Channelising the Potential of Student Community

The headline of an English daily on Feb.10 read as “Over 200 students throw stones at policemen – Third such incident this month – Seven people injured in violence - Campus Rogues on the Loose.” The Report goes on to state: “Denied permission to celebrate ‘Bus Day’, nearly 200 students of Pachaiyappa’s College on Thursday afternoon went on the rampage from inside their campus after locking the gate. They pelted stones at police, injuring seven people, including six policemen. Finally, police entered the college and dispersed the mob. Twelve students of the college as well as a class 11 student and a plumber who indulged in the violence were arrested, police said. The college management declared Friday as a holiday.

Two MTC Buses, a police vehicle and a private car were damaged. Sub-inspectors Duraipandian, 47, of the Chetpet police and Mohanasundaram, 52, Gangachalam, 54, Raman, 51, and Rengasamy, 45, of the Kilpauk police and armed reserve constable Selvakumar suffered injuries along with MTC driver V Gencilin, 28. This is the third instance of violence related to ‘bus day in the city this month after incidents involving students of Government Arts College, Nandanam and those of New College.”

It was only last month that the city witnessed two gangs of the historic Presidency college clashing inside the college campus and outside with deadly weapons following enmity between two groups travelling in two bus routes. People cannot forget for ever the gruesome attacks of a section of Law College students on another group, three years back.
The daily in its view said: “Enough is enough. Chennai for long has been enduring these unruly gangs of college students holding public transport buses to ransom. Now they seem to have graduated to a level of violence that seriously endangers the lives of citizens. Despite Madras high court making harsh observations against the ‘bus day’ practice, which some students like to call a ‘celebration,’ police have not been able to put an end to it. Filing vaguely-worded cases which fail to name the individuals who smash bus window panes and pelt stones at commuters is not enough. It’s high time the law enforcers named the perpetrators behind this culture of street violence and brought them to book under stringent sections of law.”

Indeed the police did following strict orders of the Madras High Court. The Chennai Police slapped attempt to murder charges on the Pachayappa’s college students who stoned buses and injured commuters. Armed with legal provisions and HC’s observations made in the wake of the campus violence at the TN Dr. Ambedkar Govt Law College three years ago, the police entered the college premises and brought the student unrest to an end and arrested 14 persons including 12 students and manhunt is on for two more students.

It is not uncommon for the people of Chennai and elsewhere in the State to witness the ravings and riotous behaviour of students in buses and public places and grumbling and cursing in silence.

But why the youth of this country and student community, the cream of younger generation, should go awry like this, more particularly at a time when the days ahead of them are highly competitive, whichever way they want to proceed or destined to. Though various reasons are attributed by those who matter, what if everyone miss, or possibly consciously avoid telling is – apoliticisation of the student community and its leadership, unlike in the past - prior to and after Independence of the country.

There are conflicting views regarding students’ participation in politics. There are people who always want to keep students very far from the politics. There are others who hold opposite view. They think that students ought to be well versed in politics because they are the future leaders of the country.
The most progressive, articulate, inspired and dynamic segment of the country’s population is the student’s community. The formative period of student’s life should be utilized for an all round balanced development of his/her personality. Political experience constitutes an essential part of this learning experience. This period prepares one to face the challenges better and enables one to succeed in life. The much hyped dirty murky nature notwithstanding Politics has the potential to inculcate qualities like general awareness, keeping abreast with current happenings and above all leadership qualities in an individual. Student’s who join politics are good orators. They become assertive by shedding their timidness and shyness. Tackling problems and solving disputes and handling crisis situations however small or big they may be, infuses confidence in them. It helps in developing skills to deal with people from all backgrounds and of all shades of opinion.

Moreover, politics cannot be divorced from a student’s life as he continuously interacts with the society and people from all walks of life and moreover when voting age has been brought down to 18 years. Students also have a great deal of exposure to mediums like the press, television, cinema, etc. which are important agents of political expression. Political science is a vital part of the syllabi both at the school and college level. This underlines the role that politics plays in various stages of a person’s life. Hence, it is futile to shut out students from politics.

While he is not expected to remain passive in the face of criminalization of politics, dismantling of democratic organizations, corruption, communalism and casteism, he should not indulge in communal or casteist politics, or give into the unjust directions of such party leaders.

The question has always been open to criticism whether students should be kept at arms length from politics or they should be allowed to take an active part in politics. In this age of political advancement and awakening, the students’ life in itself has been a politics for the last many years.

Moreover, every young man has some inspirations and some sentiments. These inspirations and sentiments can only be given a practical shape if they are allowed to enter politics. The question that remains unsettled is the shape and kind of politics.

The students must be allowed to understand their problems and they should have a full say in making those prob­lems solved in the right way. If they are debarred from doing so, it would mean nipping in bud the political awakening that is natural in every heart.
Students and youth are the backbone of the society and if they are not brought up properly, the future of the society will be darkened.

Modern critics who are of opinion that students should be kept away from politics forget that our society within organic concepts can only advance. The students are also a part of our society that is our body. Any organ of the body which is undeveloped makes the body cripple and infirm.
Thus we can assume that for the betterment of the society, of the welfare of the student community, for the prosperity of the country and for ever lasting peace and amity in society, the students should be allowed to have their say in all matters, which concern them.

The students are the future leaders of our country. If during their college days, the students do not learn the intricacies of politics, they would fail to become astute politicians in their future lives. They further argue that education would be incomplete without a good dose of politics.

History is replete with examples of students students playing a vital role in overthrowing corrupt dictatorial regimes, freeing their people from foreign yoke and launching relentless crusades against social injustice and exploitation. Majority of the great leaders entered politics during their student life. Therefore, political education or training during student life is important for success in life. Many students’ organizations were big and powerful. Their clout is so great that they could even go against the decision of the governments. Where others fail, they succeed easily. The power of the youth is a mighty river, waiting to be channelized. The politics of a particular system determines whether this happens in a constructive or destructive manner.
 

Tamil Nadu is known for Language struggles opposing the imposition of Hindi.

The Anti-Hindi agitation of 1965 are a series of agitations that happened in Tamil Nadu (formerly Madras State) in 1965. The agitations involved several mass protests, riots, student and political movements in Tamil Nadu, and concerned the official status of Hindi in the state and in the Indian Republic.

Adoption of an official language for the Indian Republic was a hotly debated issue during the framing of the Indian Constitution after India’s independence from Britain. After an exhaustive and divisive debate, Hindi was adopted as the official language of India with English continuing as an associate official language for a period of fifteen years, after which Hindi would become the sole official language. The new Constitution came into effect on 26 January 1950. Efforts by the Indian Government to make Hindi the sole official language after 1965 were not acceptable to many non-Hindi Indian states, who wanted the continued use of English. The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) led the opposition to Hindi. To allay the fears of the opposition, the then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru enacted the Official Languages Act in 1963 to ensure the continuing use of English beyond 1965. The text of the Act did not satisfy the DMK and increased their skepticism that his assurances might not be honoured by future administrations.

