Language has been one of the most persistent and thorny challenges to India's federalism. It split the Constituent Assembly, provoked fierce anti-Hindi agitations in the 1960s, and continues to inflame feelings today as shown by the rejection of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020’s three-language formula by Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Maharashtra. Far from being resolved, the language question smoulders beneath the surface of the national discourse.

Yet, for all the heat it generates, language remains one of India’s greatest strengths. Dozens of great languages and thousands of mother tongues – each a repository of unique history, literature and worldview – have flourished side by side for centuries. Many mistakenly regard multilingualism as a problem to be solved. The truth is the opposite: India’s linguistic diversity is a vital resource to be managed wisely and a priceless inheritance to be safeguarded for generations to come.

Despite its enduring significance, the language question has seldom received the thorough and dispassionate re-examination it deserves. This essay seeks to revive that long-overdue discussion under four themes:

1. What does India’s linguistic landscape look like?
2. Does national unity really require a single national language?
3. Why has the three-language formula failed to achieve its objectives?
4. How does the Constitution address the language question and what are the reforms that are needed now?

The issue is not just about language, but about the core democratic principles of equality, federal balance and cultural freedom.

Linguistic landscape

How many languages does India have? The answer depends on our definition of a “language”. Do we define it by a unique sound system (phonology), its patterns of word formation (morphology), its structure of sentences (syntax) or its range of vocabulary (lexicon)? Is it determined by a distinct script, by mutual unintelligibility or merely by administrative convenience?

A century ago, George Abraham Grierson’s monumental Linguistic Survey of India catalogued 179 languages and 544 dialects. Today, Ethnologue, a respected global database, lists 454 living languages in India -- 424 indigenous and 30 non-indigenous. The People’s Linguistic Survey of India (2010–12), directed by eminent linguist Prof. G.N. Devy, found 780 languages.

The 2011 census recorded 19,569 raw returns of mother tongues. In his book India: A Linguistic Civilisation, Prof. Devy points out that, with a bureaucratic sleight of hand, 18,200 of them were lumped into a single “Others” category. The remaining 1,369 were then compressed into just 121 “languages.” This numerical pruning -- undertaken for administrative convenience -- obscured the true scale of India’s linguistic diversity.

‘Hindi majority’ myth

The 2011 census claimed that 44 per cent of Indians speak Hindi. But as Prof. Devy has demonstrated in his book, this figure is grossly inflated by misclassifying 53 independent languages as “dialects of Hindi”. These include Bhojpuri, Rajasthani, Magadhi, Awadhi, Bundeli, Chhattisgarhi, and Haryanvi – all distinct languages with rich literary traditions, many predating Hindi by centuries. To call them “dialects of Hindi” is as illogical as calling Latin a “dialect of Italian”.

At least 25 of these languages have over a million native speakers, and some – such as Banjari – are not even mutually intelligible with Hindi. Once corrected, true Hindi speakers constitute barely 25 per cent of India’s population. Every Indian language, therefore, is both a minority language and a regional language. Hindi is no exception – vibrant and valuable but with no justification for special privilege.

Regionally anchored society

The 2011 census reveals that 63 per cent of Indians have never migrated outside their birthplace, 85 per cent outside their native district and 95 per cent outside their home state. Daily life – in education, work, politics, administration, commerce and culture – is conducted overwhelmingly in regional languages.

Where interstate migration does occur, it flows largely out of the Hindi belt towards the south, the west and Delhi, where economic opportunities are concentrated. Under these circumstances, projecting Hindi as India’s “natural” lingua franca is a demographic fiction.

Eighth Schedule of Constitution

This was conceived to honour India's linguistic diversity but over time, it has become a political instrument of selective recognition. It lists only 22 languages, of which:

• 15 belong to the Indo-Aryan language family – Assamese, Bengali, Dogri, Gujarati, Hindi, Kashmiri, Konkani, Maithili, Marathi, Nepali, Odia, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Sindhi and Urdu.
• Four are Dravidian – Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil and Telugu.
• One is Austro-Asiatic – Santali.
• Two are Tibeto-Burman – Bodo and Manipuri.

