Nein! Indian school students forced to drop foreign languages amid govt’s native language push

NEW DELHI – Pranshi Kathuria began learning Spanish at her school in Delhi in April. The 10-year-old took to it with ease, rattling off numbers and introducing herself as any native speaker would in Spanish on the phone with The Straits Times.

“I was very excited to learn Spanish,” said the sixth grader.

However, her experience with the language ended abruptly a little over a week into the new academic year following a government directive seeking to promote the learning of Indian languages at schools instead, pushing out foreign languages such as Spanish, German and French from the regular school curriculum.

The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), the most popular national board that regulates school education across the country in more than 33,000 schools, sent out a circular on April 9 asking schools to ensure that two of the three languages that children must learn at CBSE-affiliated schools are those “native” to India.

Under this policy, English will occupy the only spot allocated for a non-native language in India due to its significance. It serves as an official language in the country and is also the medium of instruction at most of these schools. Consequently, the remaining two spots are for Indian languages.

According to the CBSE, the move is aimed at promoting “cultural understanding and national integration among learners”.

India is one of the world’s most linguistically diverse countries, with around 780 languages. But the number of official languages is much lower at 23, including English. Communication between Indians – most of whom are either bilingual or multilingual – happens mostly in English, Hindi or another dominant regional language.

The CBSE’s move has prompted criticism over the lack of choice for students and the limitation of their access to an education with a global outlook. Under the new three-language policy, which is being implemented in phases beginning with sixth graders in 2026, the mix of languages can vary from region to region.

Students can theoretically choose from a multiplicity of Indian languages given that CBSE-affiliated schools teach around 35 of them across the country. The options are limited though, by factors such as the availability of teachers and the minimum requirement of a certain quorum of students – usually around 15 – to offer a language as a taught subject at schools.

In English-medium schools in north India, the most popular choice for the two native Indian languages has veered towards Hindi, which is widely spoken in the region, and Sanskrit, a language many schools are already teaching and for which they have the faculty and other resources.

The easy choice of Sanskrit as a second native Indian language – instead of Tamil, Bengali or another Indian language – has led critics to question whether it furthers the goal of “cultural understanding and national integration”.

The Bharatiya Janata Party-led government has been accused in the past of prioritising Hindi and Sanskrit over other Indian languages in its education policy.

At Pranshi’s school, all sixth graders are now learning Hindi and Sanskrit, along with English, which has left her and many other students disheartened. “I am very sad,” she said.

Spanish, she argued, could help her in the future, possibly as a businesswoman to deal with international clients or a doctor if she were to practise abroad, unlike Sanskrit, which has few practical modern-day uses.

“We also learnt Sanskrit (at school) but got nothing out of it,” added Mrs Priya Kathuria, Pranshi’s mother. “The only reason we chose Spanish over Sanskrit was because of its potential use in future... A language should not be forced on children.”

The CBSE maintains that children are free to learn other languages in addition to the three required ones at school. Teachers and parents, however, argue this is unfeasible as children are already overburdened, with excessive academic load and timetables that have no room for more subjects.

Offering foreign languages as an extracurricular or an after-school subject, on the other hand, might have few takers, if any, especially if children are not formally assessed in these languages.

As a result, schools have started gradually winding up their foreign language departments, with teachers losing jobs or being forced to teach other subjects such as English at a junior level.

Mr Gokulananda Nandan, a Spanish teacher of over a decade at a school in Noida, said that while the number of teachers who may lose their jobs right away is limited, the number will be much higher a few years down the line, as more grades switch to the two-native-language policy.

“And it’s not just a concern for the current teachers but also for the many university students who are actually studying these foreign languages at universities with the hope of becoming teachers at CBSE schools,” he added.

Many foreign language teachers were employed on a contractual basis and paid for the number of hours they worked. A lesser workload now means reduced pay for them.

“Financial sustenance is going to be a problem,” said Dr Nandita Wagle, secretary-general of the Indian Association of Teachers of French. “It’s extremely precarious, alarming, the whole situation,” she said.

In Puducherry in south India, the new directive has marginalised French from the curriculum of schools affiliated with the CBSE. The language has been part of its colonial French history and remains popular with students, who are now learning English, Tamil and Hindi as the three languages in CBSE-affiliated schools.

“Puducherry is proud of its French roots. Shouldn’t we have a policy to protect French education here?” Ms Gayathri Srikanth, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam’s Women Wing convenor, posted on X on April 26.

The policy also raises concerns over whether Indian children will be globally mobile in the future if they are not exposed to foreign languages while at school, besides also potentially undermining the country’s strategic international outreach.

“We are more and more a global economy, one of the biggest in the world. So is it really even worth discussing that we don’t need a foreign language?” said Dr Wagle.

India’s foreign and trade policy is anchored in multilateralism, with close strategic partnerships that have deepened in recent years, including with countries in the European Union, with which India concluded a free trade agreement (FTA) in January.

But in the light of the new policy, Dr Wagle questioned India’s ability to produce the large number of experts in foreign languages such as French needed to carry through India’s foreign relationships and businesses that will grow further because of the FTA.

“The question that remains is this – do you want to upskill your own citizens and turn them into people who are capable of functioning at multiple levels on multiple continents, or do you want to keep them knowing only English and local Indian languages and then employ people from other countries for our foreign language needs?”