Language Policy and Education: Towards Multilingual Education

Abstract

The chapter engages with language policies in the post-independent India, which, it finds, have uncritically employed the colonial categories like vernacular language, dialect and tongue to categorize Indian languages. This has impacted on education policy and practices in India, particularly in respect of education of the tribal and other minority communities. It critiques the double divide created by English and vernacular (regional) languages against the indigenous tribal minority languages and shows it has led to educational failure, capability deprivation and poverty among the tribal communities. Drawing from the research done in the area of multilingual education in India and elsewhere, a case is built for a strong late-exit multilingual education programme based on children’s home language, which, it is argued, will help in building a discrimination-free inclusive Indian society.