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Tamil Nadu chief minister MK Stalin has framed the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 as an instrument of linguistic imperialism. How well-founded are his fears that the Tamil cultural identity will be undermined by the NEP’s trilingual formula? On the flip side, can it serve as a tool for preserving the linguistic diversity of the Dravidian languages?
In the context of Stalin’s claim, a quote from David Schulman’s ‘Tamil: A Biography’ is particularly apt: “In modern South India, Tamil has become a major criterion for collective identity, often seen now as forged in opposition to Sanskrit and an invasive north Indian culture and ideology.” Drawing ethno-linguistic distinctions between north and south is one thing, charging the north with imposing cultural hegemony on the south is another.
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