Regional language in higher education: A step in the right direction or a recipe for disaster?

English has been the medium for higher education and the main language for school education. This has benefited India, but the government now wants to use regional languages for instruction. This is challenging, given India's 22 official languages and universities' struggles to maintain quality with English instruction

Replacing English as India’s official language has been one of the goals of the political leadership of the country since our country achieved independence. It was felt that replacing English, the language of colonial rule, with Hindi would encourage national unity and pride. A timeline of 15 years was set in the constitution of India in 1950 for introducing Hindi in all parts of the country and phasing English out.

This plan ran into political difficulties almost immediately. Political movements for the creation of new States on linguistic lines started in many parts of the country. This resulted in the States Reorganisation Act of 1956 which was a major step towards dividing India into States and union territories on linguistic basis. The non-Hindi speaking States were suspicious of the attempts to impose Hindi on them and resisted the Government to make Hindi the sole official language of the country. In light of the protests in Tamil Nadu and other parts of the country, it was decided in 1965 that both Hindi and English will be the official languages of the country.

Since Hindi never became the sole official language of India, English continued as the medium for higher education as well as the predominant language for school education. It was a stroke of luck for India that English was also the language of international business and globalisation trends opened opportunities for Indian companies abroad. Fluency in English was a significant factor in enabling Indian companies to become global leaders in many service industries and for the Indian diaspora in remitting billions of dollars from all parts of the world. Many countries like China, Japan and South Korea, have realised that not speaking English leaves them at a significant disadvantage and are now adding English in their curriculum.

Given this background, it is puzzling why the Government is going against global trends and emphasising the use of regional languages for instruction at primary and higher education levels. In its 11th report, the Parliamentary Committee on Official Languages, has recommended that that Hindi or local language should be used as the medium of instruction in all technical and non-technical institutions in the country, and the use of English should be made optional.

The very scale of the challenge in implementing this recommendation is unprecedented. There are, of course, many countries in the world where higher education is in the local language. In Switzerland, for instance, higher education courses are available in Italian, French, German and English. But no country in the world has 22 official languages like India does. Right now, universities across India are struggling with the challenge of maintaining quality when the medium of instruction is just English. The quality assurance problem will become much more formidable when higher education is happening in 22 languages across different states.

Rather than looking at small countries in Europe, India should look at the experience of large countries with many languages and dialects, like the erstwhile Soviet Union and China. In both these countries, school and higher education were standardised only to a single language, Russian in case of the Soviet Union and Mandarin in China. This made it possible to give parity and ensure uniform standards in all parts of these vast countries.

There are many problems in starting professional courses in local languages of which translating textbooks from English is just the tip of the iceberg. In Russian or German, equivalent terms exist for technical terms such as enthalpy, entropy, voltage, current etc. These terms may not have equivalents in every Indian language and therefore dictionaries for technical terms will have to be created. A huge effort will be required to bring a whole range of unfamiliar terms into regular usage in each language. The assumption that Indian languages are not used for higher education is itself a fallacy. In majority of colleges across the country, the teacher will solve a problem on the board or show a slide in English, but the discussion will likely be in a blend of English and the local language. The whole idea of teaching is to get the point across to the student and there is no bar either on teachers or students in using the local language.

The widespread use of English in schools and colleges has greatly aided the mobility of students within the country. A student studying in a CBSE school in Assam can easily go for college in Delhi or Bengaluru. A doctor doing MBBS in Punjab can go to Manipal for an MD course. If the recent recommendations become reality in the coming decades, then this mobility will cease. That will be a huge problem because educational facilities and job opportunities are not equally distributed across the country.

Although the NEP has been in force for the last 3 years, the demand for professional courses in regional languages has been low among parents and students. However, some professional courses are already running in regional languages. In the best case scenario, the graduates of these programs will do well professionally and get seamlessly absorbed into the economy. In the worst-case scenario, these graduates will find themselves at a disadvantage and demand reservations in post graduate courses and jobs.

Language is an emotional issue where India faces the delicate task of preserving its linguistic and cultural heritage while adapting to global trends. The balance between tradition and progress remains a challenge, requiring thoughtful policies to ensure plentiful educational and job opportunities across the nation.

(The author is a Navy veteran currently working as a professor in Pune)