Parents Want English, Kashmir’s Education Policy Wants Mother-Tongue Learning. Can Both Coexist?
By: Javid Amin | 23 September 2026
Srinagar: In many Kashmiri homes, the language question begins with a practical calculation.
Parents want their children to speak Kashmiri. They want them to understand Urdu. They want them to know where they come from.
But when it comes to the classroom, many want English.
Not necessarily because they have stopped valuing Kashmiri. They simply believe English can take their children further in higher education, professional courses, technology and the job market.
That is where Kashmir’s education debate has become more complicated.
On one side is a growing policy emphasis on mother-tongue and regional-language education. On the other is a parental demand for English-medium schooling, driven by the perception that English provides access to a wider academic and professional world.
The result is a language dilemma that cannot be reduced to English versus Kashmiri.
The real question is whether Kashmir can build an education system in which a child does not have to sacrifice one for the other.
Kashmiri is being taught widely, but teaching Kashmiri is not the same as teaching through Kashmiri
Government figures cited in recent reporting show that Kashmiri is taught as a language subject in 9,857 schools for 7,78,811 students from Classes 1 to 8.
At the secondary level, it is taught in 1,961 schools for Classes 9 and 10. The reported figures include 1,169 government schools with 92,323 students and 792 private and other schools with 60,071 students.
Those numbers are significant.
But there is an important distinction that can easily disappear in the public debate.
A student studying Kashmiri as a subject is not necessarily being educated through Kashmiri as the medium of instruction.
The available reporting itself makes that distinction.
A child may study mathematics, science, social science and other subjects largely through English or another language while taking Kashmiri as one language subject.
So, when officials say Kashmiri is taught in thousands of schools, it does not mean the education system has shifted thousands of classrooms from English to Kashmiri.
That distinction is essential to understanding what is actually happening in Kashmir’s schools.
What NEP 2020 really says
The National Education Policy 2020 has given fresh momentum to India’s mother-tongue education debate.
It recommends that, wherever possible, the medium of instruction until at least Grade 5, and preferably until Grade 8 and beyond, should be the child’s home language, mother tongue, local language or regional language.
It also calls for high-quality textbooks and teaching-learning material in those languages.
The Ministry of Education has reiterated this position in subsequent official material.
But there is a crucial phrase in the policy:
“wherever possible.”
That matters enormously in a linguistically diverse place such as Jammu and Kashmir.
The policy is not simply saying that every child must be taught every subject in a particular regional language irrespective of circumstances.
It recognises multilingual education as the broader goal.
In fact, the Ministry’s own material stresses bilingual learning and the development of high-quality teaching resources in regional languages. It specifically describes bilingual textbooks and teaching-learning materials for science and mathematics as an important part of the approach.
That creates room for a model very different from the simplistic choice between English and Kashmiri.
A child can learn concepts in the language he or she understands best while gradually becoming academically proficient in English.
And J&K’s language policy is broader than Kashmiri
There is another fact that often gets lost when the debate is framed as “Kashmiri versus English”.
Jammu and Kashmir has a multilingual population.
The Jammu and Kashmir Official Languages Act, 2020 identifies Kashmiri, Dogri, Urdu, Hindi and English as official languages for official purposes of the Union Territory. The law also provides for promotion and development of regional languages and specifically calls for efforts relating to Gojri, Pahari and Punjabi.
So the language question in J&K is not merely about protecting Kashmiri from English.
It is about managing a multilingual educational environment in which different communities speak different languages at home and may choose different languages for formal education.
A language policy designed for Kashmir Valley cannot automatically be treated as a complete language policy for every school in Jammu and Kashmir.
That is one reason implementation is much harder than drafting a policy document.
Why parents keep choosing English
For many parents, the decision is intensely practical.
English is the language they associate with competitive examinations, professional degrees, medicine, engineering, information technology, research and an increasingly globalised labour market.
That perception did not appear overnight.
For decades, English-medium schooling has been marketed, socially and commercially, as a pathway to upward mobility.
A parent who has struggled to find stable employment may therefore look at an English-medium school not as a rejection of Kashmiri identity, but as an investment in a child’s future.
One parent quoted in the recent report put the distinction plainly: he wanted his daughter to receive formal education in English while continuing to speak Urdu and Kashmiri at home.
That is probably a more common arrangement than the language debate sometimes suggests.
English for the classroom. Kashmiri for home. Urdu for cultural and social communication.
For many families, multilingualism is already a reality.
The policy challenge is to turn that reality into an educational strength.
“English means opportunity” is a belief policymakers cannot simply dismiss
It would be easy to accuse parents of abandoning their language.
That would miss the economic reality behind their decisions.
A parent does not necessarily choose English because Kashmiri is considered inferior.
Sometimes the calculation is brutally straightforward:
What language will my child need to read university textbooks?
What language will help with an entrance examination?
What language will be required for a professional course?
What language will be useful when applying for jobs outside J&K?
What language will make it easier to work in technology, science or an international company?