This distribution underrepresents the great classical traditions of the south and the rich tribal tongues of central, eastern and northeastern India. English is conspicuously excluded.

The inconsistencies are glaring. Sanskrit, with fewer than 25,000 native speakers, enjoys recognition for its antiquity. But Pali and Prakrit – the classical languages of the Buddhist and Jain canons – find no place. Sindhi (2.8 million), Dogri (2.6 million) and Konkani (2.3 million) are included but Bhili (10.4 million), Khortha (3.5 million) and Gondi (2.8 million) are not. Clearly, political clout – rather than demographic strength, literary wealth or cultural contribution – determines inclusion.

Exclusion from the Eighth Schedule has tangible consequences. A language outside it loses access to State patronage, educational support and public media; it becomes, in effect, officially invisible.

Article 350A of the Constitution enjoins states to provide primary education in the child’s mother tongue, a principle endorsed by UNESCO and reaffirmed in NEP 2020. In practice, however, most schools use the dominant state language – almost always a Scheduled language – or English as the medium of instruction. Non-scheduled languages are seldom taught, almost never used as the medium of instruction and remain deprived of teachers, textbooks and learning materials. As a result, hundreds of non-Scheduled languages are slowly inching towards extinction.

Vanishing voices

The People’s Linguistic Survey of India warns that in the past five decades, nearly 50 Indian languages have disappeared, and over 400 others are at risk of extinction within the next 50 years. When a language dies, it is not merely words that are lost. A worldview perishes with it – its metaphors, myths, botanical wisdom, healing traditions and cultural memory. A part of India’s soul dies with every language lost.

As the Finnish linguist Tove Skutnabb-Kangas wrote in her book, On the Future of Language and Language Education:

"Languages are not dying natural deaths; they are being killed. Language education policies often result in dominance of one language leading to the extinction of minority languages. This is not accidental but a result of decisions by those in power who wish to maintain it."

Towards linguistic justice

Two practical reforms suggest themselves.

1. Correct census distortions: The census must stop misclassifying 53 independent languages as “dialects of Hindi” and present the true number of Hindi speakers. Recognising Bhojpuri, Rajasthani, Magadhi, Awadhi and others as distinct languages would reveal India’s diversity in its true proportions and dispel the myth of a Hindi majority.
2. Expand the Eighth Schedule:  All languages with over one million native speakers should be automatically included in the Eighth Schedule. This would add nine languages – Bhili, Gondi, Kurukh, Khandeshi, Tulu, Khasi, Ho, Garo and Mundari – along with 25 others currently misclassified as “dialects of Hindi”. For tribal languages belonging to the Austro-Asiatic and Tibeto-Burman families, a lower threshold – one lakh native speakers – may be set. Pali and Prakrit should join Sanskrit for parity of classical recognition. English should also be included to reflect lived reality.

One nation, one language?

The idea that a single language can unite one-and-a-half billion people has a certain intuitive appeal but no historical or empirical basis. Nations are not held together because every citizen speaks the same language but because every citizen is free to speak his own. True unity is born not of linguistic uniformity but of linguistic equality – from the assurance that no community is made to feel second-class because of its mother tongue. The lessons of history all point to one truth: a common language does not create unity; on the contrary, the imposition of a single language is the surest path to disunity.

Lessons from the world

The belief that a single language is essential for national unity was a 19^th Century European invention. Newly emerging nation-states such as Germany, Italy and others imposed one language to forge one identity. That approach, fit for small homogeneous nations, is ill-suited for a subcontinental civilisation like India. It is like flattening a rainforest into a eucalyptus plantation.

Modern democracies teach the opposite lesson: accommodation, not assimilation, sustains unity. Switzerland thrives with four official languages – German, French, Italian and Romansh. Canada holds together with two – English and French. South Africa sought to heal its divided past by recognising 12 official languages. Belgium balances Dutch, French and German through a carefully crafted federal compact. Even the European Union, a community of 27 nations, conducts its affairs in 24 official languages. Imagine imposing German or French as the EU’s sole official language – how long would that union endure?

