Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Stalin Needs To Know Who Pushed Education To Concurrent List And Why

History is not the favourite subject of Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M K Stalin.

And it showed. Twice in the last one week or so. 

First, he needlessly walked into the issue of Jayalalithaa being attacked within the Tamil Nadu Assembly on March 25, 1989 when the DMK led by his father M Karunanidhi was in power in the State. 

The unprecedented violence and loutish behaviour unleashed by the DMK on a woman on the floor of the Assembly remains one of the darkest chapters in Indian legislative democracy. 

Jayalalithaa was targeted and some of the profane words and terms that emanated from Karunanidhi and other DMK leaders' foul mouths that day (all expunged from Assembly records) underlined what the Dravidian party essentially is. It is all well documented in the press reports from then.

Jayalalithaa too had spoken out several times that she was targeted as a woman. 

But Stalin, in his wisdom, has chosen to deny the incident altogether and claimed that the former AIADMK leader had made it all up. 

If any other man had chosen to callously pooh-pooh the words of a woman in such a scenario, the feminist commissars would have come down on him with vehemence. But since Stalin and his brigade are being built up as a paragon of liberalism, the woke brigade have chosen to embrace an ignoble silence. 

Anyway, on the I-day, Stalin was at it again. This time, he spoke for moving Education as a subject in the Constitution from its present Concurrent list to the State list. In principle, Stalin's demand is not a wrong one as a State Chief Minister he has every right to claim more federal rights.

But if Stalin had any idea why education, which was in the State list when the Constitution was originally written, was moved to the Concurrent list (that is, both the Centre and State have a say but the Centre can overrule any objection from the States anytime), and by who, he would have remained quiet.

Indira Gandhi’s fatalistic move

But since the DMK government is finding its narrative on the NEET issue in Tamil Nadu exposed, Stalin is reaching for corners that the CM should stay away from. 

Education was pushed into the concurrent list because his current ally Rahul Gandhi's grandmother, Indira Gandhi, wanted to settle a score with, well, Tamil Nadu.

This is the historical context that requires us to trace back to the 1960s, during a time of intense language debates that engulfed the State. The discussion around the three-language formula was already underway in India from the early 1960s, gaining momentum with the endorsement from the Kothari Commission ('64-'66) and its subsequent recommendations. In 1968, the Indira Gandhi government, while formulating a National Policy on Education, not only approved these recommendations but also presented a corresponding Bill in Parliament.

But the three-language formula kicked up a huge storm in the country, especially in southern India. 

Tamil Nadu was in the forefront of it. 

In fact, it could be argued that the DMK came to power in the State for the first time in 1967 based on its anti-Hindi protests. 

The DMK, then headed by C N Annadurai, had managed to capture the imagination of the public in the State by projecting the then ruling Congress as an agent of Hindi hegemony.

So when in 1968, the Centre came up with the Bill for the three-language policy, the Annadurai-led DMK government in Tamil Nadu hit the streets in massive protests, which till date are seen as a watershed event in the annals of the State history. 

The Tamil Nadu government opposed the three-language plan as it felt that the whole thing was a barely-disguised plan to impose Hindi.

The Annadurai government did not stop with that. In an act of bravura, it went ahead and implemented its own two-language formula. 

In this, Tamil was the official language of the State and English the link language. It was also the period when the Assembly passed the resolution for the State's present name from the previous 'Madras State'

Even as Tamil Nadu remained intransigent, New Delhi couldn't do anything because Education, in the federal set up, was in the State List. Tamil Nadu was practically free to do its own thing. 

The Indira Gandhi government was thoroughly embarrassed. It was hoisted on its own petard by a spirited government.

Indira Gandhi probably took this as a personal slight. You have to feel so, especially based on latter-day developments. 

But she knew she had to remain patient. She understood her time to strike back would come. 

It came, but by then Annadurai was long deceased. 

During the Emergency period in 1976, the Indira Gandhi government unleashed a torrent of changes to ensure that the power strings are firmly tied to the apron strings of the Centre. It was the act of a dictatorial regime. But she didn't care.  

In a fatalistic moment for the country, her government moved five subjects from the State List to Concurrent List through the 42nd Amendment Act. Education, unfortunately, was one of them. 

This essentially meant the Centre can, if need be, supersede a State's Act (through a Central Act) in matters relating to education. From then on, things have not remained the same for the country.

Stalin being disingenuous?

Clearly, Indira Gandhi had not forgotten the snub from Tamil Nadu that she had received on education policy in the 60s. The amendment introduced by her administration has led to a continuous state of tension concerning language and education matters across the nation.

Stalin now says Dravidian leaders like Karunanidhi stood for autonomy for states in federal India. Well, if that had been indeed the case, he would have pressed for moving education to the State list whenever he was part of the Congress-led governments at the Centre. 

On NEET itself, look at the irony. The original idea was thought up by the Congress-led UPA government in which the DMK was a constituent. 

Anyway, NEET, which is the mandatory exam to get into medical colleges in India, has also been accepted by the Supreme Court. Despite such a reality, Stalin's DMK promised the public in its election campaign that it would do away with the entrance exam if voted to power. 

With that not being possible, CM Stalin is now talking of moving education to the State list. Alas, that door too was blocked long back by his own party's ally.