A Study on State’s Facing issues with India ‘s Tri-Language Formula (TLF)

ABSTRACT

India enacted the Tri-Language Formula which was formulated to encourage national unity as well as promote multilingual education. While the TLF seems to be a reasonable educational policy in principle, its real-world implementation generates a form of Constitutional Asymmetry between the two groups of students who fall under it; students in States where Hindi is not the primary language (e.g., Tamil Nadu) will have to learn Hindi as a foreign language from scratch rather than from other languages that are linguistically similar. As such, there is a significant difference between Hindi speaking students learning Hindi compared to how non-Hindi speaking students must learn Hindi. The disparity that results raise significant equality and educational issues under Articles 14 and 21A of the Constitution of India, ensuring equality and free and compulsory education respectively. In addition to creating substantive inequality in educational opportunities, the TLF is likely to create a lower quality of educational experience overall for non-Hindi speaking students who are required to learn Hindi. Moreover, court rulings uphold the right of students as well as their guardians to select their medium of education. The purpose of this document is to thoroughly analyse the constitutionality of the Tri-language rule and provide evidence supporting this assertion by demonstrating that the introduction of this policy will significantly reduce individual (linguistic) independence, impact the quality of education, and disrupt the federal structure, particularly for states where Hindi is not a primary language.