Assamese in schools

The decision of the Assam government to pass the Assam Language Learning Bill 2020 in the on-going budget session of the Legislative Assembly has come in timely when thousands of children of the state studying in the Kendriya Vidyalayas, Army Schools and numerous other schools have been deprived of learning the Assamese language. Once the Bill is passed in the Legislative Assembly, all such schools in including a large number of private schools in the state will have to teach Assamese as a subject up to Class X. The Bill however has provisions of granting some relaxations in with respect to the Barak Valley and the BTAD areas of the state. Most Kendriya Vidyalayas and private schools have been so long denying the Assamese students of choosing their mother tongue as a Major Indian Language in their own state with the authorities of most such schools often figuring in the news media of allegedly showing disrespect to Assamese, which has equal status with 21 other Scheduled languages -- Bengali, Bodo, Dogri, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri, Konkani, Maithili, Malayalam, Manipuri, Marathi, Nepali, Odiya, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Santali, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu under the Constitution of India. Making Assamese compulsory is indeed a long-pending demand, especially in the backdrop of a continuous conspiracy against it that has been going on since the very first decade of Assam becoming a part of British India. It is worth reminding our readers that while the British annexed Assam in February 1826, Assamese was used in courts, offices and educational institutions until 1837 when Bengali replaced it. Had it not been for Anandaram Dhekial Phukan, the first Assamese – also the first from the entire Northeast – to go to a high school and then become the first officer in the colonial government, the Assamese language would not have been restored its status in 1873. The American Baptist Missionaries, who had launched the first Assamese newspaper in January 1845 too had played a crucial role in the campaign to restore the due status of the Assamese language. This government headed by Sarbananda Sonowal and comprising the BJP, AGP and BPF has a moral duty and responsibility towards safeguarding Assamese and other indigenous languages of Assam. While the proposed Bill is likely to be passed in the on-going budget session of the State Legislative Assembly, what Assam requires is a number of practical measures which can not only protect, conserve and propagate Assamese, Bodo and other indigenous languages of the state, but also make learning of these indigenous languages an attractive proposition. Simultaneously, it is also the bounden duty of the Axam Xahitya Xabha and the xahitya xabhas of all other indigenous communities of Assam to play a proactive role in encouraging the younger generation to learn their respective mother tongues.