Bharatiya Bhasha Pariwar framework for interpreting NEP 2020: Policy, practice, and multilingual education reform in India

This paper employs the Bharatiya Bhasha framework to interpret the NEP 2020's vision for multilingual education and its ripple effect on policy formulation, the teaching & learning process, and the reform of multilingual education in India. Although the recent literature has been rather intensive in paying attention to the pedagogical and implementation features of multilingual education, relatively little has been undertaken on the linguistic and philosophical underpinnings of this policy change. The paper treats NEP 2020 in conceptual terms of Bharatiya Bhasa Pariwar in the sense that Indian languages are not seen as separate and hierarchically ranked systems, but as a system of organically connected and long-standing contact, convergence, and mutual knowledge practices. The paper moving beyond the often-divisive colonial linguistic taxonomies to reconsider Bharatiya Bhasha Pariwar as a decolonial alternative. It infers that, as a corollary, NEP 2020 distances itself from Eurocentric paradigms which consider languages to be inherently separate and competing entities. The paper, through linguistic theory, research on multilingual education, and policy analysis, examines the provisions of the model, providing a culturally grounded account of the principles of mother tongue-based instruction and multilingual pedagogy. Telangana state has been used as an example to explore the possibilities and contradictions of applying this paradigm in practice in highly multilingual classrooms that involve regional, minority, tribal, and migrant languages. One can discern the pedagogical and structural merits and demerits of this approach from the working of a program like Tholimettu and the multilingualism practice in tribal residential schools. The paper identifies the persistent problems, including a language misfit between teachers and learners, and a lack of materials in more than one language for learning, despite society's preference for English-based education. It asserts that the model of Bharatiya Bhasa Pariwar can help improve the validity of multilingual education by restoring the Indian languages as epistemic sources, which can convey scientific, cultural, and intellectual knowledge. The paper argues that, for the realization of the dream of an education system that is not only inclusive but also decolonized, as envisioned in NEP 2020, teacher education, curriculum development, and community engagement must be geared towards incorporating a civilizational approach to linguistics.