Exercise starts in Bengal for eliminating foreign words introduced in Bengali language curriculum

Kolkata, Sep 10 (IANS) The syllabus review committee under the West Bengal School Education Department has started the exercise of identifying and eliminating foreign words introduced in the Bengali language curriculum from Class-I to Class-X during the previous Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress government in the state.

Insiders from the state school education department said that the initial blueprint for identification and elimination of such foreign words in the Bengali language curriculum had been prepared at a recently conducted three-day residential induction program.

“Over several years, several foreign words have been included in the Bengali curriculum following the natural flow of language. Words like ‘chair’, ‘table’, ‘barood’ and even ‘Sarkar’ are examples of foreign words that have become part of Bengali curriculum because of the natural flow of language. No one is objecting to retaining such words in the Bengali curriculum. But the objection is about forceful and unnecessary inclusion of some foreign words in the Bengali curriculum during the previous regime,” the state school education department minister said.

According to him, there are objections regarding the introduction of the word “Amma” along with the existing word “Maa” to describe a mother. Similarly, he added, there are objections about the introduction of the word “gosol” beside the existing word “snan” to describe bathing.

“The other such foreign words on which there are objections on grounds that they unnecessarily introduced in the curriculum are ‘nasta’ to describe breakfast or snacks, ‘asmaan’ to describe the sky and ‘fazar’ to describe the dawn. Many educationists feel that introduction of these foreign words was unnecessary when appropriate like ‘pratorash or jolojog’ to describe breakfast or snacks, ‘akash” to describe the sky and ‘bhor’ to describe the dawn were already there in the Bengali language curriculum,” he said.

Earlier this month, Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari, too, at a recent public meeting expressed ire over the introduction of such foreign words in Bengali language curriculum.

Accusing the previous Trinamool Congress regime of deliberately and strategically twisting the Bengali syllabus with an ulterior political motive to divide Bengali-speaking people, Suvendu Adhikari alleged that during the previous regime the Bengali syllabus was created in such a way that the lessons of Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar or Swami Vivekananda remained neglected in the education system.

“Division was created in the minds of children through such distortion of language,” the Chief Minister claimed while addressing an annual event of Vivekananda Vidya Vikas Parishad, the state-level affiliate committee of Vidya Bharati in West Bengal on September 3.

–IANS

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