For a middle-class family trying to secure its child’s future, these are not ideological questions.
They are career questions.
And until regional-language education can convincingly answer them, English will retain enormous appeal.
But the English-medium dream has a problem too
There is an assumption that simply putting a child into an English-medium school guarantees better education.
It does not.
The language of instruction and the quality of instruction are two different things.
A poorly trained teacher teaching a difficult concept in English can leave a child more confused than a competent teacher explaining the same concept initially in the child’s strongest language.
This is one reason NEP 2020 places such emphasis on multilingual and bilingual learning rather than treating language as an all-or-nothing choice.
The Ministry of Education describes mother-tongue-based learning as supporting comprehension and confidence, while also stressing the need for quality teaching material and teacher preparation.
That leads to a larger question Kashmir has not fully confronted:
Are children struggling because they are learning in Kashmiri, because they are learning in English, or because the teaching itself is not strong enough?
Those are three very different problems.
The textbook problem exposes the weakness in implementation
This is perhaps where the current debate becomes most revealing.
According to the figures cited in recent reporting, free Kashmiri-language textbooks are available for government-school students in Classes 1 and 2, while dedicated Kashmiri textbooks are reportedly not being provided from Classes 3 to 8.
If that situation is accurately reflected across the relevant government-school system, it raises an obvious question.
How seriously can a system expect schools to develop Kashmiri literacy beyond the foundational years if age-appropriate textbooks are not consistently available?
A teacher can improvise.
Teachers routinely do.
They prepare notes. They find supplementary material. They translate content. They use whatever resources are available.
But improvisation cannot become the foundation of a language policy.
A serious mother-tongue programme needs:
- age-appropriate textbooks;
- children’s literature;
- dictionaries;
- grammar resources;
- digital content;
- teacher-training material;
- assessment tools;
- audio-visual resources;
- standardised terminology for science and mathematics where required.
Without those resources, a policy can exist on paper while the classroom continues operating according to necessity.
The teacher shortage is an even bigger problem
The recent figures cited in reporting show a particularly striking shortage at the higher-secondary level.
Of 27 sanctioned lecturer posts in Kashmiri, only six are reportedly filled, leaving 21 vacant.
That is a vacancy rate of roughly 78 per cent.
The department has reportedly identified a pool of 434 general-line teachers and masters with postgraduate qualifications in Kashmiri who could potentially help address the shortage.
That may offer a practical route, but deployment is not the same thing as qualification.
A postgraduate degree in Kashmiri may make someone academically qualified in the subject. It does not automatically answer every question about teaching methodology, workload, school-level need or formal assignment.
If the government wants Kashmiri education to expand, teacher availability has to grow alongside the policy.
Otherwise the system risks creating a familiar paradox:
The government tells schools to teach the language, but schools do not have enough specialist teachers to teach it properly.
The senior-secondary numbers raise another uncomfortable question
The reported March-April 2025 examination figures show only 120 students appearing for Kashmiri in Class 11 and 94 in Class 12, a combined 214 students.
These numbers should be interpreted carefully.
They do not by themselves prove that Kashmiri is disappearing from schools.
Nor do they establish a year-on-year decline without comparable historical data.
But the enormous difference between lower-school enrolment and senior-secondary examination participation deserves investigation.
Why do so many students encounter Kashmiri at the lower levels but so few continue with it as an examination subject in higher secondary education?
Several explanations are possible.
Parents may prioritise subjects perceived as more useful for higher education.
Students may choose different language combinations.
Specialist-teacher availability may influence subject choices.
The absence of attractive and structured learning material may discourage continuation.
And, above all, English may be perceived as offering a more direct connection to higher education and employment.
That is precisely why the answer cannot simply be to make Kashmiri compulsory.
If students and parents perceive no academic or professional value in continuing a subject, compulsion alone will not create genuine engagement.
Cultural identity cannot be measured in examination forms alone
There is also a danger in reducing Kashmiri to a school subject.
A language is not merely a textbook.
It carries poetry, folklore, oral history, family memories, humour, idioms, songs and ways of understanding the world.
Kashmiri literature has a long written and oral tradition.
If children gradually become unable to read or write their own language, something more than an examination subject is lost.
At the same time, preserving Kashmiri does not require rejecting English.
That is the false choice at the centre of much of the debate.
A child can read Shakespeare and Lal Ded.
A child can learn computer science in English and understand Kashmiri poetry at home.
A child can become fluent in English without becoming linguistically disconnected from Kashmir.
In fact, the strongest model may be additive rather than substitutive.
Learn English.
Strengthen Kashmiri.
Retain Urdu where relevant.
Respect the other languages of J&K.
The objective should be to add linguistic capabilities rather than replace one language with another.
The public debate needs to move beyond slogans
“Parents want English.”
“Government wants Kashmiri.”
Both statements are too broad.
Which parents?
Which schools?
Which districts?
Which socioeconomic groups?
Which age groups?
Which subjects?
And what does “want English” actually mean?
Do parents want English as the medium of instruction for every subject?
