Sanskritized Hindi as a Medium of Instruction: Pedagogical Obstacles and Myth of Merit

Abstract

Often, the medium of instruction in schools is considered to be caste- and class-neutral, especially when it comes to vernacular language. However, the caste and class orientation of language has not always been critically evaluated. This article traces how education shifted from community-driven pre-colonial schools to colonial administrative policies and look at how Sanskritized Hindi became the medium of schooling in India. The study details how organizations such as the Nagari Pracharini Sabha and the Arya Samaj and influential figures such as Acharya Ramchandra Shukla and Mahavir Prasad Dwivedi systematically purged the shared Hindi–Urdu continuum to create an elite linguistic standard. This constructed register was later institutionalized as a state ideology through Article 351 during the Constituent Assembly debates, displacing actual spoken mother tongues ( matrbhasa ) from the school curriculum. The article argues that this contemporary Sanskritized textbook language reflects the everyday life-world language of the upper caste and upper class. Consequently, students coming from the upper strata benefit more and understand the content better, while this language acts as a severe pedagogical obstacle for Dalit and working-class students. Ultimately, the study demonstrates that academic merit is an accumulation of different forms of capital like language, proving that merit is a naturalized myth.