Indian Languages in Indian Higher Education

Author(s): TEJASWINI NIRANJANA

Source: Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 48, No. 12 (MARCH 23, 2013), pp. 14-17, 19
Published by: Economic and Political Weekly
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COMMENTARY :

Indian Languages in Indian

familiar fact of Indian higher education
that while the mandated medium of
instruction is English, the default lan
Higher Education guage of the classroom is the local one.
Thus any intervention that does not
strengthen the local language as a
TEJASWINI NIRANJANA
knowledge language cannot succeed.
Merely improving English skills has no
A report of a consultation on the effect on higher education when atten
social sciences and humanities tion is not paid to the relevance of the
key issues in strengthening the
presence of Indian
On 27-28teachers
languages in
July 2012,
and aresearchers,
gathering oflibracurriculum to contemporary knowledge
rians and digital technology experts met
needs. Similarly, translating large amounts
higher education, formulating
in Mumbai to discuss the feasibility and of material into Indian languages has
initiatives for innovative little effect because of their lack of
modalities of a multi-institutional project
that would local relevance.
curriculum design, production of engage with Indian languages
in the higher education space. Some ofThere is a widening gap between the
raw materials, teacher training
them had been part of a group that pre growing knowledge resources in the
and resource aggregation. pared a policy note for the Planning Comworld and the conceptual universe of
the students. The gap can be bridged not
mission for integration into the 12th Plan
through marginalising local languages
document, suggesting measures to streng
then the presence of Indian languages in
in favour of English but by strengthening
higher education, including the setting
Indian language resources. Such streng
thening would have a dual purpose: it
up of a National Mission on Quality Edu
cation in the Indian Languages.1 Thewould help the student enter new do
consultation was aimed at arriving atmains
a of knowledge through a familiar
consensus on the key issues to be addres
medium, and it would eventually lead to
the domains themselves becoming more
sed, and formulating initiatives for inno
context-sensitive.
vative curriculum design, production of
new materials, teacher training, and Earlier interventions in relation to
resource aggregation. promoting Indian languages have often
focused solely on translation into those
Background languages to the detriment of generation
of new materials. Also, such interven
About six million students (40% of all
tions have been located in stand-alone
enrolled students) from non-metropolitan
India enter the system every year and institutions and have not entered higher
fail to achieve their educational goalseducation spaces, thus failing to have an
because they are unable to cope withimpact on teaching-learning in colleges
English. Public elementary education inand universities. A multi-pronged and
India has been largely moving towards multi-institutional project could make a
serious and lasting contribution to
Indian language instruction, but in high
knowledge generation and deployment
er education globalisation has only rein
drawing on Indian languages. The over
forced the position of English as the single
all long-term objective of our interven
most important language for teaching
tions ought to be bilingual - and even
and research. Caught in this tug-of-war,
the higher education student from amultilingual - proficiency for teacher
and student, a proficiency that would
non-metropolitan context finds it impos
sible to survive. Less than 15% of the
bridge the different knowledge worlds
relevant age group enters higher educa
that converge in Indian higher education.
Access, equity and social diversity issues
tion, of which only 17% goes on to obtain
a postgraduate (pg) degree. One of thewhich are central to the exponential
significant reasons is the enormous lin
growth of higher education in India can
be addressed through a focus on Indian
guistic divide within Indian higher edu
cation, a divide that has severe conse language materials and
Tejaswini Niranjana (tejaswini.niranjana@ their deploy
gmail.com) is with the Centre for the quences
Study of ment in the classroom.
for occupational, economic and
Culture and Society, Bangalore and the Tata
social mobility, and the quality of life, A significant recommendation of the
Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai.
of non-metropolitan students. It is aNational Knowledge Commission (nkc)
*4 march 23, 2013 vol xlviii no 12 05X3 Economic & Political weekly

