Why Language Matters?

Multilingualism is India's strength

Language is not merely a tool for communication; it is a flagbearer of power, identity, and culture. The means a society adopts to recognise, privilege, or punish a language shapes matters regarding inclusion and exclusion, and who has the power to convert words into laws, jobs, and dignity. The post-1979 policies from Iran’s Cultural Revolution that rolled back bilingual and foreign language instruction are not just a distant episode in Middle Eastern history. Rather, it is a cautionary mirror for India where language is being used as a tool for enforced uniformity, schooling, culture, and most importantly, citizenship. Language is a foundational element of identity and a source for social cohesion.

Language shapes individual and collective identity. India has a staggering linguistic diversity. The People’s Linguistic Survey of India identifies about 780 languages still spoken today. But over the past five decades, more than 220 of these languages have disappeared, and nearly 200 are officially classified as endangered. Rapid demographic change, migration, urbanisation, and lack of institutional support mainly threaten the existence of a language. 

This comes despite linguistic and cultural pluralism provided by the Constitution of India. There are 22 languages listed in the Eighth Schedule. In 2024, the Union Cabinet notified five new languages ( Marathi, Bengali, Pali, Prakrit, and Assamese) as classical languages, taking the count up to eleven. This acknowledges a long ethno-linguistic history. About 96.71% of the population has one of the 22 scheduled languages as their mother tongue. 

Statistics matter, but not always in the way we think. Ironically, though Bengali counts over 270 million speakers worldwide, outnumbering Russian, Bangla speakers routinely face marginalisation in institutional power —a paradox that shows language matters not just because of how many people speak it, but how and when that speech is recognised. Today, in India, Bengali-speaking citizens are being harassed, labelled “Bangladeshis”.

The Cultural Revolution of Iran was not just a policy shift, but it was a new ideological project. The imposition of a monolingual schooling to consolidate Persian, even among non-Persian communities like Turks, Afghans, Baluchis, etc, deinstitutionalised minority languages. Similarly, language and language policies are a tool for identity politics in India, where ranking certain languages over others creates a stratification and linguistic hierarchy.

The New Education Policy (NEP) 2020’s three-language formula reawakened social anxieties of “Hindi Imposition”, especially in non-Hindi speaking states such as Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. Though NEP 2020 emphasizes multilingualism, states fear the administrative pressure of using Hindi as the de facto “national” language that binds the country. The names of the three new criminal laws, Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanshita, and Bhartiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, highlight the ongoing debate.

Language policies and executive orders also create an out-group of a class of citizens speaking a minority tongue. Recent episodes of Bengali-speaking migrant workers being arrested, detained, and suspected as foreign nationals and labelled as Bangladeshis illustrate how speech can instantly create strict in-group and out-group boundaries. Group document verification drives and detentions put a citizen’s identity and, more importantly, citizenship at risk. 

Eminent sociologist Pierre Bourdieu teaches us that language can be a form of capital (symbolic capital) and essentially becomes a tool for social mobility, especially when a certain language’s speakers are getting institutionally backed by the state. The routine enforcement of linguistic norms creates coercion, making inequality appear subtly natural. For example, one of the prime arguments of non-implementation of an All India Judicial Service as an All India Service under Article 312 of the Constitution is that court records are not maintained in local languages, and it may create an institutional barrier for a person, say belonging to a northern state, who gets the opportunity to judgeship in a southern state. 

The Constitution of India states that “Any section of the citizens residing in the territory of India or any part thereof having a distinct language, script or culture of its own shall have the right to conserve the same,”  under Article 29. But Maharashtra’s recent violence against non-Marathi speaking populations not only undermined the speakers of their fundamental right, but also denied them cultural protection.  

Moreover, Article 29’s implementation suffers from serious logistical limits. Classrooms and curricula often lack true mother tongue instruction. A 2022 report from the Ministry of Tribal Affairs shows more than 70% of teachers in Ekalavya Model Residential Schools (which are meant for tribal education in tribal language) are either contractual or are on deputation from the state government. This is garnished by scarce textbooks and learning materials in minority tongues, creating concrete barriers to education.

NITI Aayog has pointed out how weak language and digital literacy have the potential to blunt employability and university outcomes. International bodies likewise caution that the lack of access to education in a language that a child understands remains critical. It is difficult to imagine someone writing an algorithm for a Large Language Model using Maithili and not English, isn’t it?. Thus, the lack of a decentralised language policy not only worsens education levels but also widens employability gaps. A 2018 study by Centre for Social and Economic Progress (CSEP) highlighted that a higher proportion of individuals from marginalised linguistic communities are more likely to be in the lowest wealth category, thus increasing the country’s Gini coefficient.

India has undergone a tumult of linguistic federalism since independence, with the formation of states on their demand for autonomy on the basis of language. Ranging from the creation of a Telugu-speaking Andhra in 1953, to a Hindi-speaking Haryana in 1966, till the recent creation of Telengana in 2014. These anecdotes put an emphasis on the importance of language as a tool for political mobilisation, asserting regionalism, but not a model for cooperative federalism rooted in linguistic diversity. This comes despite constitutional safeguards and a Special Officer for Linguistic Minorities under Article 350B.

There is no single fix to address the issues. Incentivising multilingualism without coercion requires a decentralised language policy that needs to be locally negotiated, and not imposed using a one-size-fits-all top-down approach. Investing in the development of the mother tongue in stages of early education, like literacy materials and community-based curriculum development, could pay long-term dividends. The Special Officer for Linguistic Minorities plays a crucial role in preventing wrongful detentions and harassment of people speaking a minority language. 

Technology plays a crucial role in democratizing access and revitalizing endangered languages. AI tools can perform live translations to local languages, which will help bridge communication gaps. Voice-activated assistants can create a personalised learning experience, enabling mother-tongue-based learning. But lack of quality training data, and digital divide reduce the effectiveness of models used in the government’s Bhashini initiative. Civil society plays a huge role in public broadcasting in multiple languages by translating their literature and using social media to showcase their festivals. 

Unlike Iran, where schools became sites of cultural erasure, minorities losing institutional support, India’s job is to use plurality under a functional framework through policy humility, investment, and political restraint. If we fail, language will be a tool for mass exclusion. Multilingualism is India’s strength, and not a fault line. George Orwell’s quote shall be a sober warning: “But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.”