To,
The Honourable Union Minister of Education
Ministry of Education, Government of India, New Delhi – 110001
The Chairman
Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), New Delhi
The Chief Minister of Nagaland
Government of Nagaland, Kohima – 797001
The Secretary
Department of School Education, Government of Nagaland, Kohima
Subject: Urgent Representation Regarding the Practical Challenges of Implementing the CBSE Compulsory Third Language Policy in Nagaland — A Collective Plea from School Leaders for Special Consideration and Institutional Support.
Respected Sir / Ma’am,
We wish to begin by sincerely acknowledging and appreciating the Central Board of Secondary Education for its commendable efforts in implementing the National Education Policy 2020 a truly visionary reform in India’s educational landscape. The NEP’s emphasis on multidisciplinary learning, reduced curriculum load, conceptual understanding over rote memorisation, and the promotion of holistic development reflects a deep commitment to nurturing future-ready citizens.
CBSE’s proactive restructuring of the curriculum framework, introduction of flexibility in subject choices, and encouragement of experiential learning are steps that educators and parents across the country genuinely welcome and applaud. The intent to strengthen India’s linguistic and cultural roots through education is a noble and necessary goal that we fully support.
It is in the spirit of this shared vision and with complete faith in CBSE’s commitment to student welfare that we respectfully place before you certain concerns regarding the on-ground implementation of the R3 language framework. Our submission is not a critique of the policy’s intent, but a humble appeal to ensure that its execution is handled with adequate planning, sensitivity, and care for all stakeholders involved.
In this respect we, the School leaders and Educators of CBSE-affiliated institutions across Nagaland, write to you today not merely as Administrators of Schools — but as guardians of a generation of children whose futures will be shaped, for better or for worse, by the policies we choose to implement in our classrooms.
We bring to your attention a matter of deep educational, cultural, and administrative concern: the implementation of the CBSE Compulsory Third Language Policy in the unique socio-linguistic context of Nagaland. We do so with the utmost respect for the intent behind the National Education Policy and CBSE directives, and with sincere hope that you will hear us — not as resistors of policy, but as its most earnest partners who wish to see it succeed meaningfully.
This letter represents the collective voice of our schools. We urge you to read it not as a bureaucratic complaint, but as the cry of educators who sit across from children every single day — children who deserve a policy that serves them, not merely satisfies a mandate.
I. A State Unlike Any Other: Nagaland’s Extraordinary Linguistic Reality
To understand our challenge, one must first understand Nagaland. Ours is a state that is home to over seventeen major recognised tribes and dozens of sub-tribes, each with its own distinct language and oral tradition — additionally, the broader Naga family actually comprises over 30 to 40 distinct tribes across the region. Unlike most Indian states where a dominant regional language unifies communities, Nagaland has no single native tongue that all Nagas share. The English language, historically, has served as the practical lingua franca across tribal communities in formal settings.
In many of our urban and semi-urban schools, a single classroom holds children from more than thirty different linguistic backgrounds — Ao, Angami, Sumi, Lotha, Konyak, Chang, Phom, Zeliang, Chakhesang, Pochuri, Rengma, Khiamniungan, Tikhir, Yimkhiung and others, alongside Bengali, Bihari, Hindi, Punjabi, Assamese, Kachari, Nepali-speaking etc families who have made Nagaland their home. The classroom is a mosaic of languages, cultures, and identities.
In such a reality, identifying a single common native language for all students of a school is not merely difficult — it is, in many cases, simply impossible. Any attempt to do so risks excluding, marginalising, or even unintentionally offending the cultural identities of the very children the policy seeks to protect.
II. A Precedent Closer to Home: Lessons from the Nagaland Board of School Education
We humbly draw your attention to a precedent that speaks directly to this challenge. The Nagaland Board of School Education (NBSE) itself — the state’s own educational authority — once attempted to introduce a compulsory second language policy. Despite the best of intentions, the practical realities of Nagaland’s diversity made implementation deeply challenging. Eventually, the NBSE had to introduce Alternative English as a pragmatic solution — recognising that what works on paper does not always work in our classrooms.
We ask: if our own state board — with intimate knowledge of local conditions — found this policy challenging to implement, how much greater will be the burden on schools under CBSE, which must adhere to a standardised national framework? The policy must be informed by this lived experience.
