LAW AND LANGUAGE (ENGLISH I)

FOUR RESEARCH PAPER ANALYSIS

TOPIC: PLACE OF MOTHER TONGUE IN MULTILINGUAL EDUCATION

SYSTEM OF INDIA

PROJECT SUBMITTED TO:

Dr. Manohar Reddy
Assistant Professor,
NALSAR University of Law

PROJECT SUBMITTED BY:

Pratyush Kumar Pradhan
Roll No.- 2019-5LLB-35
1st Year, Semester 1, B.A. LL. B (Hons.)

NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad

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 Analysis

‘Every two miles the water changes every four miles the speech.’

When film maker Imtiaz Ali Khan was asked that what fascinates you in India. He said, “It is
the change in language, dialect, food, clothes, music in every 20 kms that fascinates me about
the country.” As per the 2001 census India houses 1369 rationalised mother tongues, 1474
unclassified spoken languages, 121 major set of languages and 22 out of these 121 are
officially recognised languages in eighth schedule of our constitution.1 In a country with such
a vast linguistic diversity, language has always posed an issue in the field of education.

‘Language is not everything in education but without language everything in education is

nothing.’2 The fact cannot be denied that language plays an important role in education, by
serving as the medium of instruction. From this arises the question that which language will
effectively serve as the language of instruction in the education system of India. Will it be the
mother tongue or the regional language or the official language? To solve this issue the
education planners come up with ‘multilingual education system’ as its solution.

But at this far point the questions now are: Has multilingual education served its purpose?
Has it been effective? If not, what are the lapses? And how can it be addressed? In
furtherance of this, I have chosen four research papers or articles written by four authors on
this issue to analyse the contemporary situation of multilingual education. The first article
written by A. Giridhar Rao ‘The English-Only Myth Multilingual Education in India’ 3,
second article is written by Lachman M. Khubchandani ‘Defining Mother Tongue Education
In Plurilingual contexts’4, third article is ‘‘Bridging’ and ‘Exit’ as Metaphors of Multilingual
Education: A Constructionist Analysis’ written by Minati Panda 5 and the fourth one is of Ajit
Mohanty ‘Multilingual education in India’6. These four writers have discussed the situation of

1
Language Census of India, 2011, http://censusindia.gov.in/2011Census/C-16_25062018_NEW.pdf
2
Apala Saha, The Scene of Multilingual Education In India: The Issue of Medium of Instruction – A Spatial
Study
3
Rao A.The English-Only Myth: Multilingual Education in India. Language Problems & Language Planning.
(2013)
4
M. Khubchandani, Defining Mother Tongue Education in Plurilingual Contexts, Language Policy, 2003,
Volume 2, Number 3, Page 239
5
Minati Panda, ‘Bridging’ and ‘Exit’ as Metaphors of Multilingual Education: A Constructionist Analysis (10
March 2012) file:///E:/NALSAR,%20Hyderabad/assignments/law%20and%20language/minati%20panda.pdf
6
Ajit Mohanty, Multilingual Education In India, Hornberger Encyclopedia of Language and Education.
Springer, Boston, MA (2008)
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multilingual education, role of mother tongue in education of a student and above all how to
address the problems arising in this contemporary situation.

Before going into the issue we have to understand what multilingual education is and what
are the issues the authors are dealing with. It refers to the idea of giving an education not only
in one language (monolingual) or two language (bilingual) but in multiple languages. In
pursuance of this the Indian government in 1957 came up with a 3-language formula
discussed by Ajit Mohanty in his article. 7 What Mohanty points out in his article is that the
policy had not made a clear distinction between regional language and mother tongue. In
many cases it is interpreted as the same thing. And this led to the imposition of majority
regional languages on minority mother tongues and tribal language. Giridhar Rao also had
talked about this issue in his article. For example: In the state of Odisha the majority
language is Odia but there are several dialects use by people in different part of states. Like in
western part the major language is Sambalpuri and Koshali, as a tribal state Odisha also
houses a lot of tribal language like Koya, Santali etc. So, in such cases Odia as the regional
language is interpreted as their mother tongue. Rao explained it by saying that what it means
for a Odia speaking person to learn in English, will mean the same for a Koya (tribal
language) speaking child to learn in Odia. He also pointed out the consequences of such an
interpretation on the education of student. According to him, a lot of student lack the bridging
mechanism and had to opt out of school as they loose interest. This is verified by a survey
done by ASER in 2011 (Annual Status of Education Report). 8 Kumbchandani also pointed
out that we have to identify this plurality in our society. We simply cannot go on imposing a
dominant regional language on many different mother tongue speakers. He talked differently
to others in terms of distinguishing mother tongue from ‘native speech’. Mother tongue
cannot be so narrowly interpreted as a child’s home language or the language of his/her
mother or cradle. Instead it is the language through which a child socialise himself. So first of
all we need to give the right interpretation that what actually mother tongue of a person is
then only can rightly discuss the issue.