As the day (26 January 1965) of switching over to Hindi as sole official language approached, the anti-Hindi movement gained momentum in Madras State with increased support from college students. On 25 January, a full-scale riot broke out in the southern city of Madurai, sparked off by a minor altercation between agitating students and ruling party members. The riots spread all over Madras State, continued unabated for the next two months, and were marked by acts of violence, arson, looting, police firing and lathi charges. The Congress Government of the Madras State, called in paramilitary forces to quell the agitation; their involvement resulted in the deaths of about seventy persons (by official estimates) including two police men. To calm the situation, the then Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri gave assurances that English would continue to be used as the official language as long the non-Hindi speaking states wanted. The riots subsided after Shastri’s assurance, as did the student agitation.

The agitations of 1965 led to major political changes in the state. The DMK won the 1967 Assembly election and the Congress Party never managed to recapture power in the state since then. The Official Languages Act was eventually amended in 1967 by the Congress Government headed by Indira Gandhi to guarantee the indefinite use of Hindi and English as official languages. This effectively ensured the current “virtual indefinite policy of bilingualism” of the Indian Republic.

India has hundreds of languages. According to the Census of 2001, there are 1,635 rationalized mother tongues and 122 languages with more than 10,000 speakers. During the British Raj, English was the official language. When the Indian Independence Movement gained momentum in the early part of the 20th Century, efforts were undertaken to make Hindustani as a common language “to unite various linguistic groups against the British Government.” As early as 1918, Mahatma Gandhi established the Dakshin Bharat Hindi Prachar Sabha (Institution for the Propagation of Hindi in South India). In 1925, the Indian National Congress switched to Hindustani from English for conducting its proceedings. Both Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru were supporters of Hindustani and Congress wanted to propagate the learning of Hindustani in non-Hindi speaking Provinces of India. The idea of making Hindustani or Hindi the common language, was not acceptable to Thanthai Periyar, who viewed it as an attempt to make Tamils subordinate to North Indians.

The Indian Constituent Assembly was established on 9 December 1946, for drafting a Constitution when India became independent. The Constituent Assembly witnessed fierce debates on the language issue. The adoption of a “National Language”, the language in which the constitution was to be written in and the language in which the proceedings of the Assembly were to be conducted were the main linguistic questions debated by the framers of the Constitution. On one side were the members from the Hindi speaking provinces like Algu Rai Sastri, R.V. Dhulekar, Balkrishna Sharma, Purushottam Das Tandon, (all from United Provinces), Babunath Gupta (Bihar), Hari Vinayak Pataskar (Bombay) and Seth Govind Das (Central Provinces and Berar). They moved a large number of pro-Hindi amendments and argued for adopting Hindi as the sole National Language. On 10 December 1946, Dhulekar declared “People who do not know Hindustani have no right to stay in India. People who are present in the House to fashion a constitution for India and do not know Hindustani are not worthy to be members of this assembly. They had better leave.”

The pro-Hindi block was further divided into two camps: 1) the Hindi faction comprising Tandon, Govind Das, Sampurnanand, Ravishankar Shukla and K. M. Munshi and 2) the Hindustani faction represented by Jawaharlal Nehru and Abul Kalam Azad. The adoption of Hindi as the national language was opposed by members from South India like T.T. Krishnamachari, G. Durgabai, T. A. Ramalingam Chettiar, N. G. Ranga, N. Gopalaswamy Ayyangar (all belonging to Madras) and S. V. Krishnamurthy Rao (Mysore). This anti-Hindi block favoured retaining English as official language. Their views were reflected in the following pronouncement of Krishnamachari:

    We disliked the English language in the past. I disliked it because I was forced to learn Shakespeare and Milton, for which I had no taste at all. If we are going to be compelled to learn Hindi, I would perhaps not be able to learn it because of my age, and perhaps I would not be willing to do it because of the amount of constraint you put on me. This kind of intolerance makes us fear that the strong Centre which we need, a strong Centre which is necessary will also mean the enslavement of people who do not speak the language at the centre. I would, Sir, convey a warning on behalf of people of the South for the reason that there are already elements in South India who want separation..., and my honourable friends in U.P. do not help us in any way by flogging their idea of “Hindi Imperialism” to the maximum extent possible. So, it is up to my friends in Uttar Pradesh to have a whole India; it is up to them to have a Hindi-India. The choice is theirs.”

After three years of debate, the assembly arrived at a compromise at the end of 1949. It was called the Munshi-Ayyangar formula (after K.M. Munshi and Gopalaswamy Ayyangar) and it struck a balance between the demands of all groups. Part XVII of the Indian Constitution was drafted according to this compromise. It did not have any mention of a “National Language”. Instead, it defined only the “Official Languages” of the Union:

Hindi in Devanagari script would be the official language of the Indian Union. For fifteen years, English would also be used for all official purposes (Article 343). A language commission could be convened after five years to recommend ways to promote Hindi as the sole official language and to phase out the use of English (Article 344). Official communication between states and between states and the Union would be in the official language of the union (Article 345).English would be used for all legal purposes - in court proceedings, bills, laws, rules and other regulations (Article 348).The Union was duty bound to promote the spread and usage of Hindi (Article 351).

India became independent on 15 August 1947 and the Constitution was adopted on 26 January 1950.

The adoption of English as official language along with Hindi was heavily criticized by pro-Hindi politicians like Jana Sangh’s founder Syama Prasad Mukerjee, who demanded that Hindi should be made National language. Soon after the Constitution was adopted on 26 January 1950, efforts were made to propagate Hindi for official usage. In 1952, the Ministry of Education launched a voluntary Hindi teaching scheme. On 27 May 1952, use of Hindi was introduced in warrants for judicial appointments. In 1955, in-house Hindi training was started for all ministries and departments of the central government. On 3 December 1955, the government started using Hindi (along with English) for “specific purposes of the Union”

As provided for by Article 343, Nehru appointed the First Official Language Commission under the chairmanship of B. G. Kher on 7 June 1955. The commission delivered its report on 31 July 1956. It recommended a number of steps to eventually replace English with Hindi (The report had dissenting notes from two non-Hindi members - P. Subbarayan from Madras State and Suniti Kumar Chatterji from West Bengal. The Parliamentary Committee on Official Language, chaired by Govind Ballabh Pant was constituted in September 1957 to review the Kher commission report. After two years of deliberations, the Pant Committee submitted its recommendations to the President on 8 February 1959. It recommended that Hindi should be made the primary official language with English as the subsidiary one. The Kher Commission and the Pant Committee recommendations were condemned and opposed by non Hindi politicians like Suniti Kumar Chatterji, Frank Anthony and P. Subbarayan. The Academy of Telugu opposed the switch from English to Hindi in a convention held in 1956. Rajaji, once a staunch supporter of Hindi, organised an All India Language Conference (attended by representatives of Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu, Assamese, Oriya, Marathi, Kannada and Bengali languages) on 8 March 1958 to oppose the switch and declared “Hindi is as much foreign to non-Hindi speaking people as English is to the protagonists of Hindi.”

As the opposition to Hindi grew stronger, Nehru tried to reassure the concerns of non-Hindi speakers. Speaking in the parliamentary debate on a bill introduced by Anthony to include English in the Eighth Schedule, Nehru gave an assurance to them (on 7 August 1959):

“I believe also two things. As I just said, there must be no imposition. Secondly, for an indefinite period - I do not know how long - I should have, I would have English as an associate, additional language which can be used not because of facilities and all that... but because I do not wish the people of Non-Hindi areas to feel that certain doors of advance are closed to them because they are forced to correspond with the Government, I mean - in the Hindi language. They can correspond in English. So I could have it as an alternate language as long as people require it and the decision for that - I would leave not to the Hindi-knowing people, but to the non Hindi-knowing people.

