Salute to the great visionary - Mahakavi Subramania Bharathiar

One of the foremost thinkers of this country with regard to education in its all compassing perspective is Mahakavi Subramania Bharathiar.  He had a clear vision regarding what comes first in respect of a proper education which should bring about a cultured citizenry. 

The individual first has to be a responsible person within the family, then be conscious of the society and its needs. Towards that one has to obtain knowledge of the history of one's own roots, culture and the geographical facts and life of people around.  Then one has to be groomed in scientific facts concerning the five primary elements (pancha boothas).  With this scientific outlook and the grooming with cultural understanding alone education will full fill its objective.  This was his vision. 

Towards achieving it he emphasized on strengthening one’s own language (mother tongue).  In his famous poem, ‘Thamizh Thai’, he has clearly emphasized what is to be done if the language has to live –

“Thanthai arulvaliyalum – munbu

sandra pulavar thava valialum

Indhakkanam mattum Kaalan – Ennai

Erittupparkavum Anji yirundan.

Indroruru sollininai ketten – Ini

Yedhu seiven? Yenadaruiyir makkal !

Kondridal Pooloru vaarthai – Ingu

Koorthakathavan koorinan kandeer!

“Putham podiya kalaikal – panja

poothacheyalkalin nutpangal koorum;

Metha valaruthu merke – antha

Menmaikkalikal thamizhinil illai.

Sollavum kooduvathillai – avai

Sollunthiramai thamiszh mozhikkillai

Mellathamizhini sakum – andha

Merkku mozhikal puvimisai yongum”

Endrandha pedhai uraithan – Ah!

Indha vasai enkeithidalamo ?

Sendriduveer ettuthikkum – kalai

Selvangal yavum konarndhingu serpeer!

            What a pathetic plea he had made!  And yet after decades of rule in the name of the great language, very little has been achieved towards fulfilling it.             

             The other fundamental point he emphasized was to have neighborhood schools - in every village and settlement.  But successive governments by abdicating their responsibility towards providing the fundamental need of education, have allowed proliferation of business oriented private school education and a market economy whereby children are forced to travel miles to get to know ABCD.

                How distant those dreams appear, even on this 130^th Birth anniversary of the great visionary.

A discussion Bharathiar had with his daughther Yadugiri as quoted by Yadugiriammal is extracted below:

(The discussion is said to have taken place in the year 1914-15)

Bharathi: Just because your peers go to school, it doesn't make them any better than you, Yadugiri. Why should it matter if you don't get to know the names of the rivers and lakes in the english countryside? Study Tamizh even more eagerly! Going to those schools sometimes tend to introduce girls to unwanted trends in fashions which are worthless. Honestly, I don't see much benefit in your learning English.


Yadugiri: Do you mean to say that other parents want to send their girls to school because it's useless to do so? I mean, is it because they're foolish--and we are smart?


Chellamma: Yadugiri, you don't need to go to work! Then, why do you need an English education? My father says, girls need to be literate only to the extent of being able to write a letter, and for keeping household accounts. Nowadays, we women read epics, poetry and stories. To learn the languages of our own land is important. We can learn Sanskrit, Telugu, KannaDam and Hindi. Only men need English for their work, to read letters, the newspapers and meaningless stories!


Yadugiri: The problem is, most things are written in English! Not that I do not love Tamizh. When my grandmother says: telugu tETa, KannaDa kastUri, aravam advAnam (Telugu is honey, KannaDa precious and Tamizh is useless), I fight with her by saying that literary works in Tamizh are the best!


Bharathi: Your grandmother has a point. No need to get upset with what she says. Just as you seem to want to get an English education, many in tamizh nADu are crazy about the English language. I see new works of translations in Kannada and Telugu from other languages. Tamizh used to ride high once. Now it is at its nadir. That's why we are being teased.


Yadugiri: Why has this happened to Tamizh?


Bharathi: The Tamizh people are not as resolute. After reading works in English, they develop a disrespect for Tamizh literature. There is very little patronage for our language among the public.The Bengalis are prepared to give generously for the betterment of their language whereas our people, even the wealthy ones, do not like to spend a paisa for the good of our language. The poor also want to spend whatever they can on giving an English education to their sons hoping that they can get a good job to support the extended family. When the sons do get a job, they don't have enough to support their own families! How can they help their parents and siblings? In all this, where do they have the care or means to see if their language is alive or dead? If a few among us speak up about it, we get to be the enemies and traitors of this deprived society!

RTE in Tamil Nadu – Well crossed, but not

        After a lot of pressures and tussles, the Tamil Nadu Government has notified the rules to implement the Right to Education Act, 2009.

        Though the Constitution makers wanted the Right to Education to be made a Fundamental Right within 10 years of adoption of the Constitution and they initially put it under the directive principles, it remained there until the Supreme Court broke the ice in the case of Unnikrishnan, J.P., Vs. State of AP and others by stating as below far back in the year 1993:

“We cannot believe that any State would say that it need not provide education to its people even within the limits of its economic capacity and development. It goes without saying that the limits of economic capacity are, ordinarily speaking, matters within the subjective satisfaction of the State…

We have held the right to education to be implicit in the right to life because of its inherent fundamental importance.”

Nine years later, the Government of India responded to this declaration by inserting, through the Ninety-third amendment to the Constitution, Article 21-A, which reads as below:

“The State shall provide free and compulsory education to all children of the age of six to fourteen years in such manner as the State may, by law, determine”

        It was only after another 7 years that the Right to Education Act itself became a law.  However, even this law has a major lacuna.  It sought to enable compulsory and free education only for 25% of the children of age group 6 – 14 years.  Thus the well, constituting the remaining 75%, remains to be crossed. 

The argument that the Constitution itself provided for such a piece-meal-legislation by putting the blame on ‘in such manner as the State may, by law, determine’, would be grossly forgetting that the Article states in no uncompromising terms that ‘all children of the age of six to fourteen years’ should be provided with free and compulsory education.

        The present initiative of the Government of Tamil Nadu to implement this Act of 2009 –even the 25% of the fundamental right - is thus a long due one. 

Yet there is a hue and cry from the managements of the private schools.  Their earlier objection to the entire idea was on grounds that the fees for these children would become a burden, either to the institution or for the other parents.  Now that the Government has announced in the recent rules that the fees for these children would be borne by the Government itself, the private managements content that there would be a delay in payment by the Government.  They also say that they will not be able to collect admission fees (read as donations) from these Government sponsored kids.  They are aggrieved that there is no method of selection envisaged in the rules.  They also ask half-in-public-and-half-in-private, ‘why the government could not send these 25% kids also to the government schools’. 

        Taking their objections one by one, the matter regarding delay in payment of fees is absurd.  From the remaining 75% children they are going to collect the fees much ahead and therefore they can always reserve the amount to be received from the Government for the expenses pertaining to the last months of the academic year.

     Regarding the method of selection, if they have doubts, it remains to be answered by these schools as to how they have been doing it all along, even after the highest court of the land has stipulated on these issues.

     They should also remember that donations for admission have also been banned by the Supreme Court.  They cannot say that these donations are material to the salary of the teaching and non-teaching staff since the fees determined legislation as per the fee regulation Act is after taking into consideration the expenditure of the schools.

      Before parting, it is to be emphasized that the tendency of the private schools to say that the government sponsored kids could be sent to Government schools and that private school managements are not accountable to the parents who are stake holders in the schools and are financing their activities, smacks of a feudalistic mind set.