The West Bengal unit of Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) has filed a case in Kolkata High Court, challenging the Left government'smove to tamper with the Bengali language, grammar and spelling. In the petition, the ABVP, the largest student organisation in the country, has mentioned that the move by the state government amounted to gross violation of Articles 14, 19 & 21 of the Constitution of India.
It may be mentioned here that the Left Front government of West Bengal had recently, with the connivance of some state-controlled institutions and Marxist ?scholars?, embarked upon the project of changing the Bengali language, grammar of some scripts as also their spellings. These changes, under the guise of simplifications, which are actually drastic and arbitrary changes, are being hurriedly accepted and endorsed by the School Education Boards without any serious academic discussion on the merits, demerits and relevance of the proposed changes. What is worse, these changes are being pushed through in a dictatorial manner down the throats of a section of school students all over the state. The West Bengal Board of Secondary Education (WBBSE) covers only 2,500 schools. About 75 schools are covered by the CBSE and nearly 365 by the ICSE. Such a directive will let loose academic anarchy since the CBSE and ICSE follow the conventional, standardised Bengali grammatical rules, and any modifications at this juncture do not augur well for the students. (FOC)
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