This assurance momentarily allayed the fears of the South Indians. But the Hindi proponents were dismayed and Pant remarked “Whatever I achieved in two years, the prime minister destroyed in less than two minutes”.

The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) which broke away from the Dravidar Kazhagam in 1949, inherited the anti-Hindi policies of its parent - Dravidar Kazhagam. DMK’s founder Anna had earlier participated in the anti-Hindi agitations during 1938-40 and in the 1940s. In July 1953, the DMK launched an agitation for changing the name of a town - Dalmiapuram - to Kallakudi. They claimed that the town’s name (after Ramkrishna Dalmia) symbolised the exploitation of South India by the North. On 15 July 1953, Kalaignar M.Karunanidhi (later Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu) and other DMK members erased the Hindi name in Dalmiapuram railway station’s name board and lay down on the tracks. In the altercation with the Police that followed the protests, two DMK members lost their lives and several others including Kalaignar were arrested.

In the 1950s DMK continued its anti-Hindi policies. On 28 January 1956, Anna along with Periyar and Rajaji signed a resolution passed by the Academy of Tamil Culture endorsing the continuation of English as the official language. On 21 September 1957 the DMK convened an anti-Hindi Conference to protest against the imposition of Hindi. It observed 13 October 1957 as “anti-Hindi Day”. On 31 July 1960, another open air anti-Hindi conference was held at Kodambakkam, Madras. But the anti-Hindi stance remained and hardened with the passage of Official Languages Act of 1963. The DMK’s view on Hindi’s qualifications for official language status were reflected in Anna’s response to the “numerical superiority of Hindi” argument: “If we had to accept the principle of numerical superiority while selecting our national bird, the choice would have fallen not on the peacock but on the common crow.”

As the deadline stipulated in Part XVII of the Constitution for switching to Hindi as primary official language approached, the central government stepped up its efforts to spread Hindi’s official usage. In 1960, compulsory training for Hindi typing and stenography was started. The same year, the then President Rajendra Prasad acted on the Pant Committee’s recommendations and issued orders for preparation of Hindi glossaries, translating procedural literature and legal codes to Hindi, imparting Hindi education to government employees and other efforts for propagating Hindi.

To give legal status to Nehru’s assurance of 1959, the Official Languages Act was passed in 1963.
In Nehru’s own words:

“This is a Bill, in continuation of what has happened in the past, to remove a restriction which had been placed by the Constitution on the use of English after a certain date i.e. 1965. It is just to remove that restriction that this is placed.”

The Bill was introduced in Parliament on 21 January 1963. Opposition to the Bill came from DMK members who objected to the usage of the word “may” instead of “shall” in section 3 of the Bill. That section read: “the English language may...continue to be used in addition to Hindi”. The DMK argued that the term “may” could be interpreted as “may not” by future administrations. They feared that minority opinion will not be considered and non Hindi speakers’ views would be ignored. On 22 April, Nehru assured the parliamentarians that, for that particular case “may” had the same meaning as “shall”. The DMK then demanded, if that was the case why “shall” was not used instead of “may”. Leading the opposition to the Bill was Annadurai (then a Member of the Rajya Sabha). He pleaded for an indefinite continuation of the status quo and argued that continued use of English as official language would “distribute advantages or disadvantages evenly” among Hindi and non-Hindi speakers. The Bill was passed on 27 April without any change in the wording. As he had warned earlier, Annadurai launched state wide protests against Hindi. In November 1963, Annadurai was arrested along with 500 DMK members for burning part XVII of the Constitution at an anti-Hindi Conference. He was sentenced to six months in prison. On 25 January 1964, a DMK member - Chinnasamy committed suicide at Trichy by self immolation, to protest the “imposition of Hindi”. He was claimed as the first “language martyr” of the second round of the anti-Hindi struggle by the DMK.

Nehru died in May 1964 and Lal Bahadur Shastri became Prime Minister of India. Shastri and his senior cabinet members Morarji Desai and Gulzari Lal Nanda were strong supporters of Hindi being the sole official language. This increased the apprehension that Nehru’s assurances of 1959 and 1963 will not be kept despite Shastri’s assurances to the contrary. Concerns over the preference of Hindi in central government Jobs, civil service examinations and the fear that English will be replaced with Hindi as medium of instruction brought students into the anti-Hindi Agitation camp in large numbers. On 7 March 1964, the the Chief Minister of Madras State, M. Bhaktavatsalam at a session of the Madras Legislative Assembly recommended the introduction of Three-language formula (English, Hindi and Tamil) in the state. Apprehension over the Three-language formula increased student support for the anti-Hindi cause.

As January 26, 1965 approached, the anti-Hindi agitation in Madras State grew in numbers and urgency. The Tamil Nadu Students Anti Hindi Agitation Council was formed in January as an umbrella student organisation to coordinate the anti-Hindi efforts. The office bearers of the council were student union leaders from all over Madras State, many of whom later became ministers and political functionaries. Explaining the anxiety of the students, The Indian Express noted in its editorial on 6 February 1965:

“It was inevitable that the Madras students should have taken the lead in opposing the elevation of Hindi. After all a decision whether Hindi or English is to be the official language of the country affects them much more than any other section of the population. It is the students of the South who stand to lose most, when Hindi alone becomes the official language.”

Several student conferences (sponsored by industrialists like G. D. Naidu and Karumuthu Thiagarajan Chettiar) were organised throughout the state to protest against Hindi imposition. On 17 January, the Madras State Anti-Hindi Conference was convened in Trichy. Participants included Rajaji (Swatantara Party), V. R. Nedunchezhiyan (DMK), P. T. Rajan (Justice Party), G. D. Naidu, Karumuthu Thyagaraja Chettiar, S. B. Adithan (We Tamils Party), Muhammad Ismail (Muslim League) and 700 other delegates from Madras, Maharashtra, Kerala and Mysore. They called for the indefinite suspension of Part XVII of the constitution. In the Conference Rajaji declared that the Part XVII should “be heaved and thrown into the Arabian Sea.” The Home and Information & Broadcasting ministries of the central government (headed by Gulzarilal Nanda and Indira Gandhi respectively) upped the ante and issued circulars for replacing English with Hindi from 26 January. On 16 January, Anna announced that 26 January (also the Republic Day of India) would be observed as a day of mourning. He wrote to Shastri asking for the language transition to be postponed by a week so that Tamils could celebrate Republic Day with the rest of the country. Shastri refused and the stage was set for the confrontation.
 

Madras State’s Chief Minister Bhaktavatsalam warned that the state government would not tolerate the sanctity of the Republic day blasphemed and threatened the students with “stern action” if they participated in politics. The DMK advanced the “Day of Mourning” by a day. On 25 January, Anna was taken into preventive custody along with 3000 DMK members to forestall the agitations planned for the next day. On 26 January, 50,000 students from Madras city’s colleges marched from Napier park to the Government secretariat at Fort St. George to present a petition to Bhaktavatsalam. But he refused to meet the students saying “Why should I see the students?” The students viewed his refusal as an insult and were further enraged.