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 : COMMENTARY

in its report of 2009 was to encourage The Problems in select disciplines and field-testin
multilinguality in primary and second- Key problems identified were non- them in classroom situations. We woul
ary education, but not in higher educa- availability of quality Indian language have to formulate new teaching metho
tion. It is as though the major goals of resources and training for education and (build bilingual pedagogies) to tra
tertiary education are to be achieved pri- pedagogy; lack of programmes that can non-metro students, and work tow
marily through learning English. Even effectively translate knowledge resources aggregating existing digital resource
the very idea of a knowledge society into teachable curricular content; and dovetailing them with curricular exper
stands instrumentalised in this under- lack of teacher-training for employing ments using Indian languages. The
standing. The nkc also recommended innovative pedagogic approaches using eration of new materials in Indian lan
the setting up of a National Translation Indian language materials. guages and their mainstreaming woul
Mission (ntm), currently housed at the Sample data from a baseline study necessarily involve not just textb
Central Institute of Indian Languages, conducted by the Kannada University but also interdisciplinary readers, tra
Mysore, to translate "knowledge texts" ("Survey and Analysis of Social Science lations from other Indian languages
into Indian languages. The ntm appears Materials in Kannada, 1873 to the pre- mediated translations from English
to have begun the process of selecting sent") indicates that out of the 5,000 or bridge materials for existing curri
these texts by starting with the top 47 so texts (majority of them translations) and non-print materials including au
books prescribed in Indian universities, reviewed and categorised by origin lan- and video. Building digital resourc
The design of the process also indicates guage, discipline, and publisher, History would be a complementary task,
the unidirectionality of the envisaged and Religion dominate the non-literary
translation, from English and other Euro- category, while Literature accounts for Key Conceptual Issues
pean languages, into the local languages, 57% of all books published. Ninety-six While the road map appeared rathe
which we have already argued does not per cent of the local language books obvious, the participants brought up a
take into account the modalities of cur- used in higher education in Karnataka number of significant conceptual i
riculum framing and the relevance of are translations of textbooks or stand- that would have to be addressed as i
selected texts for the Indian context. alone classics, and only 4% are original tutions embark on strengthening Ind
In the space of higher education, resources. Per capita book production in languages in higher education. E
major issues regarding the success of Kannada at 5% (as against English in language-specific sessions (Malaya
cognition and knowledge production India - which is 23%) is not only low but Marathi, Hindi, Kannada, Tamil, Tel
hang on the language question. What indicative of the general lack of resources Assamese, Bangla) provided brief o
happens when in India today we have to in Indian languages.2 Satish Deshpande views of existing initiatives and of
engage with different conceptual uni- and his colleagues conducted an inven- quality of Indian-language education
verses that also suggest different ways of tory and analysis of ba and ma textbooks resources, addressing context-leve
speaking and writing? An effort like in Hindi in History, Sociology and Poli- lenges in relation to curriculum and
the ntm needs to take this problem on tical Science, in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, pedagogy, research and knowledge p
board, and coordinate with curriculum Madhya Pradesh, Haryana and Rajas- duction. J Devika and Ratheesh Radha
development efforts that prioritise Indian than. The study, which examined about krishnan discussed the Malayalam
language materials as providing ways of 70 books from each discipline, testifies text, in which there appeared to be
seeing and knowing which should also to the absence of good quality and effec- challenges for knowledge product
enter the mainstream monolingual post- tive teaching resources and underscores when a lot of the new research on K
graduate curriculum. the need to intervene at that level to was being done in English. Plagiarism
Apart from the standard lack-gap strengthen quality of access to higher and homolinguality (assuming that hig
argument used in identifying what needs education.3 A study of the publications Malayalam was understood by ever
to be done, one could also argue for sup- of icssR-funded institutions has shown when it could be as unintelligible
port to Indian languages from the point that only 89 out of the 1,098 books English) were also issues,
of view of the sustainability of higher published by these institutions are in Both Yogendra Yadav and As
education in India. Sustainability can be Indian languages, while the Indian Kumar A P commented on the epistemi
guaranteed through Indian language Social Science Academy's 38 publica- problem of thinking knowledge af
materials for and in teaching-learning tions since 1974 include just three in versus the issue of canonical and disci
and research, which would reach the Indian languages.4 plinary knowledge. How do we med
majority of students in higher educa- To target the problem of resource the conflict between local langua
tion, not to mention the students from material and to ensure its circulation and canonical knowledge, or betwee
diverse social groups who are entering within the university, it would be neces- social sciences and the regional la
college for the first time. Such materials sary to generate new materials in regional guages? What do we do with mat
would not only be cost-effective, they languages and mainstream them for that do not "look like social scie
would also provide very quick "returns curricular use. This could be done by ere- How do we mediate between the wo
on investment". ating new model curricula and courseware of experience embodied by the
Economic & Political weekly E22S3 march 23, 2013 vol xlviii no 12 15

