In his latest vehement protest against the imposition of Hindi in Maharashtra, Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) chief, Raj Thackeray, has warned that his party will “shut down schools” if Hindi is made mandatory for Classes 1 to 5 in the state.
Speaking at a rally at Mira Bhayandar near Mumbai on Friday, he referred to Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis’s latest averment that Hindi will be taught in state schools at any costs. Thackeray maintained that he was not opposed to any language, but would not tolerate compulsion.
Fadnavis’s statement comes after the BJP-led government in the state had withdrawn two orders making Hindi mandatory in primary schools after they were met by strong opposition from various organisations and political parties, including the MNS and Shiv Sena (UBT), which is led by Raj's estranged cousin Uddhav Thackeray.
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Thackeray and the ruling Maharashtra government have been at loggerheads for a while now on the issue of Hindi being made a third language in primary schools. Thackeray has been consistently stating that his party will not tolerate any forced learning of a language other than Marathi in the state.
He was among the first in the state to protest language imposition in Maharashtra, being later joined by other political parties who reiterated that mother tongue must take precedence over other official languages.
Thackeray had also taken out a non-political march on July 5 in the state against Hindi imposition.
“The state government cancelling its two GRs issued earlier for introducing Hindi as a third language cannot be called late wisdom, because it was withdrawn only because of the Marathi people's resentment," he had said, adding that “the decision begets the question: Why was the government so insistent on Hindi being made the third language, and where exactly was the pressure on the government coming from?”
Declaring that the decision to impose Hindi as a third language in Maharashtra was thwarted 'once and for all', Thackeray had congratulated the people of Maharashtra for this “victory”.
“We are assuming that this decision has been cancelled forever, and the people of Maharashtra have also assumed the same. Therefore, do not mess with the committee report once again; otherwise, the government should take note that this committee will not be allowed to work in Maharashtra,” Thackeray had said, adding that the takeaway from this event was that the Marathi people’s collective anger against the destruction of their language should not be taken lightly.
"Our own people are sitting to thoroughly destroy your existence, your language and for them it has nothing to do with the language in which they learned, grew up, the language with which they are familiar... They probably want to please someone. This time, the collective anger of Marathi minds was seen, it should be seen again and again," he had said.
“May this bitterness grow stronger, and may the Marathi language become the language of knowledge and global affairs,” he had thundered.
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