Marathi and the politics of linguistic survival
In April and June of 2025, the government of Maharashtra, led by the Mahayuti coalition, issued two resolutions mandating Hindi as the compulsory third language
In April and June of 2025, the government of Maharashtra, led by the Mahayuti coalition, issued two resolutions mandating Hindi as the compulsory third language for students from Class 1 onwards in Marathi- and English-medium State board schools, citing alignment with the Education Policy of 2020. The announcement was, by any administrative measure, modest in scope, though its political consequences were anything but. Within weeks, the streets of Mumbai and Pune were filled with protesters. Two figures who had not shared a platform in years, Uddhav Thackeray of Shiv Sena (UBT) and Raj Thackeray of the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, found themselves, improbably, on the same side. By the end of June, the government had withdrawn the orders. The grammar of this linguistic confrontation is centuries old. I. The first language war By the early 17th century, Persian was the language of power across the Deccan. The Mughal court, the Adil Shahi sultans of Bijapur, and the Nizam Shahi of Ahmednagar all conducted their affairs in Persian. Marathi-speaking people were governed, taxed, and adjudicated in a language foreign to them. Shivaji did not accept this. In 1630, approximately 86 per cent of the vocabulary in Maratha administrative documents was Persian. By 1677, it had fallen to 37 per cent. The instrument of this transformation was the Rājyavyavahārakośa, the Thesaurus of State Usage, commissioned and completed in that same year. Every Persian and Arabic administrative term was given a Marathi or Sanskrit equivalent. Forts received Sanskrit names: Sindhudurg, Suvarndurg, Prachandgarh, Pratapgarh, etc. The royal seal was inscribed in Sanskrit. Every subsequent episode of Marathi linguistic resistance is a repetition of this founding act. II. The colonial period Jyotirao Phule’s deposition to the Hunter Commission on Education in 1882 is among the most important documents in the history of Indian educational policy. Phule argues that colonial educational expenditure overwhelmingly benefits the upper-caste elite, using revenue extracted from Shudra labour to subsidise the very class that oppresses them. He demands compulsory primary education for all, teachers drawn from the cultivating classes, and instruction in Modi and Balbodh, the two Marathi scripts. His writing in the spoken tongue of working people was itself the argument made visible: this language is adequate for the highest moral and political purposes. The founding of Kesari (Marathi) and Mahratta (English) in January 1881 by Chiplunkar, Agarkar, and Tilak transformed Marathi into an instrument of mass political mobilisation: Marathi for the people, English for the world. Tilak’s Home Rule speech at Ahmednagar on June 1, 1916, put the question of vernacular education in his characteristic direct manner. “Is the question whether education should be given through vernaculars such a big one?
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