The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), in alignment with the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, has introduced a revised three-language framework to be implemented from the 2026–27 academic session. The policy mandates that students from Class six onwards study three languages, with at least two of them being Indian. At a conceptual level, the reform appears both progressive and necessary.
India’s long-standing overdependence on English, coupled with the marginalisation of many regional languages, has warranted corrective measures. However, the strength of any national policy lies not only in its intent but in its ability to adapt to regional complexities.
In its current form, the CBSE’s framework appears to falter on this count.
The structure of the policy leaves little room for flexibility. In most CBSE schools, English already occupies the slot of a global or non-Indian language. The requirement that two of the remaining languages must be Indian effectively eliminates the possibility of accommodating another non-Indian language. This design has led to the systematic exclusion of languages such as French and German across schools.
What might seem like a marginal adjustment at the national level assumes a far deeper significance in specific regions. In Puducherry, where French has historically been part of the social and cultural fabric, the policy does not merely reorganise the curriculum—it disrupts a lived linguistic reality.
Puducherry’s cultural exception
To understand the gravity of this disruption, one must turn to Puducherry’s unique historical trajectory. Unlike most parts of India, Puducherry remained under French colonial rule until 1954. This extended period of colonial governance produced a cultural synthesis that continues to shape the region’s identity.
French is visible not just in archival records or administrative remnants, but in the built environment, street nomenclature, educational institutions, and everyday vocabulary. It is not an external imposition but an internalised inheritance.
For generations, French has been taught in Puducherry’s schools not as an aspirational foreign language, but as a medium of cultural continuity. It has allowed students to access family histories, engage with archival material, and participate in a broader Francophone network that includes educational exchanges and migration opportunities. The language functions simultaneously as a marker of identity and a tool of mobility. Its removal from formal education, therefore, represents more than a pedagogical shift. It interrupts a historical continuum that has been sustained across generations.
This makes Puducherry a linguistic exception—one that challenges the binary classification embedded in the policy. French here is neither purely foreign nor entirely external. It occupies a hybrid space that the current framework fails to recognise.
Language, data, and the question of access
The implications of this exclusion become clearer when situated within India’s broader linguistic landscape. According to the Census of India 2011, India is home to 121 languages and over 19,500 mother tongues or linguistic variants. This diversity is not incidental but constitutive of the country’s social fabric.
UNESCO has repeatedly emphasised that languages are repositories of cultural memory and knowledge systems. Its Atlas of the World’s Languages identifies nearly 197 languages in India as endangered, underscoring how fragile linguistic ecosystems become when institutional support weakens, particularly in education.
While French in Puducherry does not fall under the category of endangered languages, the mechanism of decline is comparable. When a language loses its place in formal education, its intergenerational transmission begins to weaken. Over time, it shifts from being a lived practice to a symbolic memory. This process is gradual but consequential.
The global relevance of French further complicates the policy’s implications. According to the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie, French is spoken by over 320 million people worldwide and serves as an official language in 29 countries. It is also a working language in major international institutions such as the United Nations and the European Union. In India, French has long been one of the most widely taught foreign languages, precisely because it bridges cultural and economic opportunities.
For students in Puducherry, these opportunities are tangible. French proficiency has historically facilitated access to scholarships, higher education, and migration pathways in Francophone regions. Its removal from CBSE schools, therefore, does not merely narrow linguistic options; it restricts avenues of socio-economic mobility. This restriction is unlikely to affect all students equally.
Those from more privileged backgrounds may continue to access French through private institutions or cultural centres. Others, particularly those dependent on CBSE schools, will find themselves excluded. In this sense, the policy risks producing a new layer of inequality, where access to global linguistic capital becomes increasingly privatised.
Federalism, pedagogy, and the cost of standardisation
The consequences of the policy extend beyond cultural identity and economic opportunity into the domains of pedagogy and federal governance. The revised framework requires students to study three languages up to Class 10, marking a departure from the earlier system where the third language was typically limited to Classes six to eight. This increased academic load raises questions about feasibility, especially in contexts where students may not have prior exposure to multiple languages.
Schools, meanwhile, have been tasked with implementing these changes within constrained timelines, often without adequate preparation or resources.
In practice, many institutions have gravitated towards Sanskrit as the default third language, not necessarily due to student demand but because of administrative convenience and the availability of teaching resources. In Puducherry, this transition is particularly dissonant. It replaces an already functional and culturally relevant linguistic ecosystem with one that is externally imposed and institutionally strained.
The issue also reopens broader questions of linguistic federalism. Since its inception in 1968, the three-language formula has been entangled in debates over cultural autonomy and centralised policy-making. While earlier controversies centred on the perceived imposition of Hindi in non-Hindi-speaking states, the present moment reveals a different tension. It is not about the dominance of one Indian language over another, but about the inability of a national framework to accommodate hybrid cultural identities.
Puducherry’s case demonstrates that linguistic categories are not always mutually exclusive. Languages can be simultaneously local and global, historical and functional. Policies that fail to recognise this complexity risk flattening the very diversity they seek to promote.
What makes this moment particularly significant is that the erosion of French in Puducherry is not the result of an explicit prohibition. It is the outcome of structural exclusion embedded within policy design. This is often how cultural loss unfolds in contemporary governance—not through overt suppression, but through the gradual withdrawal of institutional support. When a language disappears from classrooms, its decline is neither immediate nor visible. Yet, over time, its absence reshapes cultural memory.
The NEP 2020 itself speaks the language of flexibility and contextual adaptation. The challenge, therefore, lies not in the vision but in its implementation. A more nuanced approach would recognise that India’s linguistic diversity cannot be reduced to rigid categories. In regions like Puducherry, where history has produced unique cultural formations, policy must be capable of accommodation rather than exclusion. Recognising French as part of the region’s linguistic heritage, or allowing hybrid models within the three-language framework, would not undermine the objectives of multilingualism. Instead, it would align policy with lived reality.
In the final analysis, the CBSE’s three-language policy represents both an opportunity and a risk. It has the potential to strengthen India’s linguistic diversity, but only if it remains sensitive to regional contexts. In Puducherry, the current framework risks doing the opposite. By enforcing uniformity, it overlooks the layered histories that define the region.
French here is not an addition to identity; it is part of its foundation. When policy fails to recognise this, it does not merely reform education—it reshapes memory.
The question, then, is not whether India should embrace multilingualism. It already does. The question is whether policy can acknowledge that multilingualism itself is diverse. If it cannot, then in the pursuit of uniformity, it risks erasing the very histories that give that diversity meaning.
Amir Hyder Khan is a final-year architecture student at Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. His work engages with questions of urbanism, cultural identity, and policy in contemporary India.
Views expressed are the author’s own.