Technical courses should be taught in Tamil: Guv
Chennai: Governor R N Ravi on Saturday said technical courses in Tamil Nadu should be taught in Tamil and not English. He interacted with Tamil scholars as part of his 'Think to Dare' series at Raj Bhavan in which he spoke about the repression faced by Tamils during British rule and its revival.
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"Tamil, an ancient and rich language, suffered enormously during British rule. It was a deliberate attempt by the British to downgrade the mother tongues of the country. They destroyed our indigenous education system, industry, devastated our agriculture by heavy taxation making it unaffordable for farmers to continue agriculture," Ravi said.
Speaking about the impact of the British education system on Tamil, Ravi said, "In the English education system, the schools in which they set up didn't encourage Tamil.
The schools were mainly set up to infuse a sense of inferiority among us and to choose their education system. Through their education system they started to teach what they wanted us to learn. They taught that everything about the British and Europe were superior and what we had were inferior.
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Ravi said the Swadeshi movement helped Tamil's revival. "Only the Swadeshi movement initiated the revival of Tamil language through poets and Tamil enthusiasts such as Bharathiyar and T K Chidambaranatha Mudhaliar who carried out a virulent campaign against leaders speaking in English," he said.
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