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The 3 language formula recommended the use of three languages in the education system: Mother tongue or
Regional language as the first language(first five years grade 1 to grade 5), Hindi in non-Hindi areas and another
Indian language in the Hindi areas as the second language (grade 6 th to grade 8th ) and English as the third
language (grade 3 onwards). In 1964 this was changed making both English or Hindi as second language
mqking one of them optional.
8
ASER: Annual status of education Report is an annual survey that aims to provide reliable annual estimates of
children’s schooling status and basic learning.
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The next question that arise is what is the need to distinguish these? Why discussing this
issue of mother tongue education so important? Giridhar Rao in his article pointed out
ASER’s findings which says that “learning level is falling significantly as students are
moving more to an English language-based education from their mother tongue.” Another
thing that Rao mentioned is that this replacement of mother tongue education by regional
language leads to linguistic genocide in education. Now what this linguistic genocide is?
Ganesh Devy (a socio-linguist) in an interview given to the Indian Express pointed out while
conducting the Linguistic Survey of India he found that in past 60 years 250 Indian languages
have died and 600 are slowly dying.9 He also said that each dead language takes away a
cultural system and a whole different perspective to see the world. This is the result of a
disastrous education outcome which Rao called a ‘low intensity warfare.’ This extinction of
languages and vernaculars from the language world due to loosing importance and use is
called as linguistic genocide. And he attributes its cause to education system. Khubchandani
said in his article the importance of mother tongue education. He said that a child learns more
efficiently in his mother tongue rather that an unfamiliar linguistic medium. According to him
a child learns from the language he speaks with his family and peers but not from a grammar
book. He quoted UNESCO’s findings that psychologically a child minds work automatically
for understanding and expression through mother tongue education.

Now Analysing these from legal point of view, we can find the authors talking about
linguistic and social inequalities established by this education system by imposing dominant
regional language in place of the mother tongue of minority and marginalised. Mohanty has
explicitly mentioned this in his article. He talked about language hierarchy. This referred to a
three tired hierarchy which is based on power relation. High up in the ranking comes the
language of authority like Sanskrit, Persian, and English at different point of Indian history
(rule of Hindu, Muslim and British), then comes the language of masses or the dominant
language and at bottom comes the language of marginalised and minority. Due to this
suppression these languages could neither prosper nor could they develop their writings or
scripts which also gradually leads to their extinction. This age-old oppression is also seen in
present scenario endangering more linguistic group. Article 350(A) of Indian constitution
clearly says that “the state should provide adequate facilities for instruction at mother tongue
at the primary level of education to children belonging to minority groups.”10 But still they
9
The Indian Express, https://indianexpress.com/article/research/international-mother-language-day-2018-
ganesh-devy-indian-languages-5072487/
10
India Const. art. 350(A)
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are not given their right place and still subdued. Khubchandani also stated that this imposition
of majority dominant language on minority language group, community or individual is
violation of their fundamental and basic rights and strike on their self-esteem, identity and
dignity.

Now I will like to analyse the fact that where our education system is having the fault due to
which it is unable to achieve the visualised objective of multilingual education despite of
having the 3-language formula and a well-established education system. What Khubchandani
specified is that there is a large gap between the objective of policy and actual practice, while
student attend classes or teachers give explanation in class in one language, they write exams
and get study material in another language. Another problem that he fingered out is that while
elementary education begins in mother tongue in preparatory phase it gets shifted to another
medium in higher education. Minati Panda illustrated a similar idea in a different perspective,
where she talked about two metaphors in multilingual education system ‘bridging’ and ‘exit’.
Here she said that in our education system mother tongue is only used as a language of
transition to bring children to mainstream education and much before its introduction its point
of exit from the system is decided (In 3 language system mother tongue does an exit in 5 th
grade). For example, the tribal children know that their mother tongue has to exit from their
education in favour of regional language, official language or English. This decrease the
importance of their language in the system. Somewhat similar ideas are elucidated by Ajit
Mohanty which is a combination of both the ideas of Khubchandani and Minati Panda. What
he added to it was that in India, Language is visualised as subject rather than a medium of
instruction. The education system is multilingual to the surface form only. He attributes it as
the fault of policy maker who are forming policy without proper research and analysis. A.
Giridhar Rao on the other hand talked about two fallacies or myth regarding language
education which inhibits the development of mother tongue education in the system. These
are ‘early exposure’ and ‘maximum exposure’ to the so-called elite language English. This
means the early the child begins his education in English and the more subjects he reads in
English the better. It again derates the value of mother language.

