On English-medium education, India is having the same debates it did 200 years ago

The National Education Policy 2020 announced on July 31 has re-triggered the debate on mother tongue instruction at the primary stage. While educationalists point to numerous studies that show the advantages of learning in the mother tongue at the early ages, English continues to find support from a large section of Indians as the preferred medium of instruction. The widespread Anglophilia of Indians (not surprisingly) can be traced to the expansion of English education in the colonial era.

During the early conquest of India by the East India Company in the 18th and early 19th Century, British, Danish, German, and American protestant missionaries had set foot in India to proselytise. At the time they realised that “schools were both the cause and the effect of proselytisation and that educational and missionary work had to be undertaken side by side”. Thus they chose education as their medium for proselytisation, with English as the medium of instruction.

However, they faced barriers due to the enormous diversity of Indian languages. As a result, many missionary elementary schools were set up in India’s native languages as well. They also translated the Bible, and western school textbooks into Indian languages. By 1813, Danish missionaries in Bengal’s Serampore were printing the Bible in...

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