Mahatma Gandhi believed language was not merely a communication tool-it was the soul of a nation. For Gandhi, forcing Indian children to learn through a foreign language like English was a form of enslavement that disconnected them from their roots, families, and communities. His views on linguistic problems and education remain remarkably relevant today, offering insights into how language policy shapes national identity and educational access.
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The Wardha resolution and mother tongue medium
In October 1937, Gandhi presided over the All-India National Educational Conference held at Wardha. This conference became a watershed moment in Indian educational history. The conference passed a landmark resolution accepting Gandhi’s proposal for free and compulsory education through the mother tongue for seven years on a nationwide scale.
The resolution was built on four pillars: universal free education, mother tongue instruction, education centered around productive manual work, and a curriculum suited to local environments. A committee under Dr. Zakir Hussain was appointed to develop a detailed scheme based on these principles. The Committee observed that proper teaching of the mother tongue formed the foundation of all education-without the capacity to speak effectively and write correctly in one’s own language, no one could develop precision of thought or clarity of ideas.
Gandhi personally championed this cause because he understood that language was the reflection of a people’s identity. At the Banaras Hindu University in 1916, he declared that if Indian languages were too poor to express the best thought, then Indians might as well cease to exist. He asked pointedly whether anyone dreamed that English could ever become India’s national language.
Gandhi’s anguish over vernacular neglect
Gandhi was deeply troubled by the systematic neglect of Indian languages in educational institutions. At the 1924 Belgaum Congress, he expressed his sorrow openly, noting that numerous teachers remained unaware of the importance of giving instruction in vernaculars like Hindustani. The tendency in many national institutions, he observed, continued to overlook regional languages.
His criticism was not merely academic but personal and passionate. Writing in Young India, Gandhi described English education as having put severe strain upon Indian students’ nervous energy and turned them into imitators rather than original thinkers. He called the displacement of vernaculars one of the saddest chapters in British-Indian relations. The foreign medium, he argued, had prevented the growth of Indian vernaculars and created an impassable barrier between educated Indians and their families.
Gandhi shared his own educational experience to illustrate the problem. He recalled how, after studying through Gujarati until age twelve, he entered a high school where everything had to be learned through English. Geometry, algebra, chemistry, history-all subjects became exercises in rote memorization because comprehension through a foreign language was so difficult. He estimated that what took him four years to learn through English could have been mastered in one year through Gujarati.
The disconnect from family and community
Perhaps the most poignant aspect of Gandhi’s critique was the social alienation caused by English-medium education. He confessed that English education created distance between himself and his father, who knew not a word of English. He felt he became a stranger in his own home, gradually taking on the airs of a superior person. This experience, he noted, was common to the majority of English-educated Indians.
Gandhi lamented that even wives were not sharers in their husbands’ best thoughts because of this linguistic divide. He pointed to brilliant scientists like Jagadish Chandra Bose and P.C. Ray, asking whether it was not a shame that their research remained inaccessible to ordinary Indians. The knowledge gained by English-educated students became a circumscribed possession, not meant for transmission to the masses.
Support for Hindustani Prachar Sabha
Gandhi’s commitment to language unity led him to establish the Hindustani Prachar Sabha at Wardha on 5 May 1942. This organization was born from his conviction that a common language could unite Hindus and Muslims during the freedom struggle. Hindustani, as Gandhi conceived it, was a blend of simple Hindi and simple Urdu-a language spoken naturally in the villages of North India by both communities.
The Sabha’s objectives were comprehensive and practical. Its stated functions included preparing a reliable Hindustani dictionary, evolving a grammar, conducting examinations, making Hindustani a compulsory subject, and establishing schools, libraries, reading rooms, and teacher training institutions. Gandhi envisioned the Sabha as a vehicle for spreading the message that India’s national language was not English but Hindustani.
Gandhi assigned major responsibilities to the organization. He believed both Hindi and Urdu speakers needed to learn each other’s forms of the language. As he stated, if a living Hindustani was ever to be born, it would happen only when Hindi and Urdu voluntarily came together and merged into one whole. He compared this linguistic unity to the confluence of the Ganga and Yamuna rivers.
Earlier, in 1918, Gandhi had founded the Dakshina Bharat Hindi Prachar Sabha in Madras to promote Hindi in South India. Annie Besant inaugurated this organization, and Gandhi’s own son Devdas became the first Hindi teacher. The Sabha continues its work today, having grown into a major institution with centers across southern states.
A message to students
Gandhi consistently urged students to cherish their mother tongue rather than abandoning it for the promise of employment through English. He advised young Indians to avoid early enslavement to a foreign language merely for job prospects. In his view, those who argued they could not express their ideas in their own language were a burden to the motherland.
