“Language is very important for any society and the country, and the new education policy which is being formulated will give Hindi its due importance,” the HRD minister said.
While addressing an award function at the All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE), the minister said that when the education policy came in 1835, Lord Macualay had said that India’s people will remain Indians in their looks and blood but their thinking will be British.
“Whenever we escalate talks about working for the mother tongue, things don’t move forward,” he added.
“Who were the leaders in the country who did not let Hindi get its importance? Soon, a new education policy is coming. It is very unfortunate that people think low of themselves if they don’t know English. Like you can’t change your mother, you can’t change your language also,” he said.
The minister had in March this year said that the government is in the process of framing a new education policy (NEP) to meet the changing dynamics of people’s requirement with regard to quality education, innovation and research.
“Initially, a Committee for Evolution of the New Education Policy was constituted which submitted its report in May 2016 and thereafter, the ministry prepared ‘Some Inputs for the Draft National Education Policy, 2016’. Both these documents are treated as inputs for policy formulation,” the minister had said.
The prime objective of the NEP is to make India a knowledge superpower by equipping its students with the necessary skills and knowledge and to eliminate the shortage of manpower in science, technology, academics and industry.