Is English a foreign language in India? | In Focus Podcast

The Supreme Court has been discussing linguistics this month, while hearing challenges to the CBSE’s three-language formula, which mandates that two of the three must be native Indian languages, a category that does not include English. The Bench has been debating whether English should be considered a foreign language in India, given its long history in the country, and its role as a link language in governance and in higher education.We discuss the same question in this week’s Parley, with Apoorvanand, a professor in the Hindi department of the University of Delhi, and Ganesh Devy, a former professor of English and the man behind the People’s Linguistic Survey of India project.Host: Priscilla JebarajProducer: Jude WestonFor more episodes of In Focus: Published - August 27, 2026 08:16 pm IST