In Goa, one language for the rich, another for the poor

 The decision motivated by the political compulsions of the Congress party which cannot afford to alienate the minority vote and its influential Catholic politicians from South Goa, has also given the Opposition and its supporters an issue to flog before next year’s  election.

Backed by the BJP, Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP) and the RSS, the Bharatiya Bhasha Suraksha Manch (BBSM) has sworn to get the ‘anti-national’ move reversed. The BBSM has called for Goa bundh on Monday. Such rigid political posturing may work well before the TV cameras. But as statistics show, parents are unlikely to back it.

The Church in Goa runs 160 affiliate schools under the Archdiocesan Board of Education (ABE), 139 of these are primaries in the Konkani medium, the language of the soil. Catholic primary schools in Goa switched from the English medium to Devnagiri Konkani in 1991 after MGP leader Shashikala Kakodkar, an undiluted Marathi propagandist shut down grants-in-aid to English schools. To make the new policy more palatable, those in government at the time — many of whom were hardly educated — put a moratorium on setting up new English primaries. Not even existing English medium institutions were allowed to expand primary sections.

Goa moved on all the same. Despite the ban, 138 private English primary schools came up and hundreds more are queued up for licences. Unaided schools — many of them charge exorbitant fees — have taken the largest crop of students. This evidently because they are English medium. Over 61,000 students are enrolled in 138 unaided English primaries, 51,000 in 139 Catholic schools and less than 50,000 in the 937 government primaries that teach only in the vernacular languages.

The Portuguese banned the use of Konkani in Goa for nearly five centuries which helped Marathi take strong roots. The legacy was propelled further by the MGP which came to power soon after the 1961 Liberation of Goa. To this day, the government runs 834 Marathi schools across Goa. But contrary to what politicians and Marathi chauvinists would have the public believe, enrolments to Marathi schools have been falling drastically. Some have less than 6 students to a class. A school in Curti, Ponda, with just one student will be shut down by the government this year.

Exodus

Catholic institutions too have been hit by the exodus to English in the primary section. “Our enrolments have been declining by 15 per cent,” says Fr Zeferino D’Souza, secretary, ABE. The decision to allow government-aided primaries to teach in English is expected to benefit Catholic institutions the most in terms of enrolment and much of the animosity being whipped up by Catholic baiters like Kakodkar over the government decision stems from this.

Those opposed to government support to English argue that the move will effectually wipe out the Konkani and Marathi traditions in Goa. Some pedagogic studies too suggest that children learn best in the language and culture they are born and rooted into.
Learning and speaking in one’s native language also gives one a sense of belonging and a pride in one’s tradition. The arguments are not specious and possibly valid more than ever in the globalisation context where native cultures are being so drastically altered and replaced by a monochromatic world.

But disallowing English in aided primaries has also meant denying the poor the right to equitable education. Those who could afford it got an English education, those who couldn’t were stuck in the vernacular medium. “The choice of medium of instruction should be left up to the parents,” Fr Zeferino says. Congress minister Churchill Alemao, one of the most outspoken supporters of Konkani puts it rather bluntly: “Konkani is our mother tongue, but English is the language of sustenance.” Every parent has the right to look to the future of their children, he says.

Prashant Naik, president of the Goa Konkani Bhasha Mandal and one of the key players in the BBSM campaign against aid to English primaries is convinced the Congress government’s move will be drastic for Goa’s Konkani identity. Naik also heads the Niraker Education Society which runs two high schools and a higher secondary school in Canacona, South Goa. All of them are English medium government aided institutions, but he sees no contradiction in this and the stand he has taken over education in the mother tongue.