Students protest outside the Islampur High School on Monday. Picture by Mehedi Hedaytullah

Islampur, June 25: Several hundred Hindi-medium students of Islampur High School today protested against a government circular saying the institution could teach only in two languages, fearing that the Hindi section would be scrapped.

The students threatened to stop classes indefinitely if the order was not withdrawn.

The school has 2,200 students of which 559 students study in Hindi medium and 530 study in Urdu medium. The rest of the students read in Bengali.

The school was founded in 1953 with both Hindi and Urdu as the languages for study. After Islampur was added to Bengal from Bihar in 1956, Bengali was also introduced.

The school recently received a circular from the education department that said six posts for Urdu teachers had been sanctioned, which fuelled talk among Hindi-medium students that their language of study would be scrapped.

“I have been studying in this school from Class I with Hindi as the medium. Where should I go if Hindi is withdrawn midway? Our future has become uncertain,” said Rajesh Yadav, a Class VII student.

Secretary of the Adarsh Seva Sangathan, Sisir Singh, wondered why the government took such a decision to introduce a bilingual status. “Hindi is our national language. When the school was founded in 1953, it was in Bihar. But when Islampur was included in Bengal, assurances had been given that the interests of the Hindi-speaking people would not be side-stepped.”

“The students’ grievances are genuine because if Hindi is withdrawn it would pose serious problems for a large number of Hindi-speaking students,” teacher-in-charge of the school, Umesh Jha, said.

According to Jha, soon after receiving the circular — it mentioned new positions for Urdu teachers and the two-language teaching format — in the last week of May, the school then took up the matter with higher authorities.

Jha said they spoke to Trinamul Islampur MLA Chowdhury Abdul Karim and Goalpokhar Congress MLA Ghulam Rabbani and sought their intervention. Both assured the school of taking up the matter with education minister Bratya Basu.

The secretary of the managing committee of the school, Kanailal Agarwal, in a letter to the district inspector of schools on June 1 opposed the bilingual set-up and urged him to ensure that all three languages are allowed in the institution.