In the morning of 25 January, students in Madurai took out a procession toward the Thilagar thidal  at the centre of the city. Their intention was to stage a public burning of Part XVII of the constitution. They burned a huge effigy of “Hindi Demoness” and shouted slogans against Hindi like “Down with Hindi” and “Hindi Never, English Ever”. As the procession approached the Congress Party district office at North Masi Street, some Congress “volunteers” who had arrived in a Jeep shouted insults and obscenities at the students. A volley of sandals from the students returned the insult. The provoked Congress volunteers, who ran back into the Party’s office, returned with knives and attacked students, wounding seven. As the riot broke out, students set fire to the pandal in the Congress office, constructed for the Republic day celebrations. When news of the attack spread riots broke out in Madurai and other parts of the State. In retaliation for the attack, students cut down flag poles of the Congress party all over Madurai.
 

As the riots spread, police responded with lathi charges and firing on student processions. This further inflamed the situation. Acts of arson, looting and damage to public property became common. Railway cars and Hindi name boards at railway stations were burned down; telegraph poles were cut and railway tracks displaced. The Bhaktavatsalam Government considered the situation as a law and order problem and brought in para military forces to quell the agitation. Incensed by police action, violent mobs killed two police men. Five agitators (Sivalingam, Aranganathan, Veerappan, Muthu, and Sarangapani) committed suicide by pouring gasoline and setting themselves on fire and three more (Dandapani, Muthu, and Shanmugam) died by consuming poison. (a sixth suicide by self immolatation - by Sarangapani of Mayavaram occurred two weeks later). In two weeks of riots, around 70 people were killed (by official estimates). Some unofficial reports put the death toll as high as 500. A large number of students were arrested. The damage to property was assessed as one crore Rupees.
 

On 28 January, classes in Madras University, Annamalai University and other colleges and schools in the state were suspended indefinitely. Within the Congress, opinion was divided - On 31 January, a group of Congress leaders including Mysore Chief minister S.Nijalingappa, Bengal Congress leader Atulya Ghosh, Union Minister Sanjeeva Reddy and Congress president K. Kamaraj met in Bangalore and issued an appeal not to force Hindi on non-Hindi speaking areas as they believed it might endanger the unity of the country. Morarji Desai refused their demands regretting that Hindi was not made official before the anti-Hindi protests crystallized. He said Congress leaders in Madras should convince people there and no regional sentiments should come in the move to forge the integration of the country. Union Home Minister Gulzari Lal Nanda agreed with Bhaktavatsalam’s handling of the agitation and commended him for standing “hard as a rock”.
 

Rioting continued throughout the first week of February. On February 6, student representatives met Bhaktavatsalam to find a compromise. But the talks failed and violence continued unabated. Processions, fasts, general strikes, burning of Hindi books, destruction of Hindi name boards, agitations in front of Post offices became commonplace. By the second week of February the students had lost control of protests. Anna (who had been released on 1 February) condemned the violence and asked the students to suspend the movement. But violence continued unabated. Efforts were made by both sides to find a compromise - Indira Gandhi visited Madras to try and reconcile the situation, while Bhaktavatsalam toned down his stance and started advocating “permanent bilingualism”. In a Union cabinet meeting on 11 February, C. Subramaniam, the Minister for Food, demanded statutory recognition for English as official Language. When he was voted down, he resigned along with another minister from Madras State (O. V. Alagesan).
 

Faced with open revolt in his cabinet, Shastri remained unfazed. He recommended the acceptance of their resignations to the Indian president Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan. Radhakrishnan refused his recommendations by saying “Do you want to lose Tamil Nadu from India?. If not, kindly take back your recommendation”. Shastri backed down and made a broadcast through All India Radio on February 11. Expressing shock over the riots, he promised to honour Nehru’s assurances. Further he made four assurances on his own:
Every state will have complete and unfettered freedom to continue to transact its own business in the language of its own choice, which may be the regional language or English. Communications between one State to another will either be in English or will be accompanied by authentic English translation. The non-Hindi states will be free to correspond with the Central Government in English and no change will be made in this arrangement without the consent of the non-Hindi States. In the transaction of business at the Central level, English will continue to be used.
 

Later he added a fifth assurance: The All India Civil Services examination would continue to be conducted in English rather than in Hindi alone.
 

Shastri’s assurances calmed down the volatile situation. On 12 February, the students council postponed the agitation indefinitely and on 16 February, C. Subramaniam and O. V. Alagesan withdrew their resignations. Sporadic acts of protests and violence continued to happen throughout February and early March. On 7 March, the administration withdrew all the cases filed against the student leaders and on 14 March, the Anti-Hindi Agitation Council dropped the agitation. Shastri’s climbdown angered the pro-Hindi activists in North India. Members of Jan Sangh went about the streets of New Delhi, blackening out English signs with tar.
 

After dropping the agitation in March 1965, the Tamil Nadu Students Anti-Hindi Agitation council continued to push for the scrapping of the Three Language formula and for a constitutional amendment to drop part XVII. On 11 May, a three-person delegation of the student council met with Prime minister Shastri to press their demands. The anti-Hindi agitation slowly changed into a general anti-Congress organisation with the goal of defeating the congress in the 1967 election. On 20 February 1966, the first statewide conference of the council was held. It was attended by Rajaji, who asked the students to work toward defeating the Congress. In the 1967 elections, student leader P. Seenivasan contested against Kamarajar in the Virudunagar constituency. A large number of students from all over the state campaigned for him and ensured his victory: the Congress party was defeated and DMK came to power for the first time in Madras State.
 

After losing the 1967 elections Congress Party never managed to recapture power in the state. The agitations also ensured the passage of Official Languages Act of 1963 and its amendment in 1967, thus ensuring the continued use of English as an official language of India. They effectively brought about the “virtual indefinite policy of bilingualism” of the Indian Republic. Such was the significant and most important role of students and youth in bringing about this decisive change.
 

And this tradition of the youth and students of Tamil Nadu, that the DMK Treasurer Thalapathi M.K.Stalin is invoking in his speeches to the aspirants for positions in the Party’s Youth Wing in districts. His impassioned appeal for restoring the ideal and spirit of those days among the youth and students of the day. That is the time-tested channelisation of the power of the youth in a laudable and constructive manner!

Students taken for a ride for Jaya’s silly publicity

Jayalalitha’s battery of freebie pronouncements has purposes other than mitigating the sufferings of people or meant for their welfare and progress. On the eve of elections, she waited for the release of DMK’s Election Manifesto, and then announced her party’s adding something more than what was promised by the DMK. As Kalaignar not only fulfilled all electoral promises and offered beyond them during his previous rule, Jayalalitha could not escape this time around without fulfilling the promises as in the past.

But the modus operandi of implementing free schemes by this regime leaves much to be desired or cloaked in mystery and intrigue, unlike during the DMK rule when at every stage of implementation all the parties represented in the Assembly were associated in a transparent manner.

With the unfolding of one scheme after the other, many skeletons in the cupboard are coming into the open. The free cow, sheep/goat scheme to rural women below poverty line is reported to be benefiting ruling partymen acting as middlemen and the beneficiaries get tormented with dying cattle or old cows already given birth to 10 calves, past lactation period. The scheme serves only to transfer government funds to the pockets of ruling partymen.

