Does TGEC have intellectuals better than Tagore and Ambedkar?

Hans India

12-05-2025

Hyderabad: After passing a resolution to completely reject the New Education Policy-2020, the Telangana Education Commission (TGEC) has once again attempted to make a significant impression by organising a seminar. This seminar, themed 'English as a Medium of Instruction and Imparting Spoken English Skills to Students in Government Schools,' has been labelled a 'high-level seminar.'
However, many view the Commission as merely reinventing the wheel. Sources indicate that a few TGEC officials congratulated each other for advocating the introduction of English as the sole 'save our soul' policy essential for the survival of the educational system in the state. Critics from state universities and academic circles argue that the seminar did not yield any new or significant insights and believe it was a waste of taxpayers' money.
Speaking to The Hans India, a senior faculty member in Linguistics from the University of English and Foreign Languages (UEFL), while refraining from specific comments on the TGEC's seminar, emphasised that English-medium instruction has been established in the country for the last 200 years. The first significant push for this came from social reformer Raja Rammohan Roy, who wrote a letter to the then British Governor-General Lord Amherst in 1823. In his letter, he opposed the establishment of a Sanskrit College and advocated for founding an English language institution instead. Earlier, he played an active role in establishing the Hindu College in Calcutta in 1817, which later became a centre for English and Western education. Subsequently, Macaulay's 'Minute on Education' in 1835 officially promoted English education in India.
A former Vice-Chancellor of the oldest state university in Telangana highlighted that Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore outrightly rejected the idea of using English as the medium of instruction, insisting that it should only be learned as a second language, especially in the early stages of education.
Dr B R Ambedkar also argued that forcing a foreign language too early could hinder learning and alienate students, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds. He suggested that English should be introduced at higher education levels to empower students to participate in national and international affairs.
Moreover, experts in English language, literature, and linguistics from Andhra, Sri Venkateswara, and Osmania Universities in the two Telugu states pointed out that numerous seminars are organised both nationally and internationally on the topic of instruction in the mother tongue and foreign languages. Many of these events have focused on South Asia and Africa, featuring experts from various fields, including linguistics, neuro linguistics, natural language processing, philosophy of mind and language, child psychology, mathematics, educational psychology, cognitive sciences, and other fundamental and applied sciences, including medicine. The themes often explore how colonial rulers used English-medium instruction not only for education but also as a weapon to promote neo-colonialism, subjugating their subjects culturally, destroying native knowledge traditions, and furthering 'Western Universalisation.' Besides, to sustain and strengthen the scale of their knowledge and educational economies remains a dominant factor.
Additionally, there are numerous research papers published in peer-reviewed national and international journals over the past 150 years on the issue of the language of instruction. When confronted with the seminar outcomes claimed by the TGEC, faculty members pointed out that no new insights emerged from the seminar.
Most of the views expressed by the speakers had already been articulated, researched, and published extensively by experts over the last 50 years in the contexts of emerging fields, including the intersection of science, technology, language, and linguistics and their diversity.