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COMMENTARY :

language and the world of higher educa- Suneetha A and Uma Bhrugubanda for Indian language use.
tion which appears through English? drew attention to the rich materials in contended that interdiscipl
V B Tharakeshwar said that this separation Telugu generated by the women's move- bhasha workshops were r
of spheres exists not just in education ment, the dalit movement, and more standardisation of terminol
but also in the world and in ourselves, recently the Telangana movement, as would be a prerequisite for
He added that there were very few in- also to the fact that the older Left tradi- of analytical skills. Dulum
stances of context modifying the theory, tions were well-represented through speaking about Assamese
What was required - when we had for Telugu translations. Translations of although 70% of students in h
example knowledge of social move- movement materials into English with cation were from rural Assam
ments and knowledge coming from critical mediations would make them an not proficient in English, t
academia - was mutual engagement and important resource for social science, little material available for
the transformation of both. Yogendra Mapping the field of available resources Scholars were unwilling t
Yadav said this sort of "bridging" activi- and consolidating them was an urgent Assamese because they r
ty was central to what we were attempt- task. Rajan Krishnan, speaking about academic weightage or in
ing, in an educational context in which Tamil, added that archiving of available crucially, there was no pre
the "cognitive design of disciplines" had materials should receive priority, just as ogy in Assamese that cou
disempowered Indian languages. Uma creating original resource material in social science texts.
Bhrugubanda added that in newer disci- the form of introductory books on a vari- In a session on biling
plinary formations such as women's ety of topics could also be undertaken. Anjali Monteiro raised the po
studies and cultural studies which have Speaking about Hindi, Apoorvanand bringing into the classr
already problematised the subject of referred to the energetic inputs in writ- created by students as we
knowledge and knowledge production, ing and publishing from the early 20th they enjoyed, such as gam
the bridging could become an intrinsic century that lasted until the 1940s. Gov- so on, which could make t
part of what was done pedagogically. ernment support in Bihar and Madhya less monolingual. Sharmila S
While the lack of quality materials for Pradesh, and the socialist movement of discussed the use of YouT
higher education was a problem most the 1960s, supported the production of media as pedagogic to
languages faced, Bangla had a different social science writing in little magazines lingual situation, the prof
kind of problem, according to Amlan as also in departments of literature. The dents' use of technology cou
Dasgupta. He pointed to the long list of little magazines in particular have pro- to different literacies, she
high quality pedagogic materials - nearly duced a large corpus of social science on the possibilities opened
1,000 titles of importance - in science writing. Yogendra Yadav added that in technology had Navjyoti Si
and technology in particular, which fea- spite of Hindi being the "rashtrabhasha", about crowdsourcing kn
tured more prominently in Bangla than state patronage is irrelevant to the revi- predominantly orally-con
did the humanities and social sciences, talisation of Hindi, which is happening nities, and gesturing towa
Medical education in the 1880s, for through social movements on the one tional future that could
example, was available in Bangla. How- hand and the market on the other, journals and oral classr
ever, the present-day pedagogic and cur- Education organisations like Eklavya, as Dasgupta discussed the
ricular framework does not allow stu- Madhav Kelkar pointed out, have a short-title catalogue at Jadavp
dents to access the Bangla materials that wealth of resources in Hindi that could sity which identified about
are already available, although nearly be archived, as well as help in transía- Bangla from 1778 on. These
90% of ba students write their examina- tion and annotation efforts. form the foundation of a d
tions in that language. To redress this and creation of electronic resources for
issue, Dasgupta emphasised the need for Teaching Practice teaching and learning
interventions in curriculum design, ped- Paying renewed attention to teaching could also inclu
agogic practice, and even preparation of practice as a way of strengthening Indian political ephem
guidebooks. Padma Sarangapani pointed language use was once again stressed, pornographic text
out that a large number of teachers this time in the Marathi context, by Wan- and trains. These
across disciplines prepared courseware dana Sonalkar and Shruti Tambe. They the domain of inq
and bridge materials that tended to re- also emphasised the importance of work- Taking up th
main in the "grey" zone, and it would be shops for students that would validate ing skills for I
useful to focus attention on working out the use of Indian language materials for Alex of the Wi
how these materials could be converted research, while Rahul Sarwate spoke that getting stude
into more formal genres and linked to about using diverse genres of material in Wiki articles wo
publication and distribution networks so the classroom. Wandana Sonalkar further ing such resea
that they could enter the mainstream of stressed the need to conduct research representing in
higher education. training and research writing workshops Koganuramath and M
16 march 23, 2013 vol XLViii no 12 DEES Economic & Political weekly