Another dole by the ADMK regime in the form of free laptop is certain to become millstones around the necks of lakhs of students. Under the scheme, a poll promise of Jayalalitha, the government will distribute 9.12 lakh laptops to school students of Plus Two classes every year in the next four years. About 6,600 were distributed last year on September 15. The State government’s IT arm The Electronics Corporation of Tamil Nadu (ELCOT) is to procure the laptops.

Leaving aside ‘less-informed’ Tamil media, the self-proclaimed enlightened English media including the 24x7 penetrative news channels, did not find anything amiss in the Free Laptop scheme, until February 6, when the US expert and Free Software Pioneer Richard Stallman on a visit to Chennai, slammed TN’s free laptop scheme.

The Tamil Nadu government may be trumpeting its scheme to distribute computers free to students but it is setting a poor example for what a state should do, says American software freedom activist Richard Stallman.

    “It distributes laptops loaded with non-free software to children, teaching them to be dependent on paid products. It creates a system of digital colonisation,” Stallman, who has waged a storied battle against software giants like Bill Gates, said in an e-mail interview. He criticised the state’s ambitious free laptop scheme that hands out computers with the Windows operating system.

Even after the investigative journal Tehelka’s business daily ‘The Financial World’ exposed the evil design in the scheme as much back in October last, the media in Tamil Nadu did not think it proper to pursue the matter and inform the people how the scheme will cost the future of the poor students and the State’s exchequer.

 The ELCOT has taken out a tender for the supply of 9,12,000 laptops to be delivered this year. Over the next five years, close to 70 lakh laptops produced at a cost of over Rs 10,200 crore would be distributed. Jayalalitha has sent a memorandum to Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh asking for central funds to implement this scheme.

With so much at stake, the IT intelligentsia in India is accusing Microsoft of using a mixture of American diplomatic offensive and its ‘embrace, extend and extinguish’ strategy to make 7 million poor students of Tamil Nadu dependent on its products with their free laptops.

ELCOT’s repeated changes in the tender have forced out free software and pushed in Microsoft products, a move that could ‘end up putting unproductive laptops with Windows in the hands of poor students’. This would entrap them in Microsoft’s proprietary web of licences, renewals, updates and upgrades.

There are allegations against ELCOT that it deliberately issued a second tender favouring Microsoft by eliminating open source software from its list of specifications and removing academically useful hardware from the laptop in a bid to balance out the increased cost of using the Windows Operating system and the licensed MS Office.

ELCOT advertised the first tender for the free distribution of over 9,12,000 laptops on June 4, 2011, after Jayalalitha decided to implement another of her election promises. ELCOT was working on keeping the base price of the laptop at Rs 15,000 and, given the sheer scale of the order, the costs were expected to come down to Rs 10,000 a laptop.

In June, ELCOT took out a tender with the following specifications: A dual boot system that had free open source Linux with the proprietary Microsoft Windows starter edition with antivirus software valid for a year. In addition, the laptop also had to have 320 GB hard drive, 1.3 megapixel web camera, Wi-Fi adapter and 8X DVD writer among other things.

At a time when ELCOT was looking to reduce costs, the bundling of Microsoft Windows raised the price by Rs 5,000. Experts also point out that according to Microsoft’s terms of licencing with Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs), Windows always boots first irrespective of what a user wants when they start a laptop.

Faced with a situation where it needed to cut costs and not offend one of the world’s most profitable and powerful corporations (as directed by Jayalalitha), ELCOT took out a second tender that stupefied the IT community in Tamil Nadu. In its new tender, ELCOT asked bidders to provide only Microsoft Windows and removed Linux from the list.

The ELCOT refused to take more questions on why they needed dual boot software when Kerala had set an example in the use of the free open source software through its 2007 IT policy. The Kerala programme, which is being heralded as the future of computing, aims to make the state the leader in e-literacy driven largely by Linux, which promotes the democratisation of it and brings it to every home.

ELCOT removed the free OS even though Linux’s Ubuntu operating system comes for free and requires no updates, upgrades or expensive antivirus software to keep the laptop in shape.

Ironically, ELCOT ’s own data centre at Taramani in Chennai uses IBM servers and is powered by the free and open source Linux platform. But when it came to students, it ditched the open source model for Microsoft.

What is more startling is that in 2007 , under the DMK government, ELCOT had shut the doors on Microsoft by ordering the migration of all government departments, panchayats and schools to Open Source Software after being convinced about its cost benefits and massive collaborative potential. Over 30,000 government and schoolteachers were to be trained in Linux. Microsoft staffers approached twice and offered to sell the Windows OS for Rs 7,000 a computer. ELCOT quoted a price of Rs 500 saying that for a mere Rs 300 they could not only get an Operating System better than Windows but could also incorporate features like DVD drives, webcams, multimedia editing software, vector map drawing applications and hundreds of other academically helpful software. Rs 300 was just the media cost and they need not pay it if the package was downloaded. It was contended that MS Office did not allow saving files in open format but it was always possible to open MS Office files on an open source. This made the Windows OS and MS Office not only more expensive but also inferior. ELCOT’s proposals then, massively upgraded the systems and saved the Tamil Nadu government close to Rs 400 crore every year.

Even the special adviser to the Prime Minister, Sam Pitroda, believes that in a scheme like this there is no scope for burdening students with stifling software that would eventually become a liability for students. “I would strongly recommend going in for open source software since it gives students the capability to innovate, improvise and be creative. There is no difference between using expensive proprietary software and open source platforms and students who fear that their job prospects might be hurt because of using free software are completely misplaced in their fears,” Pitroda has said.

When ELCOT took out a second tender on August 20, 2011, not only had ELCOT booted out open source by only allowing Microsoft Windows OS on the systems, but it also removed vital hardware to accommodate the high cost of the Windows OS . The new tender removed the webcam and Wi-Fi adapter from the system while reducing the hard disk capacity to half (160 GB as opposed to 320 GB in the June tender). So ELCOT which wanted to reduce costs by about Rs 3000 on the base price of Rs 15,000 chose to dispose of hardware, which would benefit the students instead of shaving off the costs by including free software with extra hardware. Considering the growing penetration and relevance of internet in today's times, without the Wi-Fi adapter, how beneficial is a laptop (defined as a personal computer for mobile use) to students?

So what changed between June 4 and August 20 that led to Microsoft’s OS being bundled into the laptop even though it meant higher costs and removing hardware from the system, which is helpful to students?

Diplomatic observers then point out to the stopover of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Chennai on July 20-21 when she met Jayalalitha before flying out to Indonesia on a state visit. “The proximity of the Clintons and the Gates is well known to the world and needs no explanation. Hillary Clinton has often endorsed Microsoft’s views on piracy and curtailing open source software to protect Intellectual Property Rights (IPR). Microsoft employees alone contributed close to $1,30,000 to Hillary’s presidential campaign while giving just half that amount to Obama’s campaign. And the revelations of WikiLeaks only show how the US has been forcing governments across the world to buy expensive Microsoft licences,” says Peter Gabriel, an online free software activist.

Two cables, one originating in the embassy at Hanoi and the other at the embassy in Tunis, throw enough light on the scale and nature of the government-corporation nexus in the United States and its influence on world governments.

According to one of the cables, the US government ‘intervened’ to force Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dzung to sign an agreement with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer that would require Hanoi to pay Microsoft $20 million for 3 lakh licences. This even though the Vietnamese PM wanted to hold the Microsoft deal as a deliverable till he met the US president later that year.

