Reading the NEP 12: Languages, Arts and Indian Knowledge
English

Somewhere in your class
there is a notebook ruled down the middle.
On the left are the terms
from your lectures, in English.
On the right,
a student has written them again
in the language she speaks at home.
This month we got two circulars,
one on teaching bilingually and one adding
a course on Indian knowledge.
Is that the policy,
or someone's reading of it?
Both subjects are in chapter 22, four
pages near the end of the policy.
One sentence there could have been written
about that notebook.
The promotion of Indian
languages is possible only
if they are used regularly
and if they are used
for teaching and learning.
The chapter argues
that the arts pass on a culture,
and that art cannot be fully appreciated
without language.
So, it concludes, preserving
a culture means preserving its languages.
By its own account, India has lost
over 220 languages in the last 50 years.
UNESCO has declared 197
Indian languages endangered.
That is about saving languages.
What does it ask of a college like mine?
It asks for strong departments
in Indian languages,
comparative literature,
creative writing,
the arts, music and philosophy.
Local artists
and craftspersons are to be hired
as guest faculty.
Every institution is to aim
for an artist in residence.
It also promises degrees in translation,
museum administration, archaeology
and the conservation of artefacts.
A new institute of translation
and interpretation
is to make learning material available
in Indian and foreign languages.
Tens of thousands of manuscripts
are to be collected,
translated and studied.
More institutions
and more programmes are to teach
in the mother tongue or a local language,
or to teach bilingually.
So do I have to switch my lectures
to another language?
No. The sentence is about institutions
and programmes,
and it asks for more of them.
What your own programme does depends
on your state and your university.
Sanskrit is to be mainstreamed
in school and in higher education,
and connected with subjects such
as mathematics,
philosophy and linguistics.
For higher education
the text adds five words:
if a student so chooses.
The next paragraph promises
to expand institutes
for all classical languages,
and to set up a national institute
for Pali, Persian and Prakrit.
The school chapter says knowledge
of India is to enter the curriculum
in an accurate and scientific manner,
tribal knowledge included.
A friend who teaches Tamil asks
whether every child must now
learn three languages.
Wherever possible,
children are to be taught
in their home language
until at least Class 5.
The three-language formula continues.
States, regions
and students choose the three,
so long as at least two of them are native
to India.
And no language will be imposed
on any State.
If no language is imposed,
why is my friend still arguing about it?
The states have gone different ways.
Tamil Nadu has kept
its two-language policy,
and its new government confirmed it
in May 2026.
In April 2025 Maharashtra made Hindi
a compulsory third language
in Classes 1 to 5,
and withdrew the orders that June.
In March 2026
the Union government told the Lok Sabha
that no language is imposed on any state.
As of October 2026,
the three-language rule
of the Central Board
of Secondary Education
is before the Supreme Court.
In colleges,
one press report of 2024 counted 30
that teach engineering
in Indian languages.
The year before, about two-thirds
of such seats were filled,
and some states had no takers.
In December 2025
the UGC asked every college
and university to offer courses
in at least three Indian languages.
Students and staff are encouraged
to learn one more.
For Indian knowledge,
the education ministry set up
a division in 2020,
and by 2025 it was funding
over 50 centres.
UGC guidelines of 2023 say students
should be encouraged to take
at least 5 per cent of their credits
in such courses.
The figure comes from the UGC.
The policy itself sets none,
and your university's ordinance says
whether the course is compulsory
in your programme.
In August 2025
the UGC released draft model curricula
for nine subjects.
More than 900 mathematicians
and other academics petitioned
against the mathematics draft,
calling it seriously flawed.
Kerala rejected the drafts,
and Karnataka said it
would not adopt them.
A senior official said
the drafts were a guideline
for universities,
and that states were free to decide.
The Centre set up
an expert panel to review them.
As of October 2026 we
have found no published outcome.
In our staff room,
some call these courses long overdue,
and some call them ideology.
Michel Danino, then
a visiting professor at IIT Gandhinagar,
said in July 2025 that schools had long
under-represented Indian knowledge.
Generations of young Indians grew up
knowing little of Indian achievements,
he said, and online the gap filled
with fanciful and confused notions.
He hoped the new material would awaken
students' interest and enrich
their knowledge,
without preaching.
Satyajit Rath, an immunologist,
said the same month that it was right
to teach India's achievements.
His objection was to the glorification
that came with them, and to the idea
that our ancestors knew everything.
The contributions being highlighted,
he said, were mostly Vedic and Puranic,
from the Brahmanical tradition alone,
as if no one else had contributed.
Most of us teach neither
a language nor history.
What is in this for us?
Start a glossary.
Write the 50 key terms of your course
in English,
with a second column
for your students' strongest language.
In commerce at a rural college,
it might begin with ledger,
liability and depreciation.
If Indian knowledge enters your course,
teach it from a primary source.
Take one short passage
in a good translation:
Panini in linguistics,
or Charaka in the health sciences.
Read it with its date and its context.
And when a claim praises
a tradition or dismisses one,
ask what it rests
on and what specialists say.
In a state university,
a physics teacher can take that question
to the Sanskrit department.
Fifty terms in two languages.
For the second column
I will need my students.
Some of them have been writing it
since the first week.
The full text
and our sources are linked below.
Next time, online learning,
artificial intelligence and the world.