Mother tongue matters

The moment I say, “Mother tongue must be the medium of instruction in schools,” my fellow Kannada activists respond, “That’s a closed chapter. Let us move on.” Their stance is based on a Supreme Court of India ruling, which held that the medium of instruction for a child is the right of the parent(s).

While this debate has continued right from the time of independence, the New Education Policy (NEP) 2020, introduced under the Modi government, has reignited interest in the issue.

On May 22, 2025, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) issued a circular directing all affiliated schools to implement the mother tongue as the medium of instruction for all children aged three to eight—that is, from preschool up to Class 2, the so-called foundational stage.

The board specified that the medium of instruction must be the home language, mother tongue, or the language familiar to the child in its environment in all schools.

This directive is grounded in sound pedagogical principles: children acquire new knowledge, develop phonological awareness, and build basic number sense best in a language they already understand. The medium of instruction in schools must be the language a child knows and understands, which implies it must be the mother tongue. The NEP 2020 also insists that this must continue until the child becomes literate or proficient in the other language.

This appears to be a daunting task in a country like India, where a single classroom can have children with multiple mother tongues. In such situations the policy suggests that the most familiar language or the regional language or the state language shall be the medium of instruction. It clearly says English is not the mother tongue or the state language for any Indian. 

A few years ago, when some people argued that English was their mother tongue, the Supreme Court ruled that—except for Anglo-Indians—no Indian can claim English as their mother tongue.

Several organisations have called the CBSE’s move regressive. They question its feasibility, asking, “Is it even possible to run a school with multiple mediums of instruction, given the diversity of mother tongues?” They condemn the circular as impractical and insist that an “English Medium” is the way forward.

However, Anurag Behar, CEO of the Azim Premji Foundation, has supported the CBSE directive, calling it an educationally sound step in his column in Mint recently. He argues that critics of the move have either not read the policy carefully or have failed to understand it in the right spirit.

This, he says, is because English is an alien language for most Indian children. He concludes by saying it is “unscientific” to replace the mother tongue with English as the medium of instruction on the pretext of a multilingual situation at schools. He also says that it may not be practically feasible to provide mother tongue instruction in all languages for each child; however, the solution is provided within the guidelines of the CBSE directive. The language of the state where the school is situated is the best language as the medium of instruction. This is not only a commercially viable solution but is also educationally sound. He explains that while the state language may not be as familiar as the mother tongue, it is more familiar than English for any child in India. 

Hence, CBSE’s move provides a way forward to move away from meaningless rote learning to meaningful learning for children in Indian classrooms. This provides a foundation for learning in the primary years of schooling while students prepare for future learning in English. 

NCERT had published textbooks in Hindi and Urdu prior to CBSE’s circular and had made these textbooks available online in 22 other regional languages on their website.

Most children struggle to read or write in English; when you visit any English-medium school across the country, they fail to make meaning of anything, and it renders schooling as a lifeless endeavour. Is this what we desire for our children through the English medium? I will let you answer it.

(The writer is retired deputy director, Prasaranga, Mysuru University)