Decolonisation cannot begin by pretending English is foreign

More fundamentally, the term “native language” itself is problematic. As the Supreme Court observed, it is not a constitutional category. The Constitution speaks instead of the “mother tongue”, “regional language” and “Indian language”. The idea that every nation possesses one authentic language rooted in its territory emerged from 19th-century European nationalism, particularly the writings of Johann Gottfried Herder and Johann Gottlieb Fichte. Applying that framework to India ignores the country’s long history of multilingualism, migration, and cultural exchange. Ironically, a policy presented in the language of decolonisation relies on a European idea of linguistic authenticity.

From a postcolonial perspective, the problem runs even deeper. Frantz Fanon reminded us that language is never merely a means of communication; it is also tied to power, identity, and social mobility. Homi Bhabha, in a different way, argued that colonial inheritances are not simply preserved after empire but are appropriated and transformed in new cultural contexts. That is precisely what happened to English in India. It has been adapted into an Indian language with its own vocabulary, idioms, literature, legal discourse, and administrative practice. It no longer belongs exclusively to its colonial past.

This is precisely the point that the linguist Braj Kachru made through his influential theory of World Englishes. He argued that countries such as India had developed institutionalised and indigenised varieties of English that could no longer be treated as imperfect copies of British or American English. Describing English in India as “non-native” therefore revives a distinction that scholarship has largely abandoned.

Of course, at this point, an important qualification may be necessary. This is not to dismiss the strongest postcolonial critique of English that scholars are quite familiar with. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o argued that colonial languages displaced indigenous languages and alienated people from their cultures. Without doubt, that critique has considerable force in many postcolonial societies. India’s experience, however, followed a different trajectory. After Independence, English acquired a new political role. For many non-Hindi-speaking States, it became less the language of colonial rule than a constitutional safeguard against the dominance of any single Indian language.

Additionally, the present controversy must also be viewed in this specific political context. Statements by Union leaders, including Home Minister Amit Shah, portraying English as a colonial residue that India should eventually move beyond, suggest an ideological preference for reducing its public significance. Against that background, the CBSE’s terminology appears less like a neutral classification than part of a broader political project.

Finally, none of this is an argument against strengthening Indian languages. They deserve greater institutional support. But promoting them does not require treating English as a foreign language. As Pierre Bourdieu argued, language is also a form of social capital. In India, English continues to shape access to higher education, the civil services, the higher judiciary, and much of the knowledge economy. Reclassifying it changes none of these realities. The real question, therefore, is not whether English is Indian enough. It is whether a postcolonial society should define belonging by a language’s ancestry rather than its place in contemporary life. By every meaningful measure, English has become one of the languages through which modern India governs, learns, litigates, researches, and debates. Calling it “non-native” does not decolonise education. It simply misunderstands what postcolonial India has already made of the language.

The writer is former professor and dean, Christ University, Bengaluru