We aim to ensure that children of poor parents become doctors and engineers even if they are not educated in English (medium). We want to ensure that no one is left behind due to the lack of knowledge of the English language. The New Education Policy of the Centre will pull the country out from this slave mentality surrounding the English language.
-Prime minister Narendra Modi at the launch of 5G telecom services in Ahmedabad (October 17)
English has been the language of power, at the frontiers of knowledge and access to privilege. The vernacular had become increasingly confined to identity, culture, and a marker of second-class status… The challenge of Hindi is that inhabiting the world of Hindi is seen as closing off access to the frontiers of knowledge, not just in science but in civic knowledge, like higher echelons of law. It is also treated as a marker of parochialism and inferior status.
-Pratap Bhanu Mehta, public intellectual on the status of Hindi and vernacular languages (Indian Express, October 22)
Fear has dissipated in Iran and regimes like the Islamic Republic… survive based on fear. It is due to a relentless battle by Iranian women not to allow this regime to dictate their lives. People no longer believe that this regime is reformable.
-Abbas Milani, Director, Hamid & Christina Moghadam Program in Iranian Studies, Stanford University on the anti-hijab protests in Iran (CNN, November 1)
If I had a dollar for every time someone asked me if Trump is coming back on this platform, Twitter would be minting money! Twitter will not allow anyone who was de-platformed for violating Twitter rules back on platform until we have a clear process for doing so, which will take at least a few more weeks.
-Elon Musk, Twitter’s new owner and CEO on whether former US president Donald Trump’s twitter account will be unblocked (November 2, Twitter)