Closer home, Singapore offers an instructive model. In his memoir From Third World to First, Singapore’s first Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew, recalls how he resisted intense pressure from the Chinese majority – nearly 74 per cent of the population – to declare Mandarin the sole national language after Independence in 1965. He recognised that such a step would marginalise the Malays (13.5 per cent), Tamils (9 per cent) and other minorities. Instead, Lee chose English – a colonial inheritance, but a neutral language belonging to no single community. Singapore’s bilingual education policy – English for economic mobility and mother tongues for cultural identity – produced social harmony, inclusive governance and spectacular economic rise.

Language as a fault line

History also teaches us of the dangers of imposing one language. In his essay The Role of Language in the Dissolution of the Soviet Union (1992), David F. Marshall contends that the USSR’s attempts to create a unified national identity by promoting Russian and suppressing non-Russian languages incited resentment. Language became the emblem of nationality and the rallying cry for independence movements across the Soviet republics.

Pakistan’s experience tells a similar story. Its decision to impose Urdu as the sole national language alienated its Bengali-speaking majority, sowing the seeds of division that culminated in the secession of East Pakistan and the birth of Bangladesh.

India, too, faced its moments of reckoning. In the Constituent Assembly, some Hindi protagonists opposed even listing major regional languages in the Eighth Schedule, fearing it would encourage disunity. They also resisted retaining English as an associate official language alongside Hindi. The misconception that linguistic states would endanger national unity delayed linguistic reorganisation for several years.

It took Potti Sriramulu’s 56-day fast unto death in 1952, demanding a separate Andhra Pradesh, to change the course of history. The States Reorganisation Act, 1956, redrew the map of India on linguistic lines, and far from weakening the Union, it strengthened it. As historian John Keay observes in his book Midnight’s Descendants (2014), it was precisely this linguistic flexibility that preserved India’s unity.

Myth of ‘foreignness’

Consider this. None of the following – potatoes, tomatoes, kidney beans, chilli pepper, corn, cauliflower, pumpkin, capsicum, guava, papaya, pineapple, sapota, custard apple, coffee and tea – is native to India. All were brought here within the last four centuries by the Portuguese, the British, or the Dutch. And yet, can one now imagine Indian cuisine, culture, or agriculture without them? The same is true of English. After two and a half centuries in India, it is no longer “foreign”. Indian English is now a recognised world variety, deeply naturalised and enriched by Indian idioms and thought.

The real question is not one of foreignness but of usefulness and fairness. On both counts, English has proved its worth. Our freedom struggle would not have been possible without English as the link language across provinces. Our Constitution itself was drafted in English. Making Hindi the sole official language privileges some states and alienates others. English, by contrast, is a neutral bridge: it belongs to all and to none, and carries no hegemonic stamp. Even though the sun has long set on the British Empire, the English language endures – not as a relic of colonial rule but as the world’s de facto lingua franca. It is now indispensable to higher education, science, technology, law, business and diplomacy. Hindi, however valuable as a cultural language, cannot fulfil those global functions.

Lesson from Ireland

History offers a telling parallel. After independence in 1922, Ireland sought to promote Irish Gaelic by declaring it the State’s first official language, with English as the second. Despite decades of official support, Gaelic simply lacked the functionality needed for modern governance, education, science and technology. It survives constitutionally but English has become the de facto language of Ireland’s administration and national life – a reminder that linguistic pride must always be tempered by linguistic practicality.

India must, therefore, abandon the illusion that a single language can bind a civilisation as ancient, vast and varied as hers – an illusion unworthy of her genius. No language should be privileged and none marginalised.

The failed three-language formula

Launched in 1968 without any constitutional or statutory sanction, India’s three-language formula sought to promote multilingualism, national integration and employment opportunities. If the policy had worked, India – barring Tamil Nadu which has steadfastly stuck to its two-language formula since 1968 — would today be a multilingual success story. Instead, the 2011 census shows that only 7% of Indians know three languages; in Hindi-speaking states, less than 2%.

