Language Politics in Education: Hindi-Urdu Divide and Nation-building

When we talk about what gets taught in schools, we often focus on subjects like math, science, or history. But one of the most politically charged decisions any education system makes is far simpler – and far more loaded: which language do students learn in? In India, this question has never been neutral. For over a century and a half, the choice between Hindi and Urdu has carried the weight of religion, nationalism, communal identity, and political power. Understanding this divide means understanding how language in the classroom can become a battleground for the soul of a nation.

One language, two names – or so it seemed
The British role in hardening the divide
Independence and the politics of the official language
The three-language formula: a compromise under pressure
Urdu in the classroom: marginalisation as policy
Language as a proxy for communal identity
Textbooks, curricula, and the reproduction of division
Nation-building through language: what the divide reveals

One language, two names – or so it seemed

To understand the Hindi-Urdu divide, you first need to know something that often surprises people: at the spoken, conversational level, Hindi and Urdu are the same language. Historically known as Hindustani, both emerged from the Dehlavi dialect of the subcontinent and were mutually intelligible across communities. As Professor Sekhar Bandyopadhyay noted, the two languages were effectively one at the colloquial level – Hindi written in Devanagari script with more Sanskrit-rooted vocabulary, and Urdu written in a Perso-Arabic script with greater Persian and Arabic influence.

So how did a difference in script and vocabulary become one of the most divisive political issues in modern South Asian history? The answer lies not in the languages themselves, but in how they were deliberately pulled apart – first by colonial administrators, then by nationalist movements, and eventually by post-independence state policies.

The British role in hardening the divide

The Hindi-Urdu controversy has its roots in 19th-century British India. In 1837, the British East India Company replaced Persian with local vernacular languages in government offices and lower courts. In northern India, Urdu in Nastaliq script was chosen over Hindi in Devanagari – a decision that immediately politicised both languages.

A further turning point came with the opening of Fort William College in 1800, which sought to educate East India Company servants in Indian languages. The college’s project of standardising vernacular texts required that the once-fluid Hindustani be given fixed grammars, distinct vocabularies, and separate identities. What had been a spectrum of speech became two codified, competing standards. By the end of the 19th century, institutions like the Nagari Pracharini Sabha (1893) were actively championing Hindi as a Hindu cultural project, while Urdu became associated with Muslim elite culture and Islamic religious identity. As one scholar put it, the languages had effectively become “Pandit-Hindi” and “Maulvi-Urdu” – each assigned its own religious community.

Gandhi saw the danger in this fracture. He proposed reuniting both under the term Hindustani, to be written in either script, arguing that the question of vernaculars as media of instruction was of national importance and that neglecting them was a form of cultural self-harm. His appeal was rejected. The Hindi press, Hindu revivalist groups, and Muslim political organisations all had too much invested in keeping the two languages – and the two communities – distinct.

Independence and the politics of the official language

When India gained independence in 1947, the language question became urgently political. Hindi, along with English, replaced Urdu as an official language under the Indian Constitution in 1950 – a decision that carried enormous symbolic weight. Urdu, deeply rooted in the subcontinent’s literary and administrative tradition, was increasingly viewed through a post-Partition lens as foreign, Muslim, and suspect.

For the new Indian state, promoting Hindi as the national language served a specific nation-building purpose: it offered a common linguistic identity for a vast, multilingual country. But this vision was contested from multiple directions – not just from Urdu speakers, but from non-Hindi-speaking states in the south, east, and west, who saw Hindi promotion as northern cultural dominance dressed up as national unity.

The three-language formula: a compromise under pressure

To navigate this minefield, the government introduced the Three-Language Formula, formally adopted in the National Policy on Education in 1968 following the Kothari Commission’s recommendations. The formula required students in Hindi-speaking states to learn Hindi, English, and a modern Indian language – preferably a southern language. In non-Hindi-speaking states, students would learn their regional language, Hindi, and English.

The intent was to balance national integration with regional linguistic identity. In practice, it satisfied no one fully. Tamil Nadu opposed it outright from the beginning, adopting a two-language policy (Tamil and English) under Chief Minister C.N. Annadurai, who famously argued that a single link language – English – was sufficient for both national and international communication. The state has never implemented the three-language formula. Today, Tamil Nadu’s resistance continues: the central government withheld ₹573 crore in education funding over the state’s refusal to comply with NEP 2020’s language requirements.

Notably absent from the Three-Language Formula’s mainstream implementation was Urdu. The promotion of Hindi learning happened at the expense of Urdu, which had once been the elite language of administration and literature across northern India.

Urdu in the classroom: marginalisation as policy

Perhaps nowhere is the politics of language more starkly visible than in the fate of Urdu-medium education. Government schools in many states do not offer Urdu as a subject, and Urdu-medium schools have seen steady decline due to lack of investment and institutional support. There is a documented shortage of trained Urdu teachers, updated curriculum materials, and digital educational resources in the language.

