Kochi: Celebrated Malayalam poet Balachandran Chullikkad has made an open appeal to educationists to drop his works from the language syllabuses for schools, colleges and universities. He said that he would rather let his works be forgotten than subject them to the vagaries of ignorant teachers.
He said that his demand was prompted by a situation in which students were liberally evaluated and bestowed with degrees without a care to their language skills.
“Even people who are not qualified to teach Malayalam language and literature are being appointed as teachers only on the basis of bribes, religion, caste, political influence and nepotism. Even nonsensical dissertations are rewarded with doctorates. We have teachers who think spelling mistakes are no big deal. A generation without thinking power is what the corporates need. These teachers are serving the corporate agenda,” the poet said.
He said that a mafia of administrators and businessmen in education were showering students with marks without abiding by any criteria, just to attract more students to certain schools and to get more teachers’ posts created. “Please take out my poems from this business. I wrote poems only for like-minded people, not for future generations. I regret having given permission to use my poems in curriculum,” he said.
He said that he had not received a single honour for literature in the 50 years of his writing career. “This is my first request to society. The reason for this request is my recent experience in a university where I was invited to read poetry. A student asked me if I could read his poem. I was shocked. It was full of spelling mistakes,” he added.
He said that the student was pursuing an MA in Sanskrit. “How was he admitted to the course in the first place? A teacher who was conducting research on my works had sent me a questionnaire a few months ago. They were pointless and riddled with spelling errors. Let them learn the letters before learning my works. I have no worries if an ignorant generation forgot me.”
When asked if the poet was entitled to call for a halt to teaching his published works, Chullikkad quipped: “A father would grieve when he sees his daughter being sold in the street by her husband.”
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