Five students from India proudly walked away with the silver medal in the World Schools Debating Championships held at Croatia, with Dhananjay Ashok adjudged as ‘Best Speaker’ in the world.
The team comprised of Hemanth Bharatha Chakravarthy, Dhananjay Ashok, Tejas Subramaniam, Manya Gupta and Saranya Ravindran. Tejas Subramaniam and Hemanth Bharatha Chakravarthy emerged 10th and 16th best speaker in the contest.
They emerged second only to China in the World Schools Debating Championships, which saw 600 participants from around the world.
The students were chosen by the Indian Schools Debating Society, a not-for-profit organisation backed by Ramco Group, after a nation-wide selection process over a period of six months from nearly 1000 students.
Dhananjay Ashok, who has just completed schooling at the International School, Bengaluru and will soon join the University of Toronto, said: “All these years, it was really hard for India to succeed in a tournament that was dominated by countries such as England, South Africa and Singapore; we were rejected earlier on issues like accent. But this time, we decided to combine the best of both worlds and broke a lot of records. We reached the finals, three speakers from India were in the list of top 20 speakers including the best speaker.”
School Education Secretary, Pradeep Yadav, said, during a press conference: “It is a proud moment for the country and such debating could be tried in regional languages like Tamil too.
P.R. Venketrama Raja of Ramco Group said, “We had a superb team and coaches, which produced an outstanding result,” he added.