LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 26:7 July 2026
ISSN 1930-2940

Editors:
         Selvi M. Bunce, M.A., Ed.D.
         Nathan Mulder Bunce, M.A., Ph.D.
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         T. Deivasigamani, Ph.D.
         Pammi Pavan Kumar, Ph.D.
         Soibam Rebika Devi, M.Sc., Ph.D.

Honorary Managing Editor & Publisher: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.

Celebrate India!
Unity in Diversity!!

HOME PAGE

Click Here for Back Issues of Language in India - From 2001

Poetic Encounter
Available in https://www.amazon.in/dp/B09TT86S4T

Poems
Naked: the honest musings of two brown women
Available in https://www.amazon.in

Decrees
Available in https://www.amazon.com

BOOKS FOR YOU TO READ AND DOWNLOAD FREE!

REFERENCE MATERIALS

BACK ISSUES

  • E-mail your articles and book-length reports in Microsoft Word to languageinindiaUSA@gmail.com.

  • PLEASE READ THE GUIDELINES GIVEN IN HOME PAGE IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE LIST OF CONTENTS.

  • Your articles and book-length reports should be written following the APA, MLA, LSA, or IJDL Stylesheet.

  • The Editorial Board has the right to accept, reject, or suggest modifications to the articles submitted for publication, and to make suitable stylistic adjustments. High quality, academic integrity, ethics and morals are expected from the authors and discussants.

Copyright © 2025
M. S. Thirumalai

Publisher: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
11249 Oregon Circle
Bloomington, MN 55438
USA
Custom Search

Rethinking Tamil Nadu's Two-Language Policy: Diglossia, Learning Outcomes, and the Limits of Language Count

Subramanian A., Ph.D.
Arulmani A.S

Abstract

The renewed conflict between the Union government's three-language formula under the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 — operationalised in 2026 through the Central Board of Secondary Education's mandate that every Class IX student study three languages, designated R1, R2, and R3 — and Tamil Nadu's decades-old two-language policy has been argued almost entirely in terms of language count. This article contends that language count is not the primary explanatory variable. State-level comparisons of English Proficiency Index scores, employability rankings, and foundational-literacy data (ASER, NAS) show that Kerala's trilingual formula produces learning and proficiency outcomes comparable to, and on some measures better than, Tamil Nadu's bilingual formula, while several trilingual Hindi-belt states perform far worse than either. The article relocates the genuine pedagogical burden facing the Tamil-medium learner in the diglossic gap between literary Tamil (Ilakkiya Tami?) and spoken Tamil (Peccut Tami?) — a burden documented in the reading-acquisition literature and, following Ferguson (1959) and Fishman (1967), structurally comparable to but wider than the High–Low register gaps of Swiss German and Arabic. A second, independently evidenced critique concerns implementation capacity: teacher shortages, compressed timelines, and incomplete materials, illustrated by Karnataka's third-language staffing and failure statistics and by the Supreme Court's scrutiny of the CBSE's 2026 rollout. The article proposes a framework relating three analytically distinct burdens — cognitive, diglossic, and administrative — and shows that the empirical record supports only the latter two. The analysis suggests that policy attention is better directed toward the quality of first-language literacy instruction across Tamil's register gap, and toward implementation readiness, than toward the number of languages specified in policy — though the pedagogical response indicated by the diglossic account itself remains to be validated empirically.

Keywords:three-language formula, two-language policy, Tamil Nadu, diglossia, Ferguson, National Education Policy, language planning, sociolinguistics, learning outcomes

Introduction

On 15 May 2026 the Central Board of Secondary Education issued Circular Acad-33/2026, making the study of three languages compulsory for Class IX students from 1 July 2026. The circular designates the three as R1, R2, and R3 — the student's first, second, and third curricular languages respectively — and requires that at least two of the three be drawn from the officially recognised Bhartiya Bha?as. It is the latest operational form of a policy lineage stretching back to 1968, and it has reopened a dispute Tamil Nadu has sustained for almost sixty years. The state's Education Minister, under the newly formed government of Chief Minister C. Joseph Vijay, moved swiftly to reaffirm that Tamil Nadu would continue teaching only Tamil and English. The Supreme Court has since declined interim relief against the CBSE circular. It has, however, tagged the matter for detailed hearing and required the Union government to submit a readiness report — an indication that the dispute remains legally as well as politically unsettled at the time of writing.

The public argument has proceeded almost entirely on a single axis: whether the correct number of languages for a Tamil Nadu schoolchild is two or three. Proponents of the three-language formula invoke national integration, labour mobility, and the cognitive benefits of multilingual education. Opponents invoke cognitive overload and the state's founding anti-Hindi agitations. Both sides treat language count as the operative causal variable. This article tests that assumption against comparative evidence and finds it wanting.

The article makes one negative claim and two positive claims. The negative claim is that language count, considered on its own across the major comparator states, fails even a basic sorting test in which policy predicts outcome; it therefore cannot carry the causal weight both sides of the public debate assign to it. The first positive claim is that the genuine linguistic burden facing the Tamil-medium learner is better located in Tamil's own diglossia — the structural gap between the literary register of the textbook and the spoken register of the home. The second positive claim is that the strongest practical objection to the 2026 mandate is administrative: a compulsory third language is being introduced without adequate lead time, trained teachers, or materials, in a school system whose general implementation capacity is already well documented as strained.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Subramanian A., Ph.D.
Retired Senior Professor of Linguistics
&
Arulmani A.S
Research Scholar, Dept. of Linguistics,
Madurai Kamaraj University, Madurai.
arul360z@gmail.com
Custom Search
  • Click Here to Go to Creative Writing Section

  • Send your articles
    as an attachment
    to your e-mail to
    languageinindiaUSA@gmail.com.
  • Please ensure that your name, academic degrees, institutional affiliation and institutional address, and your e-mail address are all given in the first page of your article. Also include a declaration that your article or work submitted for publication in LANGUAGE IN INDIA is an original work by you and that you have duly acknowledged the work or works of others you used in writing your articles, etc. Remember that by maintaining academic integrity we not only do the right thing but also help the growth, development and recognition of Indian/South Asian scholarship.