A two-faced approach to the three-language formula

In this country, those who speak English will soon feel ashamed!” declared home minister Amit Shah at a book launch on 19 June. “The idea of a ‘complete India’ (whatever that means) cannot be imagined through half-baked foreign languages.”

As expected, there was public outrage, giving Shah reason to track back the next time. At the golden jubilee celebrations of the Union government’s official language department, in Delhi on 26 June, he said: “I sincerely believe that Hindi can’t be a virodhi (adversary) to any Indian language. Hindi is a sakhi (female friend) of all Indian languages.”

Readers will recall Prime Minister Narendra Modi mocking politicians from Tamil Nadu for signing their letters to him in English. “They are so proud of Tamil that they even sign their letters in English,” he jeered at a public meeting in April.

Earlier this year, Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan accused DMK leaders of misleading the public on the New Education Policy (NEP) and neglecting the interests of the students of Tamil Nadu. He threatened to withhold Central funds under the ‘Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan’ unless the southern states adopted the NEP’s three-language formula.

While the TDP in Andhra Pradesh — a BJP ally in New Delhi — responded with a diplomatic statement on accepting Hindi ‘willingly’, the other states were not so pliant. Tamil Nadu chief minister M.K. Stalin refused to budge from the state’s two-language formula in primary education, and accused the Centre of imposing Hindi.

The southern states criticised the Centre for its top-down approach, pointing out that they fund 85 per cent of primary education and deserve a say in policy decisions. They also questioned the effectiveness of Hindi-speaking BJP-ruled states in implementing the three-language system, urging the Centre to first address poor learning outcomes there.

Thackeray cousins’ united show has rattled Fadnavis, Mahayuti leaders: Raut

Even as the first six months of 2025 saw the language wars hotting up, initially in Tamil Nadu and then in Maharashtra, hostility against Hindi speakers who had settled in these states led to clashes on the streets and in the marketplace. Resistance or refusal was met with violence and intimidation.

Frustrated Hindi speakers (who also knew English), particularly those in transferable jobs, voiced their resentment over being asked to learn a third language. “How many languages must we learn?” they asked — ironically vindicating the two-language formula favoured by the southern states.

A brief history lesson may be in order here. While many members of the Constituent Assembly (1946–49) were strongly in favour of a single ‘unifying’ language, the resolution in favour of Hindi as the official language was passed by just a single vote. It was resolved that English would remain the official language for 15 years, and continue as one of the official languages thereafter, as long as the states desired.

In 1937, C. Rajagopalachari had made learning Hindustani compulsory in the Madras Presidency. (In 1940, the British government revoked this.) In 1968, he wrote in Swarajya, ‘Hindi is, at best, the language of a large minority, even as Tamil is the language of a medium-sized minority… Even in its most advanced form, Hindi as a language is inadequately equipped with the technical terms required for conveying modern knowledge.’

Once Hindi was adopted as the official language of the Union government in 1963, another wave of language agitations flared up.

The three-language formula was first adopted in the NEP of 1968 but was never seriously implemented. In most states, language proficiency is low, not only in English and the third language — often Sanskrit in the northern states — but also the mother tongue.

विजय मराठी माणसाचा, विजय मराठी भाषेचा! pic.twitter.com/na5luq4hdS

— Office of Uddhav Thackeray (@OfficeofUT) June 29, 2025

Fadnavis has done what Bal Thackeray could not, says Raj Thackeray

Writing in the Indian Express (8 July 2025), political scientist Suhas Palshikar explains the systematic push to make Hindi ‘unofficially the official language’. "The pro-Hindi policy of the [current Maharashtra] government [seen in its now-aborted attempt to introduce Hindi from Class 1] is in line with the BJP’s longstanding ambition to have Hindi (shuddh Hindi, not Hindustani) as the national language — a policy that dovetails with its penchant for enforcing uniformity in every respect and implementing a one nation, one language policy."

It’s only when "votaries of regional languages appreciate the link between making one language national and making one culture national’ that we can better ‘understand the politics of nationalism masquerading as the politics of a national language". This is possibly why the language issue refuses to go away.

The New Education Policy unveiled in 2020 and revised in 2021 provided ‘flexibility’ to the states, the state boards and students. What, then, prompted the Maharashtra government to make the teaching of Hindi mandatory in Class 1, along with Marathi and English? The decision announced on 17 June was hurriedly withdrawn on 30 June in the face of mounting opposition, even from the state government’s own expert committee on languages. Nobody was consulted.

The objection to chief minister Devendra Fadnavis’ decision to adopt a three-language formula for school children in classes 1–5 was along two lines: the dubious merits of burdening children with a third language so early and the opposition of native Marathi speakers.

MNS (Maharashtra Navnirman Sena) workers hit the streets of Mumbai, picking on and assaulting those who failed to communicate in Marathi. Some wrathful victims fought back, asking if Mukesh Ambani or Gautam Adani spoke in Marathi.

Police detain MNS workers protesting Hindi imposition, Mira Road, 8 July

One outcome of the furore was to bring estranged cousins Uddhav and Raj Thackeray together after 20 years, as they “united to protect Marathi”. Three days after their public reunion, tensions erupted in Mira Road on 8 July as the MNS and Shiv Sena (UBT) led a large protest, defying prohibitory orders.

With Fadnavis backing down, suspending the decision and setting up a new committee under economist Narendra Jadhav to suggest the way forward, the cousins have the higher ground, as they vow to continue the fight.

Delighted by this unexpected opportunity, Stalin was quick to congratulate the Thackeray cousins for their successful campaign, posting on X: ‘The language rights struggle, waged generation after generation by the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and the people of Tamil Nadu to defeat Hindi imposition, has now transcended state boundaries and is swirling like a storm of protest in Maharashtra.’

Stalin commended Raj Thackeray for asking which third language was being taught in Hindi-speaking states and slammed the BJP’s attempts to throttle the progress of non-Hindi-speaking states. While Stalin evidently hopes to leverage his anti-Hindi stance in next year’s assembly election, no Dravidian party — including those allied with the BJP — can really afford to take a contrary stand on this issue.

Whatever the victories of the moment, the long-term agenda of promoting Hindi as both rajbhasha (official language) and rashtrabhasha (national language) is not likely to stop as long as the BJP rules this country. Protests are unlikely to deter the BJP and RSS — they will bide their time until the next opportunity presents itself; in line with their other unitary fantasies, they will continue the campaign to foist Hindi on the entire nation.