The great schools merger in Rajasthan - shutting down smaller schools and sending its students to a bigger one - is still generating aftershocks in the state's education system. The latest one is over a government order replacing Urdu with Sanskrit. The government contends this is because it has been found many teaching the language have fake degrees - an allegation vehemently refuted by the Urdu Teachers' Association.
Jaipur's Mahatma Gandhi Government School (RAC Battalion) was recently asked by the education department to suspend Urdu classes and offer Sanskrit as the third optional subject.
In a letter written by the Directorate to the District Education Officer, it has been said that minister for education Madan Dilawar has "given instructions to create a post for Sanskrit and discontinue Urdu."
The next to receive such a note was a government senior secondary school in Bikaner.
The move comes on the heels of the government ordering the "merger" of four Urdu-medium schools and what fuelled the growing resentment was a comment by the state's home minister Jawahar Singh Bedham that many Urdu teachers in the state had secured jobs with fake degrees.
"The previous (Congress) government removed Sanskrit teachers and posted Urdu teachers in their place. Now, we don't know Urdu and no one even studies that subject, which is why we will discontinue the posts of Urdu teachers and provide the kind of education that people want here," he was quoted as saying by news agency Press Trust of India.
Rajasthan's Urdu Teachers' Association have termed the minister's remarks baseless and irresponsible.
"It is not correct to call Urdu teachers fake without any investigation. It is also untrue that previous Congress government appointed Urdu teachers replacing Sanskrit teachers," said Urdu Teachers' Association president Amin Kayamkhani.
The Board of Secondary Education Director Ashish Modi said it is not a blanket order. Citing an example, he said, "Except one student, there is nobody who studies Urdu as the third language in a government school in Napasar, Bikaner. This is the reason why it was discontinued".
But this does not apply to the RAC Battalion school, where 323 children are studying. Of them, 127 are studying Urdu as an optional language and 17 are studying Sanskrit. Urdu teachers were put on deputation but after six months they returned to their original school.
Local Congress MLA Rafiq Khan, who has been opposing the move, said: "This is a matter of my assembly constituency. I had converted it to English medium... If the minister wants to create one more post, he should do it but there is no need to stop Urdu for this. This is a matter of my assembly constituency, if they stop it then we will oppose it. We will raise the matter everywhere, in the assembly, in the court".
Over the last months, 449 schools have been merged in Rajasthan. The government's logic is that no schools have been shut they have simply been amalgamated where there are either no new admissions or no resources.
But on the ground the story is different.
In Ajmer's Andarkot, two Urdu-medium schools have shut down and merged with regular schools. There were 260 children in both schools and there were more than 30 new admissions this year for the Urdu medium school. Students said they studied in Urdu upto Class 8 and now changing the medium halfway through the session will be difficult.
The Rajasthan government has dismissed the controversy, saying they are not shutting down schools but merely moving students to schools nearby where there are better facilities and more teachers.
School Education Minister Madan Dilawar said there was no move to close down Urdu medium education and students can study in languages that have been prescribed by the state government.