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 : COMMENTARY

representing the Sir Dorabji Tata Memo- gap. We could set up across partner in- dovetailed with production
rial Library at tiss, presented ideas for stitutions a Curriculum Augmentation rials in Indian languages. I
the formation of institutional repositor- Programme to work on strengthening proposed that mandatory
ies and the requirements for large-scale student comprehension of existing curri- guage computing skills be
digital archiving. C S Yogananda joined cula through bridge materials, and trans- especially for research deg
in, giving examples of optical character formation of "grey" materials and course
recognition for Indian languages. The need ware into edited publications. Catalo- Integration of Indian Ar
for standardised metadata formats across guing of resources, in at least five to six attempts at digitisation o
languages was stressed. The panellists Indian languages to begin with, could Indian languages are und
were of the opinion that the potential of provide the basis for enhancing curricular India, sometimes includ
digital technologies for furthering the access in the language contexts where partners. These attempts ar
integration of Indian language materials model curricula, infused with Indian more often than not under
into higher education teaching-learning language materials, can be piloted. tion. Systematic integrat
and research could be immense. plete or partial archives created by exist
Teacher Education Training for Indian ing initiatives and mak
Road Map Language Use in Higher Education: able for the curricul
The kinds of programmes and activities Teacher education training workshops crucial ne
to be taken up by the multi-institutional for bilingual pedagogy at ug and pg be the cen
project could include: levels could be designed and piloted by Indian languages project in higher edu
collaborating institutions. A web-forum cation, it could be a valuable parallel
Indian Language Materials Production for sharing of pedagogic strategies in activity. The attempt would be not to
Programme: Involve pre- and post- relation to bilingual/multilingual class- host all the resources in one physical
doctoral scholars in partner institutions rooms could be created. Based on the space or one digital server, but to create
for producing original works and trans- web-forum discussions, we could work a metadata-level directory and an inte
lations in Indian languages, and to faci- towards a teacher manual for pedagogy grated search engine which would help
litate curricularising such materials. Ori- using Indian languages, and incorporate in systematising and retrieving data
ginal materials and bridge materials in these materials and concerns in faculty from all repositories through a single
different disciplines with a strong focus development programmes, either through directory. Some existing initiatives to
on social sciences and humanities to be the older schemes of the academic staff build upon would include the National
produced; writing and translation work- colleges or the newly proposed Faculty Library Catalogue, the National Mission
shops (general as well as language- Development Centres. for Manuscripts at the iGNCA-Delhi, the
specific) to be conducted. Initial steps to Digital Library of India project of the
include cataloguing and annotating exis- Research Programme in Indian Ministry for Comm
ring materials; preparing state-of-the- Languages and Higher Education: An mation Technology,
language analytical reports; baseline important feature of the project would Documents project o
studies about existing teaching-learning be a robust interdisciplinary research Australian universit
practices: which Indian language materi- programme engaging with Indian lan- Asia Library join
als students are using, who is using guages, with a focus on education, University of Chic
Indian language medium to study, teach translation, and localisation. Research In terms of prom
or write examinations; and paribhasha training would include components of visibility of Indian
dictionaries and standardisation of tech- Indian language use and curation of will take up lobbyin
nical and critical terminology. What archival materials, and in modular format activities such as g
needs to be taken up on a large scale is can be shared across collaborating insti- date Indian langu
translation from Indian language to tutions, or joint training programmes promotion and in
Indian language, Indian language to organised. Research projects on issues suggested that we
English, and where required English to relating to language, equity and access modalities for a f
Indian languages. Creation of Indian could also be developed and housed in Centre for Indian
language materials by students could different collaborating institutions. education. Additionally
also be an invaluable resource; this could that an annual Indian languages mela be
include Wikipedia entries, audiovisual Digital Archive and Resources: Set- organised, with mu
resources, and compilations of material ting up a digital hub for digitising, ag- ties, film screenin
ón peer-to-peer learning platforms. gregation, archiving, documentation, formances. It woul
sharing platforms, e-learning platforms, to showcase what is happenin
Curriculum Augmentation Programme: training platforms, would be a priority, institutional progra
Dearth of quality teaching-learning mate- Developing new e-content and making it Following up o
rials in Indian languages is an important available for teaching-learning could be tation host, tiss has