Now put that deal in an Indian context where 70 lakh licences would be required under Jayalalitha’s ambitious free laptop scheme and the business of diplomacy becomes clear. The Microsoft deal of 3 lakh licences was dubbed in the cable as ‘the most significant agreement Vietnam has ever signed with a US business’.

Another indication of what Microsoft is up to in Tamil Nadu can be understood from what the software giant did in Tunisia where only free software was being used in the government since 2001, which prevented Microsoft from participating in the Tunisian government’s tenders.

Microsoft, like its various charitable acts in India through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, also helped a charity for handicapped people run by the wife of the Tunisian president, Ben Ali. The confidential cable notes, ‘Microsoft has agreed to provide training to handicapped Tunisians to enable them to seek employment. The programme’s affiliation with Leila Ben Ali’s charity is indicative of the backroom manoeuvring sometimes required to finalise a deal. Microsoft’s reticence to fully disclose the details of the agreement shows Tunisia’s emphasis on secrecy over transparency. Ultimately, for Microsoft, the benefits outweigh the costs.’

Microsoft eventually bagged the contract to supply 12,000 licences to the Tunisian government. It also made the Tunisian government change its tender rules for IT equipment, and every subsequent tender now specifies that equipment must be Microsoft-compatible, which until then had been prohibited by Tunisia’s open software policy.

A similar scenario is unfolding in Tamil Nadu where despite a major shift to open source software in 2007 under DMK rule, the state is moving back to laptops for poor rural students preloaded with Microsoft Windows.

After one year, the performance of a Windows laptop goes down drastically. Using Windows would greatly hamper the productivity of the student using it and the machine would become useless within two years. This is a step backwards for Tamil Nadu. They thought since it is the tax payer’s money, it doesn’t matter what kind of laptop is given. Would anyone have bought a laptop for their personal use without vital hardware at an enhanced cost?”

Bengaluru-based software analyst Niranjan Bhargava says: “An inbuilt webcam would have helped poor students get access to qualitatively superior training from India’s centres of academic excellence, which are primarily concentrated in a few areas. A laptop without wireless capability is outdated. It is going back in time when we should be looking at leapfrogging broadband to improve wifi connectivity.”

Bhargava’s views are shared by Chennai-based IT consultant Mahesh Bhadani. “The education system should be vender-agnostic as ultimately it is the students who will have to pay the price of Microsoft’s armtwisting and invasive technology.

The Linux system has extremely beneficial academic applications for students available free of cost. For science students, free software like Stellarium and Kalzium are immensely beneficial.

The new tender also reduces the warranty to one year. That is a real bad idea considering that most of the users will be first timers who will be prone to mishandling the laptop out of ignorance,” Bhadani said.

What should probably be more disconcerting than Microsoft’s aggressive strategy is that Jayalalitha is making the same mistakes that leaders of underdeveloped African nations made under US pressure.

However it is still not known whether there were any other consideration, as in the case of the wife of the Tunisian President Ben Ali, that ‘moved’ Jayalalitha to add costly and risky MS software meant for students, unpacked by Hillary Clinton’s Chennai stopover.

But visibly there was a short-lived attempt for cheap and silly glorification of Jayalalitha. Following her meeting with Hillary Clinton and the subsequent event of a US congressional committee mooting a proposal for a $100 million aid cut for Sri Lanka for violation of human rights, for the consideration of US Congress and senate in October this year, the pro-Jayalalitha English daily ‘The New Indian Express’ stooped so low to interlink the two separate and unrelated events and interpreted it as a diplomatic success for Jayalalitha, publishing an editorial glorifying Jayalalitha that she has emerged as the ‘Leader of World Tamils.’ Exhilarated Jayalalitha signalled her minions to issue ads in newspapers and posters across the state hailing her as ‘Leader of World Tamils’.

However, the ad-blitz was very short-lived (only for two-three days) as the DMK daily ‘Murasoli’ exposed the bluff, as the official website of the US State department did not mention a word about the meeting of Hillary Clinton with Jayalalitha, whereas all her other engagements in Chennai were found posted on the website in detail. Ashamed over the much-ado-about-nothing,  she had directed her party’s official organ to halt publishing ads in this manner.

Now the cat is out of the bag. It was not at all Lankan Tamils issue that transpired in their very brief meeting, but the US lady pushed the US business interests and successfully pressurised Jaya for the market-starved Microsoft, of course at the huge cost of the students of Tamil Nadu and also, the State exchequer!

Freedom of Speech and Selective Predilections!

Never before the annual fare, Jaipur Literature Festival since its beginning in 2006, hogged so-much limelight in the English media – both print and electronic – as in this year. All because of the controversy surrounding writer Salman Rushdie and his work ‘The Satanic Verses’. This edition of the Jaipur Literature Festival had only one guest: Salman Rushdie. And he didn’t even turn up. No matter, no one was more present. Many would insist that the decline of Rushdie as a writer of fiction began in the middle of his fourth novel, ‘The Satanic Verses’, or definitely after his fifth work of fiction, ‘Haroun and the Sea of Stories’, and has continued since.  But all this has only to do with the tiny number of people in this country who read serious fiction and non-fiction written in English. Clearly, embedded in Rushdie's public persona is a certain unremovable mark ‘TSV' that people who have nothing to do with books or literature like to knock. That mark still sets off some kind of ruptures in certain segments outside the book-reading world.

The controversy over his non-appearance at the Festival and the debates it has triggered have tended to focus on why the government caved in to the seemingly unreasonable demand by a section of the Muslim community to prevent Rushdie’s visit because his ‘Satanic Verses’ had once offended their sensibility. That was in another century but, apparently, the wound hasn’t healed. Their argument is that Rushdie might say something to offend their faith again, which, of course, you can’t put past him. The man is nothing if can’t offend. Contemporary writers tend to betray both theories of art – ‘art for art’s sake’ and ‘art for social purpose’. They have their own theory – ‘art for attention’s sake’, for which they create controversies - Crass commercialisation!

Since the banning (of imports) of Satanic Verses decades ago, Rushdie has visited India several times. He has appeared in print, given interviews, attended parties, spoken on TVs. He has also attended Jaipur festivals in the past. How is it that suddenly a section of Muslim community finds his presence radio active? Because of politics – what else?

Of course, because of politics – what else? Clearly, they are playing up in the context of UP Assembly elections. The Congress party, leading the Rajasthan government, would like the sizeable Muslim minority in UP to have an understanding with it. That is the reading of the literati that annually makes the pilgrimage to Jaipur and of course, the non-playing captains of carnival, the Media. So much so the unusual coverage given to this year’s annual literature festival, which again is the same – politics of the media. suddenly, everyone is talking about freedom of speech and the right to offend as part of it, and if you listen carefully, even the BJP is making overlapping noices. They have staked their all in defence of Rushdie and they have levelled substantive charges of craveness on the part of ruling Congress-led government.

How is this class of freedom fighters – the literati and the media – seem to wake about freedom of art and speech, which generally involve the right to offend, only when intellectual pin-up boy like Rushdie is in the crosshairs?

