Language Discrimination in DU: Kerala CM Pinarayi Vijayan Writes to PM

Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi against the Delhi University’s rules that allegedly discriminate against students who have studied languages such as Malayalam, Tamil, Kannada, Telugu and Marathi in Std XII. He has demanded that necessary steps be taken to ensure that all languages in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution are included in the university’s admission process.

The basic criterion adopted by the varsity for admitting students in its undergraduate courses is the aggregate marks of the "best four" – the marks of the four subjects in Std XII exams for which they have scored the highest. But the rules followed by the DU has meant that students who include languages such as Malayalam and Tamil suffer a 2.5% cut in aggregate marks.

The issue has been raised by students in the past, but the protests were far too scattered to make an impact. The issue this time has attracted the attention of state governments, which led to the Kerala Chief Minister writing to the Prime Minister and HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar.

The DU has for long refused to consider a majority of languages in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution as “academic subjects”. Hindi, Bengali, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Urdu, Persian, Arabic, Italian, German, and Spanish are the languages considered “academic subjects”. But other languages, which include 17 out of 22 languages in the Eighth Schedule, are considered “non-academic” subjects.

The “best four” aggregate marks of students who include the marks of “non-academic” subjects are reduced by 2.5% as per rules, which puts students from large parts of India at a disadvantage.

The controversy erupted at a time when the imposition of Hindi on non-Hindi speaking states has triggered widespread outrage in South Indian states.

Vijayan’s letter states that the DU’s admission policy is in violation of the Constitution of India and “contrary to the purpose and spirit of a Central University”.

"The Article 29 (2) of the Indian Constitution states that ‘no citizen shall be denied admission into any educational institution maintained by the State or receiving aid out of State funds on grounds only of religion, race, caste, language or any of them'. It is a matter of great concern that a central university is penalizing their prospective students on the basis of their language, when it ought to lead by example in ensuring national integration", the letter says. "Undoubtedly, it amounts to discrimination and is a clear violation of the Fundamental Rights of our citizens as enshrined in our Constitution.”

The DU is a central university with an undergraduate programme which is widely considered to be among the best in the country, and large numbers of students from all over the country apply to its colleges every year.

A report in The Indian Express had quoted DU officials as saying that the rules are in place because there are no departments in the university to teach the excluded languages and that they are not included in DU’s list of Modern Indian Languages.

Student activists have taken strong exception to the DU officials’ justification. “The DU officials’ arguments are flawed. It is not necessary that a student who has included Punjabi in his/her “best four” would be studying Punjabi in college,” Prashant Mukherjee, Delhi state secretary of the Students’ Federation of India (SFI), told Newsclick.

“How can you discriminate between the languages of the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution? If Bengali, Punjabi and other languages are included, on what grounds does a central university exclude Malayalam, Tamil, Marathi, etc.?” he asked.

Sulthana Nasrin, a second year student of English (Honours) in St. Stephens’ College, said that some colleges are allowing languages considered “non-academic” to be included in the “best four” without the 2.5% reduction. “But there are only a few such colleges. Students who travelled thousands of kilometres to come and take admission in DU are told at the last moment that their marks are going to be cut. It is a severe blow to them,” she said.

Teachers say that the DU only needs to get an amendment to its rules passed in its Executive Council in order to rectify the problem. Students are hoping that the Kerala Chief Minister’s letter will add momentum to the efforts in this direction.