His message was clear: no nation can become truly great by producing a race of translators. He pointed to religious reformers like Kabir, Nanak, and Chaitanya, who achieved far more lasting influence among the masses precisely because they worked through vernacular languages. Even great reformers like Ram Mohan Roy and Lokamanya Tilak, Gandhi believed, would have been greater still had they not been handicapped by having to think and transmit ideas primarily in English.
Gandhi urged students not to feel ashamed of their mother tongue or believe they could not express the best thoughts in their own vernacular. He famously declared that he wanted the cultures of all lands to blow freely through his house, but refused to be blown off his feet by any. Building on foreign intellectual traditions, he argued, would only impoverish India’s own heritage.
Finding virtue in linguistic heritage
Gandhi encouraged students to discover the rich vocabulary hidden in their regional dialects. He deprecated suggestions that technical education required extensive research before it could be delivered in Indian languages. Village folk, he observed, had remarkable resourcefulness-they coined terms like hava gadi (air vehicle) for motor cars without needing to borrow from foreign languages.
His advice remained consistent throughout his life: Indians must cling to their mother tongue as to their mother’s breast, despite its shortcomings. Only the mother tongue, he believed, could provide the life-giving intellectual nourishment that students needed to serve their communities effectively.
Contrasting views on English
Gandhi’s position on English stood in sharp contrast to other prominent educationists of his era. The Radhakrishnan Commission (1948-49), India’s first education commission after independence, took a notably different view. While recommending that the medium of instruction should eventually be regional languages, the commission acknowledged that English should be studied in high schools and universities to keep India in touch with the living stream of ever-growing global knowledge.
The Commission noted that the English language had been a potent factor in developing national unity, with the very concepts of nationality and nationalism being largely a gift of English literature to India. English was recognized as the most useful library language for higher education and described as India’s significant window on the world.
Scholars like M.S. Patel and members of various education commissions acknowledged English’s practical value in accessing modern scientific and technical knowledge. They recognized that English was less divisive because of its neutral character and was essential for India’s industrial and scientific progress.
Gandhi’s alternative vision
Gandhi fundamentally disagreed with this perspective. He believed the supposed benefits of English education came at too high a cost-the systematic alienation of educated Indians from their own people. If he had despotic powers, he declared, he would immediately stop tuition through a foreign medium and require all teachers to introduce the change forthwith, even before textbooks were prepared.
He never disputed English’s value for international diplomacy and commerce, or for accessing world literature. However, he insisted that translations could make global knowledge available through vernaculars. He pointed out that Gujarati students did not need to learn Russian to appreciate Tolstoy-good translations sufficed. Similarly, the treasures of Shakespeare and Milton could reach Indians through their own languages.
Gandhi viewed the continued use of English as a medium of instruction not as educational necessity but as cultural conquest. The process, he argued, was producing daily proof of increasing harm to millions through false de-Indianizing education. Educated Indians, he observed, floundered when expressing their innermost thoughts, remained strangers in their homes, and could not exist without English books.
The continuing relevance
Gandhi’s arguments about linguistic education remain contested but pertinent. India’s language policy continues to balance regional identity, national integration, and global engagement. The tension between mother tongue instruction and English-medium education persists in classrooms across the country.
His fundamental insight-that language connects individuals to their communities, families, and cultural heritage-resonates with contemporary research on educational outcomes. Studies consistently show that children learn more effectively in their mother tongue, particularly in early years. Yet the practical demands of employment and higher education continue to pull students toward English.
Gandhi’s vision was never about rejecting the world but about engaging with it from a position of cultural strength. He wanted Indians to access global knowledge without losing their linguistic souls in the process. Whether that balance has been achieved, or can be achieved, remains a question each generation must answer for itself.
What do you think? Can mother tongue education and global competence coexist in today’s interconnected world? Has India’s current language policy struck the right balance between preserving linguistic heritage and preparing students for modern opportunities?
References
- https://www.gktoday.in/wardha-scheme-of-education-1937/
- https://www.insightsonindia.com/modern-indian-history/social-policies/education-policies/wardha-scheme1937/
- https://www.studyiq.com/articles/wardha-scheme/
- https://www.studocu.com/in/document/aligarh-muslim-university/philosophy-of-gandhi/gandhis-views-on-language/22433113
- https://www.mkgandhi.org/towrds_edu/chap14.php
- http://hindustanipracharsabha.org/introduction.php
- https://gandhiking.ning.com/profiles/blogs/constitution-of-the-hindustani-prachar-sabha-1
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dakshina_Bharat_Hindi_Prachar_Sabha
- https://gandhiking.ning.com/profiles/blogs/english-education-and-mahatma-gandhi
- https://www.gandhiashramsevagram.org/selections-from-gandhi/on-education.php
- https://www.yourarticlelibrary.com/education/university-education-commission-1948-49/76820
- https://ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in/engp12/chapter/105/
- https://www.gandhiashramsevagram.org/towards-new-education/english-education.php
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