Economic & Political weekly G353 march 23, 2013 vol xLvm no 12 17

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 i COMMENTARY

following: assemble, with inflibnet

NOTES The study was done under the aegis of t
Institute for Research in Development a
support, A Digital Hub for ilhe; support
The policy note was based on collective Democracy
delibera (ISERDD), with support from t
tion by and inputs from (in alphabetical order):
five-six internal faculty research pro Sir Ratan Tata Trust, availed of through t
Preetish Aacharya (RIE, Bhubaneshwar), Satish Language Resources Initiative of t
Regional
posals to produce material in Indian
Deshpande (Delhi School of Economics), Abhay
Higher Education Cell, Centre for the Study
Dubey (Indian Language Programme, CSDS,
languages and conduct workshops Delhi),
to Culture and Society.
Mary E John (Centre for Women's Deve
Sushanta Kumar Sarma and Ishan Agraw
support this activity; conduct research
lopment Studies, Delhi), Tejaswini Niranjana
(2010), "Social Science Research in Vernacu
(Higher Education Innovation and Research Ap
training workshops for MPhil-PhD stu
plications,
Languages", Economic & Political Weekly, XLV:
Centre for the Study of Culture and
dents (open to other institutions); conduct We are indebted to Graham Shaw, formerly
Society, Bangalore), Suhas Palshikar (University
of Pune), Pankaj Pushkar (ICSSR General theFellow
British Library, for drawing our attention
Wikipedia research training programme some of these initiatives. What is significa
at CSDS), Ravikant (CSDS), K C Suri (University
for ba and ma students; support theof Hyderabad), Anil Kumar Vermaabout these initiatives is not just the number
(Christ
Church College, Kanpur), and Yogendra items digitised, but the processes evolved a
Yadav
editing and assembling of a volume of benchmarking
(CSDS), The note was facilitated by Publics and standards developed. Similarly
analytical state-of-the-language reports;Policies Programme of the CSDS. there is much we could learn from the processe
thatout
The Kannada University study was carried have been developed and implement
begin work towards assembling a "cook
by V B Tharakeshwar and M Usha, with with sup
regard to selection of materials, editin
book" or teacher manual for bilingual/ and translation
port from the Sir Ratan Tata Trust, availed of in the Indian Languages P
grammes
through the Regional Language Resources Ini at CSDS - Lok Chintan Grantham
multilingual pedagogy; and host the
tiative and the for
of the Higher Education Cell, Centre Lok Chintak Granthamala - and initia
Indian Languages Mela. the Study of Culture and Society. tives at Centre for Social Studies, Surat.

Reflections on "Annual Status numbers of such "school goers but non

learners" seem to be gradually increas

of Educational Research 2012' ing. There has been an improvement in

teacher-pupil ratio and basic facilities
like drinking water, toilets and provision
of mid-day meals but it is quite obvious
DISHA NAWANI that besides providing a facilitative envi
ronment for children in schools, these
The Annual Status of Educational measures do not have an impact on learn
Research 2012 reflects an overall Research (aser) 2012 yet again ing per se. For learning to happen, schools
The Annual Status
points out certain of Educational
interesting trends must function, there must be a nurturant
picture of increased enrolment in
in elementary education in India. The pedagogic environment, adequate infra
school but with a large percentage fact that more numbers of children in structural support, meaningful and contex
showing limited foundational the age group 6-14 are going to schooltual teaching-learning materials, especially
skills of formal learning. Parents, (96%), that greater numbers of childrentextbooks and most importantly teach
are joining private schools (28.39%) anders must teach and valid measures of
especially those from the
that an increasing number of childrenassessment must be in place to ensure
economically weaker sections, are are depending on private tuitions (25%), that students have learnt.
unhappy with the Right to all reiterate a heartening fact that par There is nothing new that is being said
ents want their children to learn. How here, that is not known already, yet
Education Act's emphasis on no
ever, what remains disturbing is the consomething is still amiss in schools, espe
detention until Standard ix. They
tinued trend of children going to schoolcially public schools. The aser highlights
seem to prefer a schooling system and yet not learning, an increase inthe following reasons for the declining
that examines students regularly the proportion of out of schoolchildren,learning levels among schoolchildren.
to assess and correct their formal especially among girls and the generalEach of these factors is understood in the
disillusionment of people with public context of varied performance of public
learning skills.
school system and its dismal performand private schoolchildren.
ance compelling people to seek private
support, either institutional or informalQuality of Teachers and Training
in the form of tuitions. A primary schoolteacher in India enjoys
Discussions with Suresh K Reddy ensured
that I did not take my own assumptions for
Though the data reflects state-wisea peculiar position and occupies a low
granted and lose my focus. Ramlal Murti and variations, the general picture remainsstatus in the educational hierarchy. The
Bhanu Jain's experiences as schoolteachers grim reflecting a deep-seated malaise in teacher is most often trained in a mini
substantiated my own understanding of our education system, where children gomalist functionalist pedagogy - a two
school-related issues.
to school and despite being enrolled foryear diploma in education after Stand
Disha Nawani (dishanawani@yahoo.com) a number of years, do not learn evenard xii offered by the District Institute of
teaches at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences,
the foundational skills required for forEducational Training (diet) established in
Deonar, Mumbai.
mal learning. What is worse is that thedifferent states. The auricular framework

Economie & Political weekly EEE3 march 23, 2013 vol xlviii no 12 19

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