Educational surveys confirm the failure. The National Achievement Surveys (NAS 2017, 2021) found that fewer than half of Class 8 students could read or write at grade level in their first language while English proficiency remained modest. The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER 2022) revealed that nearly 30% of Class 8 students in rural schools could not read a Class 2 text in their mother tongue; over half could not read basic English sentences. Notably, neither NAS nor ASER assesses third-language proficiency at all -- conveniently masking the policy failure.

Few government initiatives have endured so long — and achieved so little. Instead of rethinking its relevance, NEP 2020 has reinforced the model by making a third language compulsory in schools nationwide – a textbook example of ideology trumping evidence. When so many children struggle with their first and second languages, the imposition of a third language is indefensible. The national priority should be to teach two languages well, not three poorly.

What research says

Proponents of the three-language formula often claim that a third language boosts cognitive abilities. NEP 2020 repeats this in a single sentence without citing credible research. Cognitive science offers a more nuanced view. The benefits of bilingualism – enhanced executive function, improved problem-solving and delayed cognitive decline – are well-documented. But these gains do not scale linearly beyond two languages.

According to The Cambridge Handbook of Third Language Acquisition, cognitive gains from multilingual learning occur only when students are challenged but not overwhelmed. When learners are still struggling with their first (L1) and second (L2) languages – as in much of India – adding a third language (L3) leads to cognitive overload, mental fatigue and weaker performance in all three. Attrition of L2 is especially common. Cross-linguistic interference can cause pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary mix-ups. True fluency in three languages is exceedingly rare; typically, one dominates while the others decline.

The learning burden is unequal. For children speaking tribal and other non-scheduled languages at home, the three-language formula becomes a four-language ordeal:

1. Their mother tongue, for which there is no classroom support;
2. The state’s regional language, used as the medium of instruction;
3. Hindi or Sanskrit, imposed by the curriculum policy; and
4. English, taught with limited competence.

The result: cognitive overload, rote learning, language loss and soaring dropout rates. NEP 2020’s rigid trilingual mandate overlooks these complexities.

The illusion of choice

NEP 2020 insists that there will be no imposition of Hindi, and that students are free to choose any three languages, provided two are Indian. This promise is illusory.

Consider a school in Tamil Nadu where students request five different third languages – Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, Hindi and Sanskrit. In theory, the school should provide all five. In practice, hiring qualified language teachers, procuring textbooks and scheduling multiple language classes are logistically and financially impossible.

As Hindi has abundant centralised resources – teachers, training and textbooks –it becomes the default choices. Regional or minority languages, by contrast, lack institutional support. Thus, what is presented as “choice” effectively becomes a subtle nudge towards Hindi, curtailing genuine student freedom.

Administratively impractical

Implementing the policy is ruinously expensive. In Tamil Nadu alone, appointing a single third-language teacher in all the 8,074 government/aided high schools and higher secondary schools would cost about Rs 560 crore a year in salaries alone. Add textbooks, training and infrastructure, and the figure doubles. Extending the policy to primary schools, as NEP 2020 prescribes, sends costs soaring into thousands of crores of rupees. Nationwide, the annual outlay would run into tens of thousands of crores of rupees – with no demonstrable educational benefit.

To put this in perspective, even a fraction of that outlay could finance tens of thousands of mathematics and science teachers, provide digital infrastructure to schools, or launch a national program to teach Artificial Intelligence and coding in every district. While countries like China, Estonia and South Korea are already teaching AI in schools, India risks squandering scarce resources on a relic of 20th-century linguistic politics.

Embrace educational pragmatism

The world has moved on. Multilingualism today is contextual, need-based and technology-driven. A Malayali nurse in Mumbai learns Marathi to serve patients, uses English for hospital records and speaks Malayalam at home – guided by circumstance, not compulsion. Foundational literacy in one’s mother tongue and English rightly need structured classroom instruction. But additional languages can now be learned independently through AI-powered tools, based on students’ needs and at their own pace.

Unlike world-class systems such as Singapore and Finland that lay stress on bilingual mastery, India’s three-language formula overburdens students – sacrificing quality for quantity. It is time to stop pretending to be multilingual and start working on being truly bilingual: English for opportunities, regional languages for identity and technology for everything else.

