The medium of instruction turmoil in Goa has defied both, resolution and logic, refusing to die down as it simmers on the political front burner. The only benefit from its longevity is that fundamental matters in the long drawn out conflict inadvertently finally come to the fore, and shed the fuzzy cultural and pedagogical arguments that they initially came dressed in.
For protagonists in the PTA organization FORCE, there is perhaps nothing sweeter that the crystallisation of these issues, have come to the fore due to the ongoing public spat and tussle between the RSS Goa head and a section of the BJP that currently decides governance issues. Chief minister Laxmikant Parsekar made his exasperation with the Bharatiya Bhasha Suraksha Manch (BBSM) clear in recent weeks. The government’s argument is that they have done everything possible to encourage primary education in regional languages. It has gone to some lengths to reiterate that its government’s policy is in favour of regional languages in schools; it has given additional monetary incentives to regional language primaries, upped their grants per student and has gone out of its way to shore up the abilities of regional language schools to compete and garner students. But this placation has not worked. The BBSM wants nothing short of a reversion to the 1990 policy of Shashikala Kakodkar, and a stoppage of government grants to English medium primaries that opted for the MOI changeover in 2011-2012. To this end, the BBSM agitation has intensified, holding meetings specifically in BJP-held segments, on what the BJP leadership has dubbed a negative programme.
The earlier aggressive exasperation that emanated from the BJP leadership is replaced now with an almost plaintive despair evident in the government’s plea that the RSS leadership understands its governance obligations of balancing societal needs. The matter was ostensibly taken to the BJP higher ups in New Delhi. There was speculation, though denied, that the BJP leadership had sought the RSS chief be either shifted out of Goa, or be asked to tone down the ugly inter parivar spat. Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar, whose compromise formula and “amicable settlement” on MOI is at the receiving end of BBSM vitriol, is now speculated to return to state politics, one mission of which is to iron out matters for the local unit of the party. For the factions jostling within the Goa unit of the BJP, this is being held out as deliverance.
Deliverance -- from conflict into peace, from the dark into light, is the stuff of saviors or superheroes or accomplished statesmen/politicians. While myth making is the domain of adept spin doctors. Hard pressed to make sense of the unusual open display of acrimony between the BJP and the RSS leadership, some opposition members were inclined to think it was stage-managed, a case of the joint parivar playing out a good cop-bad cop routine while dealing with sections of minorities that clearly distrust both. The tenor of the insults traded though, suggest a difference of opinion and compulsions. Are these on fundamentals or on more negotiable, flexible issues of timing and strategy that can be ironed out and discussed, as is the view gaining currency in the BJP these days? BJP leaders like Sripad Naik and Rajendra Arlekar have valid reasons for their stance in the ongoing tussle. So does Vishu Wagh.
Is the BJP in a state like Goa, with a 25 percent Christian electorate, ready to break from its hardcore RSS ideological moorings? That may well be a no-brainer. Or will it succeed in reining in those at the forefront of the BBSM? At any rate, whether the inter parivar spat is real or contrived, ambiguity is a useful device, more so in politics. A political party that can conjure up hardliners and moderates, or create the illusion of this, will find itself better able to manage all manner of contradictions and balance polar opposites to stay in power.
One analysis suggests that those looking for an explanation for the BBSM’s demand that salary grants be stopped to English primaries, need only look at the facts. They lay out who would be the most affected and who is the prime target.
At a media meet, the BBSM leadership made it clear that it was not against those who paid private fees and obtained their English education. But it was against the government giving grants and public money towards a primary education in the English medium. If the grants are reversed, this would automatically affect only the 137 schools run by the Archdiocese, which had opted for the switch over of MOI from Konkani to English in 2011 and 2012. It would not affect the 100 odd private run English primaries in the state that chosen to stay out of the purview of government grants.
The FORCE leadership has long been highlighting the dichotomies, asking why the anti-English stance did not extend to demands from the BBSM to also stop government grants to English medium middle schools, high schools and higher secondary schools in Goa. Education department statistics for 2015-16 show there are no Marathi and Konkani middle schools, high schools or higher secondary schools, whereas in 2010-11 there was one Marathi medium government middle school and one Marathi medium government high school. While there are 42 government and 22 non-government (aided and unaided) middle schools that run in English, 70 government high schools and 307 non-government high schools that use English MOI and 09 government and 87 non-government higher secondary schools in English.
Regional language schools have existed since 1961 and prior. The Shashikala Kakodkar MOI policy of the 1990s restricted grants to regional language schools, but twenty five years later, middle schools onwards, students largely switch to English, with no issues raised on the political or cultural front. Pedagogically it was a disaster for students and parents. For diocesan schools that fell into the carefully laid- trap in 1990, buying into the lure of grants and the language agitation high --- and going against parent’s wishes, the regional language policy proved to be its highway to perdition, before it realized its folly in 2011. Switching over to English gives it a new lease of life, arresting the outflow of students it suffered for more than two decades, but also sparking the antagonism of its traditional adversaries.
Pamela D’mello is an independent journalist
