school students cannot read the text book of Class II and 75% of them cannot identify the two-digit number from 10-99. He added, “Doordarshan has the significant role to provide correct information to people as most of the channels are compromised here.”