Curriculum, multilingualism, and identity in postcolonial education: insights from India’s three language formula

Abstract

This study examines how India’s Three Language Formula (TLF), a cornerstone multilingual education policy, is lived and remembered by those it was designed to serve. Drawing on phenomenological interviews with seven Indian graduates in U.S. doctoral programmes, the analysis reframes the TLF as a curriculum-as-lived to reveal the hidden hierarchies embedded within its official trilingual structure. Findings show the TLF was remembered and interpreted not as balanced inclusion but as a stratified hierarchy. English functioned as an indispensable linguistic capital for global mobility; Hindi as a formal obligation; and mother tongues as symbolic and emotional anchors. Participants’ narratives revealed an internalised colonial logic, constructing a bifurcated self where English was associated with the intellect/academic seriousness and mother tongues with emotion/cultural belonging. This symbolic recognition, however, was unmatched by functional integration and resulted in literacy loss in heritage language and intergenerational strain. The study argues that curricular justice requires moving beyond policy rhetoric to functionally embed regional and minority languages across the curriculum. Insights from these beneficiaries highlight the tensions between global competitiveness and cultural continuity and offer transferable lessons for other multilingual and postcolonial societies.

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