A language crisis in education

India was recently left with two words to ponder: “parasites” and “cockroaches”. The clipped excerpts from Supreme Court Justice Surya Kant’s speech sparked a range of reactions. Though the judge clarified that the comments were meant for “people with degrees” who use fake credentials to “try to infiltrate professional systems”, many social media users took a different reading of the judge’s comments.

This is not a unique situation. A remark by Shashi Tharoor in 2009, calling economy-class service “cattle class,” drew considerable criticism for being a cynical jab at the political motives behind austerity and for being highly classist and insulting. Comedian and presenter Vir Das’s ‘Two Indias’ act was seen by some as a slice of democracy, while others felt it was an international embarrassment for the country. Hillary Clinton botched her campaign when she publicly labelled half of Trump’s voters a ‘basket of deplorables’ during the 2016 presidential election. 

These are important not just because they caused the ripples they did, but also because they raise three underlying issues in communication in today’s India.

The first is that language is beyond institutional control once it enters the digital sphere. Second, the intention no longer leads to the interpretation. The third and most serious is that the public reception becomes the sole “real” meaning of the original content.

Public speech is a reality in the current fragmented interpretive communities. As long as the context of the recipient, clipping, and dissemination of the sentence changes, it can be used as a piece of satire, patriotism, insult, criticism, or propaganda. Communication failures today stem from the complexity of each communication, which is presented to the public as emotionally charged and context-free, repackaged by algorithms.

Language in academics

The ecology of language has been transformed by digital culture, which has removed the barriers between informal and institutional modes of expression. From the courtroom to the classroom, from a political joke to the sarcastic tweet, a single observation can now carry like wildfire at the speed of outrage. The meaning is increasingly defined by circulation rather than by speakers. Therefore, India’s communication crisis is also an educational crisis. 

Communication in India has, for decades, been accorded a technical status—fluency, grammar, pronunciation, and employability. In most of the schools, however, the teaching of English is stagnant, and it is still characterised by excessive traditional teaching content, which is still dominated by the teaching of prose, poetry and drama and is out of place in students’ real communication life. This is simply not sufficient anymore. 

India is a multilingual democracy struggling to address political polarisation, algorithmic misinformation, meme culture, video-cut discourse, and an increasingly virile online public. Universities continue to invest in STEM and management education. They continue to produce professionals with certifications and qualifications, but with little training in interpreting particular contexts or communicating ethically in a fair language.

The urgent issue in Indian higher education is not how well the students can speak English. The question we should ask: Can institutions make a difference in the development of citizens, judges, educators, bureaucrats, media, and political leaders who understand the ethical consequences of public language in a hyperconnected democracy?

The remedy

There has to be a media literacy requirement at the heart of citizenship learning. It should involve understanding literal versus implied meaning; identifying satire, irony, and rhetorical framing; reading statements in full context, not just viral fragments, to recognise misinformation from disinformation; and analysing meme cultures and outrage economies, as well as understanding how algorithms can exacerbate conflicts and emotional reactions. It should also sensitise everyone to the language they use when criticising what they dislike.

It is something which humanities educators are best positioned to do. The humanities are not ‘soft’ subjects: at this moment, they may be the last vestiges of academia where students can be trained to become responsible citizens by teaching the nuances of reading a full text, how to disagree respectfully, how to tell apart misinformation from disinformation, and how to verify misinformation.

The row over Justice Surya Kant’s comment reveals how fragile the communication is in today’s India, where language is always instantaneous, permanent, weaponised and infinitely reproducible. But if the education system is unaware of this, India risks producing generations that are professionally prepared but not communicatively prepared. 

If universities continue to ignore this reality, the next national crisis may emerge from loose statements by those in power and from how millions choose to read them.