Did Uddhav-Raj front force Fadnavis govt rethink on Hindi in schools?

India Today

01-07-2025

Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, in a major climbdown by his Mayahuti government, has withdrawn the controversial decision to introduce Hindi as a third language from Class 1 in schools. The decision had drawn flak from Opposition parties, litterateurs and educationists, and more crucially created the possibility of the two estranged Thackeray cousins—Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) president Uddhav Thackeray and Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) chief Raj Thackeray—burying the hatchet and joining forces.Fadnavis' move on June 29 came in the backdrop of a grand morcha announced by the Shiv Sena (UBT) and MNS on July 5, leading to intense speculation on whether the Thackeray cousins will come together politically. The decision had invited charges of Hindi being imposed on school students.advertisementFadnavis has said the government resolutions issued on April 16 and June 17 would be scrapped. 'A new committee will be set up to decide on the three-language policy by studying the [Raghunath] Mashelkar committee report (on the three-language formula), listen to the objections of those who oppose it, and then decide on what is good for our students,' the chief minister added.The committee will be chaired by economist Narendra Jadhav, who is also former vice-chancellor of the University of Pune and a former Rajya Sabha MP. The three-language policy will be implemented after the committee submits its report to the state government.
Fadnavis said the erstwhile Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government, led by Uddhav, had accepted the Mashelkar committee report suggesting the implementation of the three-language formula, and accused the former chief minister of double standards.advertisementThe first government resolution (GR) had made Hindi the mandatory third language for students from Class 1 to 5, while the second GR, issued after a maelstrom of opposition, had made it optional, but with riders. However, these conditions had led to charges that Hindi was being given a backdoor entry into classrooms.Stakeholders had pointed to how this will involve learning and educational challenges for students as they were too young to learn a third language in schools. If a third language was included in the primary curriculum, this could result in the weightage to crucial subjects, such as mathematics, being reduced.While the Opposition to the move to make Hindi mandatory had been launched by academicians and civil society groups, such as Deepak Pawar of the Marathi Abhyas Kendra, it was the prospect of the two Thackerays joining hands on the issue of Marathi pride that seemed to have forced the government to rethink.Before branching out and launching the MNS, Raj, a former president of the Bharatiya Vidyarthi Sena (BVS), the now-defunct student wing of the undivided Shiv Sena, was seen as his uncle and Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray's political successor. However, he had to gradually make way for Uddhav in the party, and eventually quit it in 2005 to set up the MNS the next year.advertisementUddhav and Raj have said the July 5 protest meeting will now be converted into a 'vijay morcha', or victory parade, though the venue remains to be decided.The Shiv Sena (UBT) and MNS were mauled during the assembly elections held last year. The Shiv Sena (UBT)'s strength in the legislative assembly dwindled to just 20 while the MNS, which had won one seat in 2019, was wiped out; even Raj's son Amit lost the Mahim seat to Mahesh Sawant of the Shiv Sena (UBT).The defeat had led to the two parties making overtures to each other; Uddhav and Raj are reported to have taken the initiative to open lines of communication for a possible patch-up. The July 5 event will be the first time the two Thackerays will be seen together in decades.The Shiv Sena is seen as a party with an emotional base, and the two Thackerays joining forces could galvanise their core Marathi voters in Mumbai and the surrounding areas and pay dividends in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) polls due this year. In Mumbai, the BJP is seen as a party with a strong base among non-Marathi speaking groups, such as Gujaratis, Marwaris, Jains and north Indians, putting it on the back foot.advertisementWhile the BJP and Sangh Parivar are seen as strong votaries of Hindi as a national language, the policy was being helmed by the school education department, led by Dadaji Bhuse of the Shiv Sena led by deputy chief minister Eknath Shinde. This put the Shinde Sena in a quandary. Deputy chief minister and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) president Ajit Pawar had also struck a discordant note over the policy, and the issue is said to have led to protests in the state cabinet meeting on June 29.Ironically, while the July 5 event, which will be held at the NSCI dome in Worli, is seen as an event that may bring Uddhav and Raj together, it was a similar protest march that had sowed the seeds of discord between the two cousins and led to a split. In December 1993, as the president of the BVS, Raj had organised a morcha of the unemployed to the Maharashtra Vidhan Bhavan during its winter session in the state's second capital at Nagpur. Earlier, Raj had toured Maharashtra extensively to drum up support for the morcha and had seen a rousing response of the youth to the campaign.advertisementSenior journalist Narayan Athavale aka Aniruddha Punarvasu, who was elected as a Shiv Sena Lok Sabha MP in 1996, had written the memorandum that was to be submitted by Raj to the state government later. It was evident that the Nagpur morcha would be huge. A night before the morcha, Raj got a call from Matoshree, the Thackeray family residence at Bandra East in Mumbai, asking him to ensure that Uddhav too got to speak at the public meeting.Raj was disturbed as he felt Uddhav wanted a share of his credit. The next day, when Uddhav was sitting on a makeshift dais on a truck, senior leader Manohar Joshi announced that Uddhav would make a speech—his first. This was shown as a spontaneous move. Raj later addressed the 50,000-strong morcha.However, the ice-breaking between the cousins has now raised expectations among Shiv Sena voters that the two Thackerays will bury the hatchet. The Sena (UBT) and MNS face an uphill challenge in the local body elections, especially in Mumbai, where a resurgent BJP seems to be eager to come to power in the BMC, the country's richest civic body.advertisementThe BMC elections are seen as an existential battle for the three Senas, which hail from the same political stock. Any rise in the fortunes of the two Thackerays will work against the interests of Shinde's Sena. In contrast, the BJP, with its base among the Hindi, Gujarati and Marwari speakers and the upper-caste and upper-class Maharashtrians, is relatively better insulated from the political aftershocks of any reconciliation between the Thackeray cousins.Subscribe to India Today Magazine- EndsMust Watch