The PMK on Wednesday opposed the proposal to merge the Central Institute of Classical Tamil, an autonomous institution, with a university.
In a statement, party founder S. Ramadoss said that the National Education Policy (NEP 2020) stated that all classical language institutes would be allowed to function autonomously, but under a university.
“The Central government has said that would enable students in classical language institutes conduct multi-disciplinary research. This is not believable and it is unacceptable,” he said.
According to him, the Centre has been taking several steps to shutdown the institute over the last few years.
“In July 2017, it was proposed that CICT be merged with Central University of Tamil Nadu in Tiruvarur. The PMK was the first to oppose it. The Centre said that it doesn’t have any such plans. Now, again, there are attempts to close down CICT through the NEP,” he said.
He felt that developing technology to improve use of Tamil only needed Tamil centric, multi-disciplinary approach. There are only seven classical languages and Tamil is the only classical language still spoken in India, he added.
“Therefore, the Central government should take steps to honour the Tamil language. It should not insult the language by merging it with a university. A Tamil research scholar should be appointed as its director and Tamil research should be further developed,” he said.
