Tamil Nadu, Puducherry medical students set to get MBBS textbooks in Tamil

After Madhya Pradesh, medical students in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry may also study their MBBS courses in vernacular languages, in their case, Tamil.

Tamil Nadu Health Minister Ma Subramanian said MBBS in Tamil would be introduced in the new medical college to be inaugurated in Chennai soon and only after the central government’s nod.

Following that, on Tuesday, Puducherry Lieutenant-Governor Tamilisai Soundararajan said the government was planning to introduce Tamil as a medium of instruction in medical education in the Union Territory.

Also read: Hindi MBBS will make sense only after ensuring English proficiency

“In consultation with the Chief Minister, an expert committee will be constituted to work out modalities for preparation of medical books in Tamil. The Madhya Pradesh government has introduced Hindi medium of education in medical courses. We will introduce Tamil medical textbooks, and students will be given the option of choosing that medium,” she said.

“Not linked to Shah or language panel”

Subramanian refused to link the introduction of first-year medical textbooks in Tamil to the ongoing controversy over Hindi as the medium of instruction. He said work on the new textbooks in Tamil began last year and will be over in a month.

“It is not an outcome of what Union Home Minister Amit Shah or the Parliamentary Panel on Official Language said,” he claimed.

On October 16, Union Home Minister Amit Shah released textbooks of three MBBS subjects in Hindi in Madhya Pradesh’s Bhopal. With that, Madhya Pradesh became the first state in India to start a section of the MBBS course in Hindi or any other vernacular language.

Earlier, the Parliamentary Panel on Official Language, headed by Shah, recommended that Hindi should compulsorily be made the medium of instruction in all technical and non-technical educational institutions, including central universities. The MK Stalin-led DMK government in Tamil Nadu has since been at loggerheads with the BJP at the Centre over this issue.

The “Hindi imposition” controversy

The Tamil Nadu government on October 18 introduced a resolution against the “imposition” of Hindi, which was unanimously passed in the state Assembly. The resolution argued that the recommendation was against the state languages and the interest of people who speak those languages.

Also read: MBBS in Hindi: Ambitious project but concerns remain over practicality

While talking to the Press on Tuesday, Soundararajan said the Prime Minister and the Home Minister were not trying to impose any language and were only trying to promote technical education in the mother tongue.

While releasing the Hindi textbooks in Madhya Pradesh, Shah had said lakhs of students would be able to “study with pride in their own language,” which would open many doors of opportunities for them.

Six more medical colleges are under construction across Tamil Nadu. Tamil may be used as a medium of instruction in those as well.

(With agency inputs)