The situation worsened sharply in 2021, when the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) stopped providing Urdu-language question papers. Students at Urdu-medium schools affiliated with CBSE – including those run by Maulana Azad National Urdu University – found themselves required to answer exam questions in Hindi or English, languages they were less proficient in. Officials at these schools pointed out the contradiction: the National Education Policy advocates for mother-tongue-based education, yet CBSE’s policies were working in the opposite direction for Urdu speakers.

The numbers reflect this marginalisation. By 2011, only 4.2% of the Indian population declared Urdu as their first language, with roughly 30% of Muslims claiming it as a mother tongue. In Maharashtra – which has the largest concentration of Urdu-medium schools in the country – only 6.7% of students enrolled in Urdu-medium sections. Muslim families across India have increasingly shifted toward English-medium schools as a strategy for economic mobility, recognising that Urdu-medium education offers little leverage in the job market, government services, or mainstream institutions.

Language as a proxy for communal identity

A critical sociological dimension of the Hindi-Urdu divide is how it transformed two linguistic registers into markers of religious community. Post-Partition, Urdu began to be increasingly identified with Indian Muslims and viewed suspiciously as “foreign” or “other” – a mischaracterisation, given that the language evolved entirely on the Indian subcontinent. Research tracking generational shifts found that Urdu was not associated with Muslim identity for those born before 1947, but became strongly associated with that identity for those born after Partition. By the early 1980s, the association had worsened further: Urdu was being linked with poverty, illiteracy, and conservative identity among younger generations, leading many to disaffiliate from it entirely.

As sociologist Paul R. Brass observed, the Hindi-Urdu controversy demonstrates how little objective linguistic similarity matters when communities attach subjective significance to their languages. The divide was never really about grammar or vocabulary – it was a struggle over identities, about which community’s culture would be centred in the nation-state. By “Hinduizing” Hindi and “Muslimizing” Urdu, political actors on both sides succeeded in making an essentially artificial divide feel natural, inevitable, and existential.

Textbooks, curricula, and the reproduction of division

The Hindi-Urdu divide does not merely reflect social divisions – it actively reproduces them through educational curricula. When textbooks, literary canons, and language policies in schools are shaped along communal lines, they send children a clear message about which culture, history, and tradition belongs to them – and which does not. Hindi-medium schools draw on a literary tradition rooted in Sanskrit and Hindu texts; Urdu-medium schools offer a curriculum grounded in Persian-influenced literature and Islamic scholarly traditions. This parallel structure reinforces the idea of separate communities rather than a shared civic identity.

The political dimension is amplified by the BJP’s strong political hold over Hindi-speaking northern states, where Hindi is the dominant language of public life. Critics argue that central government policies – including aspects of NEP 2020 – reflect this regional power asymmetry, prioritising Hindi while paying lip service to linguistic diversity. Resistance movements have emerged across India, particularly in the south, where hashtags like #StopHindiImposition regularly trend on social media, mobilising youth, regional influencers, and political leaders around language as a marker of regional autonomy and pride.

Nation-building through language: what the divide reveals

The Hindi-Urdu divide in Indian education is ultimately a case study in how language policy can either build inclusive national identities or fracture them. When the state promotes one language in schools while systematically withdrawing resources from another, it is making a political statement – about who belongs, whose culture counts, and whose children deserve full participation in national life.

In India’s linguistic economy, English elites sit at the top, followed by bilingual speakers of English and a major Indian language, with monolingual communities – often the poorest and most marginalised – at the bottom. Urdu speakers frequently occupy the lower rungs of this hierarchy, locked out of government employment, higher education, and economic mobility by a system that does not value their language. This is not simply a cultural loss. It is a structural inequality embedded in educational policy.

India’s Constitution recognises Urdu as one of 22 scheduled languages. But constitutional recognition and practical institutional support are different things. A language needs, as one scholar put it, first-language status in administration and education if it is to remain viable in a competitive, capitalist world. To truly foster national cohesion, India must embrace inclusive language policies – ones that treat every language not as a threat to unity, but as part of what unity actually looks like in a country of this diversity.

What do you think? If language policy in schools can either reinforce or break down communal divisions, what responsibilities do governments have in ensuring that minority languages receive genuine institutional support – not just constitutional recognition? And when a state promotes one language while withdrawing resources from another, is that a neutral educational decision, or an act of cultural politics?

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Table of Contents

One language, two names – or so it seemed 🔗

The British role in hardening the divide 🔗

Independence and the politics of the official language 🔗

The three-language formula: a compromise under pressure 🔗

Urdu in the classroom: marginalisation as policy 🔗

Language as a proxy for communal identity 🔗

Textbooks, curricula, and the reproduction of division 🔗

Nation-building through language: what the divide reveals 🔗