Put students first

NEP 2020 treats languages as cultural pursuits, ignoring their practical value in the job market. It reveals its ideological bias by dedicating more discussion to Sanskrit – a language with limited career opportunities – than English. At a time when countries across the world are actively promoting English education to enhance global competitiveness, NEP 2020 neither recognises its pivotal role nor makes any serious effort to improve English proficiency in India. Beyond English, languages like French, German, Spanish and Mandarin offer far greater career opportunities worldwide than Hindi and Sanskrit. By limiting foreign language choices to just one (invariably English), NEP 2020 undermines the only real benefit of learning a third language, namely, better job prospects.

Language should be a bridge to opportunity, not a badge of ideology. That means stronger English training, foreign-language instruction linked to global jobs and certification in Indian languages for careers in healthcare, governance, tourism and rural banking.

Constitution and the language question

Contrary to popular belief, the Constitution does not declare Hindi the “national language”. Instead, it addresses the linguistic needs of different institutions through a set of functional provisions located mainly in Part XVII (Articles 343–351) and a few elsewhere.

Official language of the Union

Article 343 declares Hindi in the Devanagari script as the official language of the Union and permits the continued use of English for 15 years (i.e., until 1965). It also grants Parliament the power to extend the use of English beyond that period. Following the anti-Hindi protests of the 1960s, Parliament enacted the Official Languages Act, 1963 (amended in 1967). This allows English to continue alongside Hindi for an indefinite period of time.

Official language of a state

Article 345 allows each state legislature to adopt one or more languages in use within the state – or Hindi – as its official language(s) for internal administration.

Link language

Article 346 provides that communication between the Union and the states, and between one state and another, shall be in the official language of the Union (i.e., Hindi) or in English.

Additional official language of a state

Article 347 authorises the President to direct a state to recognise a language spoken by a “substantial proportion” of its population as an additional official language.

Language of judiciary and legislative drafting

Article 348 stipulates that only English must be used in the Supreme Court, high courts and for legislative drafting, until Parliament decides otherwise. With the President's permission, a state may allow its official language to be used for high court proceedings, but judgments, decrees, or orders must still be in English. The high courts of Rajasthan (1950), Uttar Pradesh (1969), Madhya Pradesh (1971) and Bihar (1972) have been authorised to use Hindi for proceedings. But requests by Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Gujarat, West Bengal and Chhattisgarh have not been accepted.

Language for making representations

Article 350 allows people to make representations “in any of the languages used in the Union or in the state”, but it remains silent on the language of the reply. This omission has caused recurring friction, especially when Union authorities respond only in Hindi, disregarding the linguistic rights of the petitioner.

Promotion and development of Hindi

Article 344 establishes a "Commission" and a "Committee of Parliament" to make recommendations as to the progressive use of Hindi for official purposes of the Union and restrictions on the use of English.

Article 351 directs the Union to promote the spread of Hindi, and develop its vocabulary by drawing primarily from Sanskrit and only secondarily from other Indian languages. This is precisely the opposite of how living lingua francas evolve. English rose to global prominence through openness – by absorbing freely from Latin, French, Norse, Arabic, Persian and several Indian languages – growing richer with every encounter. Hindi, by contrast, has sought purity by purging Urdu, Persian and English influences and replacing them with heavy Sanskrit coinages. The outcome is a stiff, Sanskritised Hindi that even native speakers find alien. Jawaharlal Nehru himself admitted in 1948 that he “did not understand a word” of a Hindi draft of the Constitution.

Languages in Parliament and state legislatures

Article 120 stipulates that Parliamentary business shall be transacted in Hindi or English. However, any member may speak in another language with the Chair's permission. Likewise, Article 210 requires that proceedings in a state legislature shall be transacted in the state’s official language(s) or in Hindi or English. Again, the Chair’s permission is necessary to speak in other languages.

Protection of linguistic minorities

Article 29 protects the rights of linguistic minorities to conserve their language, script and culture. Article 30 grants them the right to establish and administer educational institutions of their choice. Article 350B requires the President to appoint a special officer for linguistic minorities to look into and report on their constitutional safeguards.

