English in Multilingual India: Language Contestations, Pedagogy, and the Illusion of the Three Language Formula

• In Event: Fairmont Roundtable Session Six
  In Roundtable Session: English Language Education and Students From Low-Income Backgrounds in the Indian Context: Service or Disservice? (Table 15)

Abstract

This presentation explores the contested sites of education policy, planning and implementation within the powerful language-in-education rhetoric around English in India’s 70 years of independence, especially in the ways English has been claimed, disclaimed and reclaimed by social, economic, political groups and movements. It discusses the implications of India’s Three Language Formula (TFL) on indigenous, heritage and minoritized language groups that aspire for an English education as an outcome of neoliberalization. The presentation also critiques the continuing and uncritical framings of language teacher education through Western models that do not respond to the fluid language engagement that characterizes Indian multilingualism.
The framing of English in successive national education policies {NPE 1968; NEP 1986; National Curriculum Framework (NCF) 2005; NEP 2020} has unfortunately promoted, polarized or disadvantaged different sections of citizens. For instance, NPE (1968) recommended “a working knowledge of English … and a reasonable proficiency in the language” (p. 192) as necessary for university education, while the NCF 2005 favored introducing English at elementary level as “a matter of political response to people’s aspiration” (p. 38). The newly published NEP (29 July, 2020) adds to the multiplicity and vagueness in the representation of English in language education by declaring that the “three languages learned by children will be the choices of States, regions, and of course the students themselves, so long as at least two of the three languages are native to India.” (p. 15). India’s Three Language Formula thus continues to be enacted in vertical, hierarchical boxes, where dominant languages (such as the State language, Hindi and English) are visibilized in education at the cost of less ‘powerful’ indigenous, minority and tribal languages, as recent studies by Giridhar Rao (2013, 2017); Groff (2016); Harshvardhan et.al. (2019), Meganathan (2011) and Mohanty (2006, 2019) show.
Because of a premium on English without adequate directions on how to accommodate the language within the Indian linguistic landscape, the teaching of English fails to sit comfortably within, or enrich children’s existing language repertoires. Empirical studies (e.g., Bhattacharya 2014; Boruah, 2017; Dash & Senapati, 2014; Ramanathan 2015; Vaish, 2008; Venkatramana 2013, Vulli, 2014) show the disappointing outcomes of policy dispensations on English education as these have not responded adequately to Indian multilingualism. In policy, languages continue to be constructed as isolated systems with discrete grammars, conventions and features, while in reality languages are sites of converging repertoires where people draw upon all known languages in meaning-making, rather than framing them within separate cognitive, linguistic, psychological and sociocultural domains.
For English language pedagogy to truly speak to social justice and nation building as envisaged by the Indian Constitution, English language education will have to invest in the multilingual Indian teachers’ and learners’ translanguaging ability (the ability to move effortlessly across multiple language repertoires), and nurture language teachers’ critical pedagogical stance and contextual responsiveness, rather than making them the object of impractical pedagogical models and practices emerging out of Western monolingualism or bilingualism.

Author

• Padmini Bhuyan Boruah, Gauhati University
  Presenting Author