III. The Sanskrit Default: A Well-Meaning Policy Producing Unintended Outcomes
As schools seek a workable path within the current policy framework, many are facing a difficult dilemma and converging on a troubling default: Sanskrit. This choice is rarely made because Sanskrit is the most educationally meaningful option for our students. Rather, it is a default born out of necessity — teaching Hindi effectively itself is highly demanding and securing qualified teachers in this part of the world is exceptionally difficult, and within the current policy framework, Sanskrit emerges not by educational or cultural choice, but by the absence of a more feasible alternative. Despite the abundance of readymade textbooks, introducing Hindi itself remains a herculean task. The primary obstacle is the acute shortage of suitable teachers. When teachers are available, they often communicate exclusively in Hindi with their respective Mother Tongue Influence (MTI) which makes it more complicated for children to understand and thus creating a significant barrier for our students who struggle to follow the meaning as well as the lessons and fail to understand the core concepts.
We respect Sanskrit as a language of immense historical and classical value. But we must be candid: for the children of Nagaland, studying Sanskrit as their third language will not help them connect with their Angami grandmother, their Konyak grandfather, or the oral stories of their own community. It will not preserve the Sumi dialect spoken in their village. It will not give a Lotha child the tools to write their own language.
If the noble goal of this policy is to preserve mother tongues and indigenous identities, then the current trajectory of defaulting to Sanskrit represents a compliance exercise rather than a cultural mission. Our children deserve better than that.
IV. The Human and Financial Reality: Schools Cannot Do This Alone
We ask you, respected authorities, to consider a simple arithmetic reality. A school with students from ten different tribal backgrounds would need ten different language teachers to meaningfully teach each child in their mother tongue. A school with thirty linguistic groups would need thirty. The cost, logistics, and sheer human resource challenge of this is beyond the capacity of any private school in Nagaland — and arguably, most government institutions as well.
The languages needed include — but are not limited to — Ao, Angami, Sumi, Lotha, Konyak, Chang, Phom, Zeliang, Chakhesang, Pochuri, Rengma, Yimkhiung, Sangtam, Khiamniungan, Bengali, Bihari, Hindi, Assamese, Nepali etc. Qualified teachers exist for very few of these in any formal, hireable capacity. Textbooks and structured curricula for most of these languages remain largely undeveloped at the school level.
We did not make these languages marginal — history, resource constraints, and decades of policy neglect did. We are now being asked to reverse centuries of linguistic marginalisation overnight, without the tools, the teachers, or the financial support to do so. With so many languages to consider, how will a single school manage to employ so many teachers? This is neither fair nor feasible.
V. Three Additional Concerns That Cannot Be Overlooked
A. The Plight of the Transferring Child: An Invisible Crisis
India is a nation of remarkable mobility. Government employees, defence personnel, and private sector workers are frequently transferred across states, and their children must follow. Under the current R3 (third language) framework, these children face a near-impossible situation: the third language studied in one state is often entirely different from the one required in the school they join next.
Most third languages mandated by states are regional mother tongues that are not even recognised in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution of India. A child who has spent two years learning, say, a regional language in one part of the country arrives at a new school in a different state only to find that their acquired knowledge is of no value — and that they must begin a new language from scratch, mid-academic year, in an already unfamiliar environment.
This is not a hypothetical concern. It is the daily reality of tens of thousands of children across India. We respectfully ask: has the policy framework adequately considered the cumulative educational burden placed on the transferring child? A truly student-centric policy must have a national portability mechanism — one that ensures a child’s language learning effort is never rendered irrelevant by a geographical move.
B. If Hindi Is Already a Challenge, Sanskrit Is a Steeper Climb
There are vast regions of our country where Hindi itself — despite decades of promotion, national media presence, and widespread use in commerce — remains a formidable challenge for students to learn. In the Northeast, in the deep South, and in many tribal and coastal regions, children encounter Hindi as an almost entirely foreign language. Teachers struggle to teach it; students struggle to absorb it.
In this context, we must ask with the deepest sincerity: if Hindi, a living language with films, songs, news, and everyday social exposure, is so difficult to learn in many parts of India — how do the authorities realistically expect students to take up Sanskrit, a classical language with no such living cultural ecosystem?
Sanskrit, despite its profound scholarly value, is not a language that children encounter in any living context outside the classroom. There are virtually no films, songs, conversations, or daily interactions in Sanskrit to reinforce learning. For a child in Nagaland, or in Tamil Nadu, or in Kerala — Sanskrit is as distant as Latin is for a child in England. Mandating it as a compulsory subject without adequate teachers, teaching materials, or real-world exposure is setting children up for frustration, not enlightenment.
(To be continued)
School Leaders and Principals
CBSE-Affiliated Schools of Nagaland
Nagaland,
Northeast India
Sunday, June 7, 2026