A podcast discussion has revived a long-running national debate over whether English should be formally classified as a foreign language in India, despite its entrenched role in governance, higher education, judiciary, and professional life. The conversation, hosted by The Hindu’s “In Focus” podcast, brought together two prominent public intellectuals whose work has shaped Indian discourse on language, identity, and access for decades.
The episode featured Apoorvanand, a Hindi professor at the University of Delhi and well-known public commentator on social and political questions, alongside Ganesh Devy, the linguist who led the People’s Linguistic Survey of India (PLSI), the largest such survey ever conducted in the country. Their exchange examined the historical, political, and social dimensions of English in India, particularly the persistent tension between the language’s associations with British colonial rule and its continued dominance in elite Indian institutions, including the civil services, the higher judiciary, major news organisations, and corporate boardrooms.
What Happened
The episode revisited a question that has surfaced repeatedly in Indian public life since independence: whether English, which holds no formal constitutional status in any of the 22 languages listed in the Eighth Schedule, should nonetheless be treated as foreign in official policy. The discussion traced how the language came to occupy a position of influence without ever being designated as an official language of the Union, and how that ambiguity has shaped educational access, employment outcomes, and cultural prestige for generations.
India’s linguistic landscape, the podcast noted, is among the most complex in the world. The Eighth Schedule recognises 22 languages, but linguists and census enumerators have repeatedly documented hundreds of additional mother tongues, tribal languages, and dialectal variations, many of them endangered. English operates as an associate official language alongside Hindi at the central government level under the provisions of the Official Languages Act, 1963, and it remains the dominant medium of instruction at many universities, in competitive examinations such as those conducted by the Union Public Service Commission, and in the legal profession, despite the existence of Hindi and regional-language alternatives.
Why It Matters
The classification of English is not merely a semantic or academic question. The label attached to the language carries practical and symbolic weight, with consequences for how India educates its children, staffs its institutions, and distributes opportunity.
If English were formally reclassified as a foreign language, the change could influence the design of school curricula, the allocation of public funding for language education, and the framing of linguistic rights in multilingual states where regional languages compete for institutional support. It could also affect the framing of government recruitment, where English proficiency already functions as an informal gatekeeper to the higher civil services and to senior positions in banking, diplomacy, and the judiciary.
Proponents of a “foreign language” designation, including voices that have appeared in Indian academic and media debates for years, argue that such a step would more accurately reflect the language’s colonial origins and reduce its privileged position in access to government jobs and higher education. Critics counter that the label would ignore the lived reality of millions of Indians, including many from non-elite backgrounds, who use English daily in workplaces, courts, and digital spaces, and that demoting the language could undermine India’s integration into global commerce, science, and diplomacy.
The debate also has implications for the National Education Policy 2020, which emphasises instruction in Indian languages, particularly in the early years, while preserving English as a language of wider professional use. The two emphases are not always easy to reconcile, and the podcast highlighted the gap between policy intent and the continued expansion of English-medium instruction in private schools, even as government schools in many states struggle to provide basic English-language teaching at all.
Background and Context
India’s relationship with English is rooted in the colonial encounter and has been contested since before independence. Mahatma Gandhi argued against making English the medium of instruction in independent India, while Jawaharlal Nehru defended its continued use as a window to global knowledge and as a link among India’s many linguistic communities. The compromise produced the Constitution of 1950, which did not designate any national language, listed Hindi in the Devanagari script as the official language of the Union, and permitted the continued use of English for official purposes for a period of fifteen years. That arrangement was made permanent by the Official Languages Act, 1963, and by subsequent amendments that gave English its current associate-official status.
Ganesh Devy’s work through the People’s Linguistic Survey of India, conducted between 2010 and 2013, sought to map the country’s linguistic diversity beyond the categories used by the Census of India. The PLSI identified 780 languages and 86 scripts, and concluded that more than 190 Indian languages were endangered, a figure substantially higher than commonly cited estimates. The survey has been a point of reference in subsequent policy discussions about the protection of indigenous languages, though critics have questioned some of its methodology and counts.
Apoorvanand has written and spoken extensively on questions of language, caste, and access in Indian public life, and his participation in the discussion brought a perspective rooted in the politics of Hindi-speaking north India, where the relationship to English is shaped both by regional pride and by awareness of the advantages English confers in employment and higher education.
The podcast also touched on the regional politics of language, including longstanding tensions between Hindi and non-Hindi speakers, particularly in the southern and northeastern states, where English has often been defended by regional parties and civil society groups as a safeguard against what they describe as Hindi linguistic majoritarianism. The three-language formula, intended to balance instruction across Hindi, English, and a regional language, has produced uneven outcomes and periodic controversy in states including Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, and West Bengal.
Analysis:
The renewed podcast debate reflects a broader unease in Indian public life about the relationship between linguistic inheritance and social mobility. English in India is no longer simply the language of the former colonial power; it is the working language of the Supreme Court of India, of major stock exchanges, of the bulk of the country’s scientific and technical research output, and of a substantial portion of its digital economy. Any move to formally relabel it as foreign would therefore carry significant signal effects, both domestic and international.
There are also internal inconsistencies in the current arrangement. English is treated as foreign in some official contexts, particularly under the rules governing the recruitment of language personnel and in the framing of language teaching in certain central schools, while functioning as an associate official language in others. The result is a system in which the practical status of English often diverges sharply from its formal classification, and in which the benefits of English proficiency remain highly concentrated among urban, upper-caste, and upper-income groups, even as English-medium schooling expands rapidly in private institutions.
The podcast’s contribution, in this context, is less to resolve the question than to insist that it remain visible. By foregrounding the perspectives of a Hindi intellectual and a linguist who has spent decades documenting the fragility of India’s smaller languages, the discussion placed the status of English within a wider frame of linguistic equity, one in which the privileging of any single language, whether English, Hindi, or another, has measurable consequences for access, dignity, and survival.
What to Watch Next
Several developments over the coming months and years are likely to shape the trajectory of the debate:
The implementation of the National Education Policy 2020, particularly the rollout of mother-tongue or home-language instruction in the early years, will be closely watched for evidence of whether instruction in Indian languages improves learning outcomes without disadvantaging students in later access to higher education and employment.
Any move to revise the Official Languages Act or to amend the constitutional status of English would require legislative action and would likely provoke political resistance, particularly from states and communities that view English as a critical tool of access.
The next cycle of the Census of India, if conducted, will provide updated data on mother tongues and language use, potentially refining estimates of how many Indians report English as a primary or secondary language and how patterns of use have shifted since 2011.
Continued work by linguists, including follow-up efforts to the People’s Linguistic Survey of India, may produce revised figures on the number of endangered Indian languages, with possible implications for funding and policy.
The expansion of artificial intelligence and digital public infrastructure, much of which operates in English first, will continue to reinforce the language’s practical importance, regardless of how it is classified in policy documents.
Conclusion
The podcast’s re-examination of whether English should be classified as a foreign language in India is unlikely to produce an immediate policy change, but it has sharpened attention to a question that sits at the intersection of history, equity, and national identity. English in India is simultaneously a legacy of colonial rule, a working language of contemporary institutions, and a contested marker of social advantage. Any honest reckoning with that reality must grapple with all three dimensions, and with the costs borne by the millions of Indians whose access to opportunity continues to be shaped, for better and worse, by their relationship to a single language.
Sources:
The Hindu – https://www.thehindu.com/podcast/is-english-a-foreign-language-in-india-in-focus-podcast/article71397144.ece
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Story synopsis gathered from: The Hindu – National — source
