Senior BJP leader and Union Home Minister Amit Shah stressed that states should promote education in Hindi or regional languages in technical, medical and legal fields to harness the skills of non-English speaking students for the country. Underscoring the importance of education in Hindi and regional languages, students can easily develop original thought process if they study in their mother tongue and this can lead to research and innovation.
“Technical, medical, law – all should be taught in Hindi and regional languages. All state governments should take the initiative to properly translate the curriculum in these three areas of education into local languages,” Shah said in an interview to PTI.
Suggesting that education in the mother tongue is easier and faster, Shah said, ”It will promote the country’s talent in higher education. Today we can use only five percent of the country’s talent but with this initiative, we would be able to use 100 percent talent of the country.”
He said this five percent comes from an English background, while adding that he has nothing against English as a language.
“It is that ‘maulik chintan’ (original thinking) of a student can be easily developed in his mother tongue and there is a strong connection between maulik chintan and anusandhan (research),” Mr Shah said.
Talking about his observations on History education, Mr Shah said he has appealed to students to “study 300 (Jannayak) people’s heroes who were not given their due by historians and thirty such empires who ruled in India and established a very good model of governance.”
Mr Shah said it is time that people and students study the “real history” of the country. “Till when we will make a hue and cry about what others have written about our history and distortions in it. Students of our country should research our actual history,” he said.
The BJP-led governments at the Centre and in states have been holding programmes on various historic icons and their contribution to the freedom struggle and development of the country. The party sees this as part of his ideological exercise to recall the contribution of native personalities including many who were allegedly not given due credit.