SHILLONG, April 9: The Meghalaya government is yet to receive any notification from the Centre on the reported move to make Hindi compulsory up to Class X in schools across the Northeast.
Confirming this, an Education department official said the government will discuss the matter after receiving any official instruction.
On Saturday, state BJP chief Ernest Mawrie said the statement made by Union Home Minister Amit Shah on the Hindi language was a suggestion not implying imposition as such a decision cannot be forced.
Shah made the suggestion in his capacity as the chairman of the Parliamentary Official Language Committee, he added.
“Of course, the students have to be given a choice. We do have alternative subjects,” Mawrie said.
Shah had on Thursday said that 22,000 Hindi teachers have been recruited in the eight states of the Northeast and all the states have agreed to make Hindi compulsory up to Class X.
Shah had also stated that nine tribal communities of the Northeast had converted the script of their dialects to Devanagari.
Mawrie said there is nothing wrong with learning Hindi as Hindi and English are the two official languages of the country and it will only be a plus point for those willing to learn.
Pointing out that Hindi Sammelan used to be conducted in central government offices during the Congress regime, Shah said the government would request the public to learn Hindi and to write any correspondence in Hindi. “It is a wrong idea that the BJP is trying to impose Hindi,” he said.
“Nowadays, we stand to gain by learning more languages. I encourage my son to learn Hindi as it offers a scope for jobs outside the state for the students,” he added.
Ruling out the imposition of Hindi by the Centre, he said all the chief ministers of the Northeast welcomed the National Education Policy 2020 and wanted the introduction of Hindi in the schools.
“Most of the schools teach Hindi from nursery to Class 6 and it is not compulsory,” Mawrie said.
“Education is a state subject and the syllabus is prepared by MBoSE. I do not think it will be implemented or that the Centre will force us to learn Hindi,” he said.
However, the move has not gone well with many in the state with suspended Congress leader, Ampareen Lyngdoh, slamming the Centre for trying to impose the Hindi language on the Northeast.
She had said Meghalaya has an adequate system in place to prevent the Centre from making the language compulsory in schools.