Do they simply want their children to become fluent in spoken and written English?
Would they support bilingual science and mathematics textbooks?
Would they prefer Kashmiri to remain compulsory as a language subject?
Would they accept mother-tongue instruction in the early grades if English proficiency were guaranteed by later classes?
These questions have not been answered through a representative statewide survey.
That is a gap policymakers should fill.
If the government wants to make a serious language policy, it should ask families directly.
What Kashmir could learn from its own multilingual reality
There is an irony here.
Kashmir’s children are already multilingual.
Many grow up hearing Kashmiri at home, Urdu in religious or social settings, Hindi through television and popular culture, and English through school, technology and the internet.
The child often manages this linguistic world more naturally than the education system does.
The school timetable, however, tends to divide languages into subjects.
That may be the wrong way to think about multilingualism.
Instead of asking which language should “win”, schools could teach children when and how to use different languages.
That means strong Kashmiri literacy.
Strong English proficiency.
Appropriate Urdu learning.
And exposure to other Indian languages where relevant.
The Ministry of Education itself describes multilingualism as an important component of NEP 2020 and has made NEP material available in Kashmiri and other Indian languages.
The policy direction, therefore, is not inherently anti-English.
The challenge is implementation.
The English question is also an equity question
This part deserves much more attention.
If English is seen as the gateway to opportunity, families who can afford expensive private schools, coaching and additional language support can give their children more exposure.
Poorer families may depend on government schools.
If government schools shift toward regional-language instruction without simultaneously providing strong English teaching, parents who can afford alternatives may move their children elsewhere.
That could unintentionally deepen educational inequality.
On the other hand, if government schools simply imitate English-medium private schools without building teacher capacity, they may provide English as a label rather than as a genuine academic skill.
The objective should therefore be English proficiency for all, not English privilege for those who can pay.
And the answer should not be to weaken Kashmiri.
It should be to strengthen both.
What would a sensible language model look like?
A practical Kashmir model could begin with a simple principle:
Mother tongue for understanding, English for wider access, and multilingualism as the goal.
In early grades, children could receive strong foundational learning in the language they understand best, wherever feasible.
English could be introduced systematically rather than symbolically.
By the middle grades, schools could increasingly use bilingual teaching, particularly in science and mathematics.
Kashmiri should have proper textbooks, literature and digital resources rather than being treated as a subject that survives through teacher-prepared notes.
English should be taught to a standard that prepares students for higher education and competitive examinations.
And teachers should be trained to move between languages intelligently rather than being forced into rigid language compartments.
That would be much closer to the spirit of NEP 2020 than simply replacing one medium with another.
The bigger failure would be to make children choose
There is a deeply human element in this debate.
A Kashmiri parent should not have to think:
If I choose Kashmiri, am I damaging my child’s career?
Nor should another parent have to think:
If I choose English, am I turning my child away from our language and culture?
A modern education system should remove that anxiety.
Children should be able to inherit their language without inheriting an economic disadvantage.
They should also be able to acquire English without being told that their mother tongue is a barrier to progress.
That is the real test of educational policy.
Kashmir does not need an English-versus-Kashmiri war
The language debate has sometimes been presented as a clash between cultural preservation and modern aspiration.
It does not have to be.
English can be the language of opportunity.
Kashmiri can remain the language of identity, memory and cultural continuity.
Urdu can retain its own literary and social significance.
Dogri, Gojri, Pahari, Punjabi and other languages spoken across J&K deserve their own space and institutional support.
The Official Languages Act itself reflects this wider linguistic reality by recognising five official languages while also providing for the promotion and development of other regional languages.
The real failure would be to force families into a choice that the education system itself could avoid.
The policy test should be simple: can the child do both?
The government should therefore move the debate away from declarations and towards measurable outcomes.
If Kashmiri is being promoted, how many children can actually read and write it confidently by Class 5?
How many have access to age-appropriate books?
How many schools have qualified teachers?
How many students continue with the language in Classes 9 to 12?
If English is being demanded by parents, how many government-school students achieve functional academic proficiency?
Can they read a university-level text?
Can they write clearly?
Can they communicate confidently?
Can they use English without abandoning their first language?
These are better measures than simply counting how many schools offer a language.
The choice should not be English or Kashmiri. It should be competence in both.
The most important lesson from Kashmir’s language debate may be that parents and policymakers are not necessarily asking for opposite things.
Parents are asking for opportunity.
Policymakers are asking for cultural continuity.
Children need both.
The problem begins when the system presents them as mutually exclusive.
A Kashmiri child should not have to surrender Kashmiri to become globally competitive.
And learning Kashmiri should not mean surrendering English.
The real educational ambition should be much higher: raise children who can think deeply in their strongest language, communicate confidently in English, understand Urdu where relevant, and move comfortably across Kashmir’s multilingual social world.
That would not be a victory for Kashmiri over English.
Nor would it be a victory for English over Kashmiri.
It would be a victory for the child.
And that is ultimately where any language policy should begin and end.
