The discontent it triggered among the Congress legislature members forced the resignation of Rajaji as Chief Minister.
In accordance to this directive, in 1950 the Madras State's Directorate of Public Instruction prepared a ten-year plan to provide education to all children of school-going age.
Hindu professions are based on Varna or Caste with the Brahmins the highest in the order and studied while Kshatriya and Vaishya traders received some education.
When the Justice Party came to power in 1920, Brahmins disproportionately occupied over 70% of the high level posts in government, judiciary and in education.
[4] The Justice Party introduced caste based reservation and this gradually reversed this trend and allowed non-Brahmins to rise in the government and education in Madras Presidency.
As per this policy schools were to work in the morning and students had to compulsorily learn the family vocation in the afternoon.
The ulterior motive behind the scheme was understood to be that the children of non-Brahmins should undertake only the manual jobs of their ancestors such as washerman, barber, scavenger, cobbler etc.
and they should not aspire for any higher education or for any white collar employment, which only Brahmins could claim as their exclusive privilege.
In the academic year 1949–50, during the Chief ministership of P. S. Kumaraswamy Raja, an experimental shift system had been introduced in ten taluks and later expanded to other areas as an optional measure.
[14][15] The Dravidian movement viewed the scheme as an attempt to preserve and perpetuate caste based discrimination through official means.
Rajaji had earlier expressed his opinion about castes and crafts as: The food is grown, the cloth is woven, the sheep are shorn, the shoes are stitched, the scavenging is done, the cartwheels and the ploughs are built and repaired because, thank God, the respective castes are still there and the homes are trade schools as well and the parents are masters as well, to whom the children are automatically apprenticed.
[17] Rajaji and his education minister MV Krishna Rao responded with a counter campaign in the scheme's defense.
On 13 July 1953, the DMK executive committee met and decided to conduct a marial (blockade) agitation outside the Chief Minister's residence.
[15] The next day (15 July 1953) the confrontation heated up with the Government introducing a motion in the Legislative Assembly for implementing the scheme from the academic year 1953–54.
On 20 August 1953, the Government passed an order (Education G.O # 1888) to constitute a committee of experts for reviewing the scheme.
It made additional recommendations including extending the scheme to rural areas, opening as many as 4000 new schools, revising the existing curriculum, providing training and remuneration to the craftsmen involved.
[23] On 20 October 1953, forty Congress Legislative Assembly members led by P. Varadarajulu Naidu, sent a memorandum to Nehru objecting to Rajaji's unilateral conduct.
On 9 March 1954, Congress leader and former Chief Minister O. P. Ramaswamy Reddiyar made an open appeal to Rajaji in the legislature: Please give up the scheme without any more ado.
[27]But Rajaji did not relent and his education minister C Subramaniam upped the ante by announcing that the scheme would be extended to urban areas in June 1954.
Faced with certain defeat in the leadership election that was bound to happen in that meeting, Rajaji tried a last minute compromise – he would quit if C. Subramaniam was chosen as his successor and the scheme was kept.
This has to be opposed and abolished...Is this educational scheme not a reconstruction and protection of varnashrama?...who physically labours and slaves in the name of caste?
The village school is only for three hours duration, the rest of the time our children should graze donkeys, this is called the New Primary Education Scheme.
If the Vanaan washes clothes, if the Paraiyan beats the drums, if the Chakkili stitches shoes, if the Ambattan shaves, only then they will get the feeling that they are a low caste.
[12]The Andhra Elementary Education Committee Report also rejected the Modified Scheme and recommended an approach similar to the one eventually adopted by the Kamaraj Government.
Probably because I am its author, some people suspect there is something behind it..If some other person would have done it, by God's grace, everyone might have accepted it and the scheme might have worked successfully...I made similar suggestions over 30 years ago.
[9]After the Kamaraj Government scrapped the scheme, he again defended it as : My plan was based on the conviction – which was confirmed by educational officers of highest rank and experience – that three hours attendance was quite adequate for the purpose and would leave nothing out of the present elementary school instruction.
[36]India's President Rajendra Prasad offered his support in a letter written to the Governor of Madras – Sri Prakasa – on 9 June 1953: I have read with great interest both the speech of Rajaji and the scheme of education in primary schools in rural areas.
The Board also appreciates the attempt made in the Scheme for bringing education into closer contact with the life of the community and this gives it a practical bias which is at present lacking in ordinary Primary Schools.
Rajaji's successor Kamaraj was ever mindful of the fact that it was the issue of primary education that caused his predecessor's downfall.
[22] This approach was successful and by the end of Kamaraj's tenure as Chief Minister in 1963, enrollment in primary schools had been doubled.