India lives and works in hundreds of languages. Several are spoken by millions of people; some are spoken by fewer than fifty.
However, by positioning the “mother tongue” – and not the state or official language – as the desirable medium of education, the Constitution of India tried to introduce an element of equality, levelling the playing field between languages of power (languages with honorifics like “official” or “scheduled” or “classical”) and others. In practice, this might not have often worked out since, for a long time, education budgets did not allow for textbooks and other pedagogic materials to be prepared in many languages within each state, neglect especially being meted out to languages spoken by small communities and with oral – rather than scriptal – heritages.
Particularly post-liberalisation, the hunger for English as an aspirational “must have” has also played a role in this alienation. Why invest in teaching all these languages when everywhere everyone wants English? This view is changing though as research continues to emphasise that for all learners, the mother tongue works best when it comes to the early years.
Here are eight things about language education in India that you might not have known.
One: Nagaland
Seventeen languages are taught in the state. Article 350 B of the Indian Constitution directs that there should be a Special Officer for linguistic minorities. Nagaland, through the Department of School Education, appoints Language Officers for every tribe, who are aided by Assistant Language Officers and Language Assistants to develop textbooks for schools for all the approved official tribal languages.
Currently all tribes have a Language Officer, and this has made a great deal of difference to the mother tongues. Tenyidie is taught up to the level of a PhD, Ao is taught up to the level of a Bachelor’s Degree, Lotha and Sema are taught up to the level of Class XII, and the remaining 13 languages are taught up to the level of Class VIII.
Two: Bihar
Under the Bihar School Education Board, two language groups are offered at the secondary level, with students having to pick one: The mother tongue or Matri bhasha (Hindi, Urdu, and Bengali); or the group with the following four languages – Sanskrit, Urdu, Hindi and Bengali.
English belongs to a separate category. It is compulsory. But, interestingly, one has to only appear in an English exam without having to obtain pass marks in it. It is enough to simply attempt the paper.
Three: Chhattisgarh
In 2013, the Pandit Ravishankar Shukla University in Raipur, Chhattisgarh, offered an MA in Chhattisgarhi for the very first time, and about a hundred students enrolled for it.
Four: Sikkim
While the medium of instruction is English, eleven state languages are taught in schools: Nepali, Lepcha, Bhutia, Limboo, Gurung, Manger, Mukhia, Newar, Rai, Sherpa and Tamang. Of these eleven languages, Nepali, which is a Schedule VIII language (though it is not the majority mother tongue of any one state in India), is the lingua franca.
Five: Odisha
The Odisha Adivasi Manch advocates the wonderful Mother Tongue-based Multi-Lingual Early Childhood Education (MTMLECE). It is important to note that the National Curriculum Framework of 2000, in accordance with the principles enshrined in the Indian Constitution, recommends primary education in the mother tongues across India. In 2014, the MTMLECE has prepared “New Arunima” primers in the following local languages: Kui, Kuvi, Munda, Santali, Koya, Oraon, Saura, Juang, Kissan, and Bonda, and hopes to offer a new template in education in tribal areas using these localised books.
Six: Tamil Nadu
While higher education across the country almost exclusively uses English as the official medium of instruction – even though a wide variety of languages is actually used in classrooms – in Tamil Nadu there are several Tamil-medium sections in the humanities departments of government and government-aided colleges. However, they seem to attract very few students, and the number of students is dwindling with every passing year.
Seven: West Bengal
While Bengali is the medium of instruction in most government schools (there are no English medium schools under the West Bengal Board of Primary Education), Hindi and Urdu are taught as first languages in Hindi- and Urdu-medium schools, respectively. There are a few Oriya and Telugu medium schools as well, where these languages are taught as the first languages from Class I to V. However, a scarcity of textbooks and teaching materials pose a major problem in these schools, since textbooks in these languages are not published by the Board.
Eight: Arunachal Pradesh
Of the 2,471 languages from all over the world listed as endangered languages by UNESCO, 197 are from India, and 34 from Arunachal Pradesh.
The Arunachal Institute of Tribal Studies offers a three-month certificate course in the tribal languages of Nyishi, Adi and Monpa. The Adi Agom Kébang stands for preservation and development of the Adi language, and it was established in the year 1982. The Adi primer developed by Reverend Osik Pertin was published in the year 1999. It was implemented as a third language in the year 2004, at the primary level in the Adi-inhibited districts.
Devapriya Roy is the author of two novels, a PhD thesis on theNatyashastra, and most recently, with Saurav Jha, of The Heat and Dust Project: the Broke Couple’s Guide to Bharat.