There are any number of instances that have gone begging for strident interventions in the recent past; why? almost during the Jaipur festival. Symbiosis University in Pune decided to disallow screening of a documentary film on Kashmir, after a right-wing student group objected to it. Bowing further, the university even dumped proposed seminar. Dileep Padgaonkar may be good enough for the Government of India which appointed him its interlocutor for J&K, but the noted journalist was not allowed to speak about his experiences at the university’s seminar on Kashmir. After several right-wing organisations like Hindu Janjagruti Samiti and Panun Kashmir supported by the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (APVP) of the BJP opposed the event, the university decided to ‘postpone’ (alibi for cancellation) three day-seminar ‘Voices of Kashmir’, earlier scheduled for Feb.3, 4 and 5. The literati and the media (except ‘The Hindu’) made no noices.

But this does raise questions about relative understandings, in different contexts, of things like freedom of expression and bans. So, how do we look at those critical issues? One way would be to approach this by using two examples: of course, Rushdie, and also a documentary film on Kashmir. And doing so by locating them in the contexts of power: both internally, as in what power structure, or lack thereof, any narrative (be it a book or a film) emanates from and how that exists in relationship to a larger matrix of power.

Satanic Verses exists in a matrix of what the west and east ‘mean’ to each other. Or rather the imbalance of power that exists between them, which Rushdie clearly was aware of. Which is to say, both the history of antagonisms (real or invented) between the west and, in this case, Islam and the relative position of power between the two in today’s world.

Now, it is the right, even duty, of artists and writers et al to challenge, even provoke. The question of evaluating what is produced thus is asking whom does it provoke, and why, and how all that is located in the context of power. Does what is produced attack power, speak against it, unravel it, or does it align itself with it either intentionally or by default?

A cursory reading of Satanic Verses makes clear that Rushdie was aware of what he was doing. The book unambiguously caricatures the Prophet of Islam and other contemporaneous figures. Now, keep in mind both the authoritarianism and repression extant in most of what is called the ‘Muslim world’ as well as the rank demonisation of Arabs-Muslims in the west, and it is no wonder Rushdie’s book was seen as yet another attack, another humiliation emanating from within the west. The mass reaction, in turn, added to stereotypes of ‘exotic fundamentalism’.

The point about Salman Rushdie’s freedom to write what he wants is given. The issue about whether books et al should be banned is a nonstarter, they should not. The point, rather, as with the case of the Danish cartoons of the Prophet, is whether you are seeking to target, vilify or mock someone above you in the power equation or lower — a comprehension of that power equation is critical to contextualise the attendant reactions.

The point also, arguably, could be whether there is intent of progressive reform, at a betterment of society and the world in a radical, startling piece of work (all questions of artistic or literary merit apart) which seeks to shock. Or whether there is an attempt to shock for its own sake, and perhaps make a commercial success of the work in the bargain.

Although somewhat different in scale, the decision of an educational institute in Pune to disallow the screening of a documentary film on Kashmir, after a right-wing student group said it promoted ‘separatism’, is an other-side-of-the-coin sort of example. If a film or any other narrative is seeking to present a picture on the political situation in that state which is not only at variance with state narratives — with all the power that is implicit within them — but undercuts them, unravels them, then, obviously, it is ‘speaking to power’. It is, then, speaking against the dominant state-and-media discourse on Kashmir. If a film speaks about the powerlessness of a people, disallowing its screening, therefore, is a decision that aligns itself with the dominant powers — whether articulated by the state, media or assorted right-wing groups.

Since this comes right on the heels of the Rushdie-in-Jaipur fracas, it becomes a pointer to the selective nature of what is hailed and defended as freedom of speech and what is quietly largely left to fend for itself — if not excoriated by the same quarters. The manner in which how power inflects issues of freedom of expression and how they are played out in the public domain becomes, thus, a wee bit clearer.

Some of the instances that went begging for student strident protest in the recent past were:

A couple of years ago, when Bal Thackeray’s Shiv Sena forced Bombay University to remove a Rohinton Mistry text that called into question the leader’s parentage, the civil society’s voices were muted. A couple of mass petitions did the rounds on the net. That was about it. Bombay is a crowded city; but if the champions wanted, they could have found a toehold at Marine Drive or Azad Maidan and read out passages from the banned text. Or distributed photocopies of the passage in question. When the artist M F Husain exiled himself from India because the state was not ready to guarantee him protection from the threats of the Hindu right wing, the champions of democracy did not believe freedom of speech was all that endangered; a little, may be, but not enough to make a show of it and pressurise the government to say that art is more important than votes or blood on the streets.

When James Laine (Hindu King in Islamic India) cast aspersions on Shivaji’s parentage, and the Hindu right wing banned the book, no one was bothered enough to move court as is now happening in Rushdie’s case. Nor was there a sustained media debate on the issue.

Or the recent controversy over A K Ramanujan’s essay (Three Hundred Ramayanas: Fives Examples and Three Thoughts on Translation) where he mentions the possibility of Sita being Ravana’s daughter. Did we see any pitched battle being waged by literature lovers when some Delhi University professors succeeded in removing the essay from the BA syllabus?

Again, recall the Ram Sethu controversy in the recent past. The BJP and other Hindu right wing parties said at the time that the reef under the shallows of the Palk Straits connecting Rameswaram to Sri Lanka was built by the Vanara Sena in the mythical ages of Ramayana and not by nature; and that that shouldn’t be scientifically ascertained because the truth might hurt the Hindu sentiment. The truth they were afraid of is that both Vanara Sena and Rama are more mythological than historical. How easily the intelligentsia let that too go.

These cases of neglect do not justify either the ban on Satanic Verses or Rushdie’s visit. But we do ourselves a disservice when we identify Rushdie as a martyr and let other saints march by into the dark.

Tale of Two Chief Ministers

Expressing concern over the manner in which agitating nurses of government hospitals and students of government-run nursing colleges since January 24, were being treated by the ADMK regime, DMK President and former Chief Minister Kalaignar M.Karunanidhi urged the government to invite them and hold talks to solve the issue amicably.

Speaking at a function held at DMK Headquarters Anna Arivalayam on Jan.26, Kalaignar said the Tamil Nadu government should hold talks with agitating nurses, who are protesting against a government order to appoint nursing staff from private institutions at government hospitals, and settle the issue amicably.

Expressing concern, Kalaignar said, “We are all seeing the plight of the nurses for the last couple of days through newspapers and how they were being treated. Why should they be made to suffer like this? What have they asked? The nurses and the government can sort out the issue through talks” , the DMK President said. “If the government invited them and held talks with them, and satsify them by accepting their demands, they will be doubly happy”, he said, and lamented over the manner in which they were being treated by the ruling ADMK.

More than 1,500 nurses from government hospitals and medical colleges were arrested across the State on Jan.24 after they took to streets protesting against the GO dated Jan.18, which said that the government had decided that “in future, all vacant posts of nurses in all government institutes shall be filled up from among the trained nurses both in the government institutions and government-approved private nursing institutions by conducting an examination by the Medical Services Recruitment Board.”

