When my son entered Class III, he had to choose an additional language. The school offered two options: French and Sanskrit. I chose Sanskrit.
Share
When multilingualism becomes compulsion rather than meaningful learning
Dr. Mary N. Odyuo
When my son entered Class III, he had to choose an additional language. The school offered two options: French and Sanskrit.
I chose Sanskrit.
The decision was neither cultural nor ideological. I did not choose it because I wanted my child to engage with classical texts or ancient traditions. My reasoning was practical. Since Sanskrit is often described as closely linked to Hindi, I assumed it might strengthen his Hindi and make language learning easier in the long run.
Today, my son is in Class IV and I find myself revisiting that decision.
As a parent who sits beside her child during homework and as an educator who thinks about learning beyond examinations, I have begun asking whether my decision was correct. Has the additional language created confidence, improved communication or opened intellectual curiosity? Or has it simply added another subject to complete?
My son studies in an English-medium school in Nagaland. Like many children here, he already lives across multiple languages; there is the language of home and community, the language of schooling and increasingly, the language requirements of formal education.
Sanskrit, however, does not exist in his everyday environment. There are limited opportunities to practise it outside school and little connection between the language and the child’s lived experience. I had expected familiarity to grow through exposure. Instead, what I often observe is memorisation without meaningful engagement.
This year, our school discontinued French and Sanskrit became compulsory under the new language arrangement. That development pushed me to think beyond my own child and to ask broader questions about language policy.
This is not an argument against Sanskrit.
Sanskrit occupies an important place in India’s intellectual history and should remain available to students who wish to study it. However, availability and compulsion are not the same thing. The larger issue is whether language learning achieves its purpose when students have neither opportunity nor context to use what they learn.
The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 places considerable emphasis on multilingualism and encourages learning in the mother tongue or local language, especially in the foundational years. The educational logic is understandable: children often learn best in languages they understand.However, India’s linguistic reality is far more complex than it is often presented in policy discussions.
Public discussions frequently assume Hindi to be India’s national language, although constitutionally India has no legally declared national language. Under Article 343, Hindi in Devanagari script is the Official Language of the Union, while English continues to be used for official purposes. The Constitution also recognises 22 Scheduled Languages, while countless dialect continue to exist beyond constitutional lists.This distinction matters because a mother tongue is not determined by constitutional recognition but by lived experience and this becomes particularly important in regions such as Nagaland where children often grow up navigating different linguistic worlds at home and in school.
This raises a deeper question. If NEP encourages learning in the mother tongue and speaks about flexibility, how should that work in places where the language spoken at home, the language used in school and the language expected by policy are entirely different?
In regions such as Nagaland, many children are already multilingual before schools introduce another language. They may speak one language at home, study in English and learn additional languages in school. For many families, English is not experienced as a foreign language in the educational sense; rather, it functions as a global and academic language. It is the language through which children learn across subjects, write examinations, access higher education and participate in opportunities beyond their immediate context. That does not make English culturally indigenous to the region but it does mean that English occupies a central place in educational and professional life.
The challenge, therefore, may not be creating multilingual students but ensuring that multilingualism remains meaningful and manageable.
Schools must be allowed to retain greater language choice where feasible, especially in states such as Nagaland where students already navigate multiple linguistic environments. Flexibility does not mean lowering standards; it means recognising that students do not all begin from the same linguistic reality.
If language requirements expand, learning resources and opportunities for meaningful use must expand as well. Otherwise, language learning risks becoming another academic requirement rather than a lasting educational experience.The goal should not be to produce children who study more languages but children who can actually use, value and grow through the languages they learn.
The issue becomes more complex when viewed in the context of India’s wider school system.
CBSE is one among several educational boards operating in the country. Students continue to study under different boards with different curricular structures and language requirements. Yet these students eventually appear for the same competitive examinations, apply to the same universities and enter the same national institutions.This does not suggest that one board is inherently better than another. It simply raises the question of how educational goals can remain common while implementation remains responsive to different classroom scenarios.
Language policy also influences educational decisions. Families do not evaluate schools only through academic reputation; they also consider academic workload, relevance to local realities and the overall educational experience of their children.
This is not an argument against multilingualism or educational reforms. It is a reminder that while educational goals may be common, the realities of classrooms across India are not. As a result, one approach may not work equally for every classroom.
Language should expand possibilities rather than become another requirement that students complete and later abandon.
(Views expressed are personal)