Jeyaranjan slams Guv for discrediting English education

CHENNAI: Deputy Chairman of the State Planning Commission Professor J Jeyaranjan has slammed the Governor for discrediting English medium of education.

Speaking at the release of the Tamil translation of “Minutes by Macaulay” in the city, Jeyaranjan said that a campaign was being run frantically on WhatsApp against the English system of education introduced by Lord Macaulay by people who benefited enormously from it.

Recalling an incident where an ignorant Minister proposed the revival of the old Indian culture by doing away with the education system in vogue, Jeyaranjan said that he had corrected the Minister after the function that they would have been rearing cattle and doing agriculture but for Lord Macaulay. “Such false information is being frantically spread through WhatsApp by a massive spectrum (of people). Politically, people who must not speak thus are saying that English (medium of) education has spoiled us and we are living with a colonial mindset,” he added.

“People holding Constitutional posts have no need to make such statements. They propagate Sanathana Dharma. They are saying that learning English has spoiled our country’s culture and the Brits have enslaved us. People promoting National Education Policy are saying that the English medium of education has reduced us to clerks. People who say that are the ones who have benefited enormously from it,” he said, apparently referring to Governor Ravi’s repeated endorsement of Sanathana Dharma.

Describing the critique that Macaulay attempted to make everyone (in India) clerks and enslave people is a ‘lie,’ Jeyaranjan said, “I feel ashamed that even now they want people to learn Sanskrit and Hindi. We should decide what we will learn. Drafters of the New Education Policy are very clear. Their children are enrolled in Stanford and Yale universities, but they attempt to push ordinary people like us into a deep abyss.”