What all these authors are trying to say is that for a student it is easier to learn and
comprehend in his mother tongue rather than a language with which he is not familiar with.
The level of familiarity one has with his/her mother tongue cannot be developed with any
other language. But our education system lacks the scope of mother tongue education. Higher

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education could not be possible if we don’t know English or a majority language. This led to
increase in school dropout rates and degrading intellectual development among students as
pointed out by Giridhar Rao. Due to this shift in importance of English as a medium of
instruction many parents prefer to enrol their students in so called ‘English medium schools’
which are mostly private schools, ending up derating the potential performance of their
children.

Mother tongue is now visualised as a traditional artefact. As Khubchandani noted in his

article, the underdeveloped speech community in the process of modernisation tries to accept
language and values of other cultures whom they consider more developed then their own
(For example: Westernisation). Now leaving back their mother tongue has become a sign of
modernity and civilisation. And this English based education system has catalysed this
process to a greater extent.

Finally, the question arises what can be done and what is the solution of the problem? The
authors have given their ideas in their articles that what is lacking and what can be done?
A.Giridhar Rao don’t want to discard English from the education system neither he wants to
give it the place of mother tongue. He talked about making student language improvised
rather than making them English improvised. He wants the myth of English as language of
science and mathematics created by our education system has to be removed. He wants a
child to have eight to ten years of learning in mother tongue with gradual introduction to
other languages. Khubchandani had also given a similar view. He wants the education system
to recognise the plurality and diversity of the Indian society and thus adopt a holistic
approach. The system must be relevant to the environment and learner’s need. The system
should not be uniform or rigid while dealing with a plural society according to him. Neither
he wants mother tongue to be the only language of education. He wants a system to cater all
the needs of students and ensure social justice. Mohanty also wants our education system to
ensure social justice and equality. He said that the core of Indian multilingualism lies in the
relationship of all the its languages whether minority or tribal language, state or regional
language or language of communication (english or hindi). We need to reconcile all their
interest. He hopes that the new changes that were brought in Multilingual education system
of tribal dominated states like Odisha, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh will be able to meet the
interest of students and marginalised languages. All he wants is the systematic evaluation of
the system. Minati Panda had also pointed a showed an equal idea where she wants every

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language to give its place. She wants this dominant culture centric education where one child
is permitted to stay with his mother tongue till end of higher education while the other has to
leave it at the primary level to end. She strongly criticises this differential treatment in a
democratic society. MLE as she said should seek to empower the learner and their
community and helps to sustain this linguistic diversity.

In my views this linguistic and cultural diversity is the beauty of our nation. We should not
let our education system destroy it. Multilingual education as a policy has the potential to
sustain this quality of the nation. We cannot let our languages die. Summarising the ideas of
all the above writers what I conclude is that, first we have to remove all the myths regarding
the so called ‘elite’ language English. It is not a language which is necessary to sustain in this
world or to become successful. Our country system of education and employment has made it
so. The subjects and textbooks which are now available in English can also be given in any
other Indian language or in our mother tongue. All we need to do is first modify our own
system which can accommodate all these diversities of language. Then if we promote mother
tongue education it will be fruitful and accepted by everyone. The second thing is that no
language should be imposed on anyone. It is the fundamental right of a person and his/ her
discretion to choose the language he/ she wants to study in. Only for developing a majority
regional language we cannot ignore the interest of minority. The third thing which we can
inferred in this project is that Mother tongue education cannot be replaced by any other
language in the system of education. The intellectual and language skills that it can give as a
medium of instruction cannot be provided otherwise. India is a democratic nation and
everyone have their rightful place so does language. This multiple language society is a gift
to the nation which give us multiple ways to view the world. We cannot lose this heritage of
ours. The policy maker and linguist should form a well-researched and analysed approach in
the education system which will let this multilingual society to prosper.

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