Roadmap for genuine linguistic federalism

As Granville Austin observed in his classic The Indian Constitution – Cornerstone of a Nation, the language provisions represented “a half-hearted compromise” – a settlement that reconciled opposing fears but left behind enduring tensions. They preserved the Union at a moment of peril by rejecting monolingual nationalism, yet placed disproportionate constitutional weight behind Hindi.

What began in 1950 as an uneasy linguistic truce has since evolved into recurring contestation – from the anti-Hindi agitations of the 1960s to the disputes over the three-language formula, and the Union’s growing tendency to name central schemes, national campaigns and even laws in Hindi. Unless the Union tempers this approach with restraint, fairness, and genuine federal sensitivity, the privileging of Hindi – which is, after all, only one regional and minority language among many – will remain a source of avoidable friction.

The constitutional amendments required to restore linguistic balance and fairness almost suggest themselves:

1. Secure English in law and governance

Amend Article 343 to entrench English permanently as an official language of the Union, placing it beyond the pale of parliamentary discretion.

Declare all languages listed in the Eighth Schedule as official languages of the Union – on the model of the European Union – now rendered feasible through AI-enabled translation technologies. For languages newly added to the Eighth Schedule, a 10-year transition period may be provided before they attain full Union-level recognition.

Amend Article 346 to guarantee English as the enduring link language for communication between the Union and the states and among the states themselves.

Finally, amend Article 348 to entrench English irrevocably as the official language of the Supreme Court, high courts and legislative drafting. These are domains where clarity, precision and consistency are essential for good government and fair justice.

2. Promote all languages equally

Amend Article 344 so that it is the Union’s duty to promote and develop all Scheduled languages equally, instead of only Hindi. Delete Article 351, whose directive that Hindi draw its vocabulary “primarily from Sanskrit” has stopped the language from growing naturally and distorted the spirit of linguistic harmony the Constitution was meant to uphold.

3. Omit Article 347

Conceived before linguistic reorganisation of states (1956), Article 347 is now anachronistic, infringes state autonomy, and is a constitutional backdoor through which Hindi or any other language could be foisted upon a state without its consent. It must be omitted.

4. Create a national language commission

Replace Article 350B’s limited office with a comprehensive and empowered “National Language Commission”, tasked with identifying endangered languages, documenting vocabularies and oral traditions  and supporting community-led preservation and revival initiatives. If biodiversity merits protection as a national asset, so too does India’s unparalleled linguistic diversity, the living archive of her civilisation.

5. Guarantee language reciprocity in replies

Amend Article 350 to make Union government offices respond in the same language in which a citizen’s representation is made, either in the state’s official language or in English, as applicable. Limiting responses to Hindi only goes against the spirit of federalism, and reduces non-Hindi-speaking citizens to a subordinate status in their own country.

6. Let democracy speak in many languages

Amend Articles 120 and 210 to abolish the archaic “permission-to-speak” rule that limits the use of non-official languages in Parliament and state Legislatures. In an age of real-time translation, such limitations are unnecessary and undemocratic. Every elected representative should be free to speak in the language they know best. India should take pride in the symphony of its multifarious tongues that echo through its Parliament and state legislatures, not silence them in the name of uniformity.

Concluding remarks

India’s language debate is an open-ended story. It takes different shapes with each new generation, reemerging whenever the Union government’s pursuit of homogeneity overshadows the Constitution’s spirit of accommodation. There is no part of the Constitution more in need of reform than its language provisions – antiquated relics of another era that have disrupted the federal balance.

It is time for a new debate on the language question – not to weaken India but to revitalise her unity upon fairer and firmer foundations. As Belgium, Canada, Singapore and Switzerland have shown, nations flourish not by privileging one language, but by embracing all in the spirit of statesmanship and equal respect for all languages.

K. Ashok Vardhan Shetty is a retired IAS officer and a former vice-chancellor of the Indian Maritime University, Chennai, and a member of Tamil Nadu’s High-Level Committee on Union-State Relations.

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