In Chennai, nearly 500 nursing students went on a hunger fast in Director of Medical Services campus from Jan.24 when they were forcibly removed by the police and thrown into police lorries, detained in kalyana mandapams and released in the evening. In other district headquarters also, nurses and nursing students resolved to boycott of attending on patients, formed human chains and held demonstrations etc., The agitation was getting intensified day by day as there was no move from the government to call them for talks and find solution. Instead, the authorities resorted to coercive methods to put down the agitation. Hostels of nursing students and nurses were closed for a week and inmates were asked to go to their homes. On Jan.27, when about 500 of them intended to present a memorandum to the Chief Minister and proceeded to the Secretariat they were stopped by the police near Kannagi statue and directed to disburse. When the girls refused they were threatened to be remanded, they refused to leave and offered to get arrested. The police used force to clear them from the road by which the convoy of Chief Minister Jayalalitha would pass through. They were all kept in a hall and in the late evening taken in vehicles to different parts of the city and dropped. They were not even provided with food and drinking water all through the day. In some places like Coimbatore, parents protested against nursing school authorities for seeking a declaration that their children will not take part in protest.

Twenty-two Government nursing schools and 24 nursing colleges in the state produced 4,000 nurses every year as against 10,000 by 155 private nursing colleges and 214 schools. The nursing students, who were pursuing diploma courses in government colleges said that the status quo, which permits only those graduated from government-run nursing and medical colleges for appointment in government hospitals, should continue as admission was done purely on merit in such institutions and most of them come from economically poor families. “If examinations are conducted by allowing students from private nursing schools/colleges too to compete with students graduating from government schools of nursing, our job opportunities will get sized down,” the students said.

Leelavathi, president, Tamil Nadu Government Nurses Association speaking to reporters said the association had intervened in asking students to present their demands without quitting work. While commending the order for providing nurses from private institutions with equal employment opportunities, Leelavathi said some preference such as higher percentage of recruitment should be accorded to government nursing students. “Nurses trained at government institutions are better trained than their private counterparts. They have more practical training as they are required to tend to poor patients in the government hospitals and attend a wide spectrum of medical cases. Nurses trained in private institutions on the other hand cannot lay claim to equal practical training as they tend to limited number of patients.”

“Though we are not paid much, we continue to work in government hospitals since we consider this as a service to the patients. While we slog without a break, it is unfair for the government to appoint nurses from private colleges, as meritorious students would be affected because of this decision”, said Pushpalatha, a senior nurse at the GH, Chennai.

When the nursing students started protesting, the authorities of government nursing colleges and schools had threatened them that they would be committing contempt of the Madras High Court, “which had directed the TN government in June 2011 to grant equal job opportunities to students of private and government nursing colleges.” This is contrary to truth and if at all any contempt of court is committed, it is by the government and not the students.

A conscious effort by the ADMK government to sidestep the judicial process seems to have triggered the latest protests by nurses of government hospitals and students of government-run nursing colleges. The order issued by the Health and Family Welfare department on January 18 permitting nursing students from private colleges to compete for appointment in government hospitals, has a long and complex legal history.

The order was issued though a special leave petition on the matter is pending before the Supreme Court, and a specially-constituted three-judge bench of the Madras High Court too is seized of the matter. When the issue has not yet attained finality in judicial forums, what was the urgency to come out with such an order, ask jurists.

The government order partially answers the query. It says the government was receiving a constant stream of petitions from candidates from private nursing schools/colleges. It also says the order’s validity is subject to the outcome of the SLP in the SC. But it does not mention that the issue is also pending with a full bench of the HC comprising Justice Elipe Dharma Rao, Justice D Murugesan and Justice M Venugopal. The case last came up for hearing before the bench on September 9,2011.

In 2006,a single judge of the High Court ruled that private college students were entitled to be treated on a par with candidates from government nursing schools. On an appeal, a division bench set aside the order in April 2007. The third round of litigation started when private nurses challenged the rule itself, which says that only nursing students from government colleges are eligible for appointment in government hospitals.

After a single judge dismissed their plea, appeals were filed before a division bench in Madurai. The bench directed the authorities to consider the applications of private students for appointment in government institutions.

This interim order of March 31,2011 was confirmed by the bench on June 23,2011.

Government college students successfully appealed against the order and got it set aside. Against this order, private nursing students filed an SLP in the SC, which stayed the division bench order on November 17,2011.The apex court issued notice to the government as well.

The government, which was supposed to file its response before the SC as well as the HC, has, instead, chosen to come out with an order which forecloses the litigation before these courts. What is the tearing hurry for the government to take sides with private institutions, asks a former law officer.

While referring the matter to be decided by a full bench, a judge had said that the existing scheme was not one of institutional preference favouring government nursing colleges, but a comprehensive scheme for training and appointing nurses.

For nurses, the entry point to GHs is admission in government nursing schools. The students and the government sign a bond, pledging stipend for students who would give an undertaking that they would work only in government hospitals.

But all this while, there were no moves from the Chief Minister or the Health Minister to take up the matter and find a solution. Dismayed over the plight of these young women, Kalaignar said, “Witnessing the scenes of these women tortured, outraged, arrested, lifted and lobbed into lorries and dragged away, people like me could not but feel ‘why all this distress and get annoyed.’

It is not because Kalaignar is not in office now and leads the opposition party that he expressed his concern and dismay for protesting nurses and students. What did he do in a similar situation during his rule?

Not long back but during his previous tenure as Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, Kalaignar, promptly acted with extraordinary sensitivity and humanness. On 26.5.2010, 72 differently-abled persons who could not get appointments after completing secondary school teacher training during the period between 2005-06 and 2008-09 in Special Teacher Training Centre in Poonamallee, resorted to indefinite fast near Rajarathinam Stadium, Egmore in Chennai demanding appointment as teachers. Some of them fell sick and swooned on the second day 27.5.2010. The police took them to Government General Hospital in the night and admitted for treatment. Refusing to undergo treatment, they continued their fast in the hospital itself. The news was published in dailies on May 28. On learning the news from dailies, the then Chief Minister Kalaignar felt distressed and rushed to the GH even without taking his breakfast and met the fasting differently-abled persons. He pacified them and assured to fulfill their demand within a week in consultation with officials. They were moved and thrilled by Kalaignar’s gesture, gave the fast and returned to their homes. Without procrastinating for a week, on reaching the Secretariat, Kalaignar swiftly consulted with officials and passed order on the same day (May 28) in fulfilment of his assurance to the differently-abled teacher trainees. Accordingly, government order was released on the same day for providing appointment to all the 72 of them as secondary grade teachers, in primary schools under School Education Department by relaxing rules.

Thus, Kalaignar as Chief Minister went out of the way in personally heading to the place of the agitators, talk to them, gave assurance and fulfilled it on the same day. But what is the “change” that people of Tamil Nadu wanted in May last year and what do they witness now? The present Chief Minister is not moved by the reports of these young girls protesting on the roads for days together, the scenes of the police brutally handling these girls in white uniforms and driving them away when they came to present a memorandum to her. The people of the State who aspired for a “change”, also witnessed some days back, the former Chief Minister, in spite of his advanced age, undertaking a gruelling journey on roads in his car for over 500 km through Puducherry, Villupuram, Cuddalore, Tiruvarur and Nagapattinam districts hit by cyclone Thane to personally meet and console the affected people and  render assistance to the extent possible; and the sitting Chief Minister making a flying visit by helicopter to Cuddalore for just 12 minutes.

“What to do? We have to face the consequence of the actions we did, we have to find salvation for the mistakes we committed. We only have to be awarded punishment for the actions we did. That is what is happening now”, Kalaignar said speaking for the people of Tamil Nadu, – the moral of the Tale of Two Chief Ministers – then and at present.