Health, education and nutrition are the basic interrelated needs of every individual irrespective of any distinctions. The international community also recognised that education is essential for the success of all 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

I would like to focus only on education here. Secret of success of any individual lies in application of behaviour, knowledge and skill. All these three can only be acquired with education.

American educationist John Dewey said that whatever role is of food and reproduction in existence of physical life of humans, similar role is that of education in their social life.

American educational reformer Horace Mann said that where anything is growing, a former is worth a thousand reformers. Education and learning play a major role in life of not only men but of animals too. Man becomes human only with education. Knowledge is the best resource and we can achieve almost anything with it. The children learn informally from the family and formally in schools. Most brain functions are developed in childhood.

The French proverb goes “a man who knows two languages is worth two men”. The use of language is an important part of behaviour as it also contributes to personality development.

A child’s education starts just after birth and the power of humans grows with education. Children learn from their environment before coming to the school and have already learnt a language at home.

The attempt of education policy makers should be such that the language which children know should give them self confidence to best express their abilities.

It seems that we are not united with each other because for union we need a medium which can help unite us considering the diversity of the nation. One feels that all Indians cannot have the same religion, geographical area, economic status and one culture, but we can definitely have one national language which can be spoken and written by all of us.

In addition to that regional and international needs can be fulfilled by corresponding regional or international language and I feel Hindi can be easily a national language which is spoken by more than a half of India’s population.

Many words of Hindi language are prevalent and common in many Indian regional languages. Though on paper, Hindi is the national language but after more than 70 years of independence, Indians could not adopt the national language which is acceptable practically to all.

Primary education is the foundation of development of any child irrespective of any caste, creed, religion and region. If primary education is given in mother tongue then the quality of education will improve because the basic requirement of communication is speaking, listening and understanding. One can grasp better, express better in his or her mother tongue and others can understand better if they know that mother tongue.

 If children are having different media of instruction which is different than mother tongue then it will be difficult to communicate with teacher and other children as well.

We don’t need the language only for communicating with others but to communicate with self too. Mahatma Gandhi used to say that language is like a mother. Though Gandhi’s mother tongue was Gujarati and education in English medium, he wanted Hindi to be our national language.

According to Tamil poet Thiruvalluvar, knowledge can be spread by expressing the thoughts which can be communicated with language only. It is said that he also spoke other languages apart from Tamil. But seeing the recent mass media report it looks the current Tamilian political system does not follow the Valluvar teaching.

Review of literature had revealed that the king ruling over different parts of Tamil Nadu had wide regional and international contact with many countries including Sri Lanka in South, the Himalayan kingdom in the North, Rome in the West and China in the East. It is presumed that without giving due importance to other languages their culture could not have evolved.

The three-language policy is left on the states to decide regarding the choice of languages. The political parties in Tamil Nadu took this act as an attempt by the centre to impose Hindi on them.

The three-language formula in the new National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 is "painful and saddening", said Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami, as he vowed not to implement the new policy.

This is not the first time that we are changing the language but I presume that language has been changing since the origin of mankind. There is unnecessary hue and cry in a southern State against new education policy which was released recently by the Union Education Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank’.

The minister has clarified that the Centre will not impose any language on any state. Is there any harm in learning another language? If Tamils are learning Tamil for local reason and English for global reason then why not Hindi for national reason because Hindi is the most spoken and used language in India.

It is difficult to understand when India is giving the message of Vasudhaiva Kutumbhakam to the whole world why is it unable to convey this message to one or few of our states?

(The writer is a Dehradun based orthopaedic surgeon)