Role of National Education Policy (NEP - 2020) for Language Standardization of Linguistic Minorities in India

It has been established that the inclusion of the mother tongue plays a very important role for the children of minority groups in terms of cognitive and academic excellence. Conversely, due to their non-dominant status, minority languages are hardly used in the educational system, administration, media or courts. A lot of work has been done for the identification of the linguistic rights of minority languages. Benedikter says that Education should help the student to develop the necessary skills such as linguistic competence for partaking and involvement in the administrative process of nation building. So, use of language in education and administration should be attuned with each other. If the language of education acts as a counterpoise to the language of administration, it may create tensions which may frustrate the entire planning. A guideline in the light of the National Education Policy (2020) has replaced the 34-year-old policy of education in 1986. However, the absence of comprehensively agreed linguistic rights of the people, apart from the political and social dilemmas is used as an excuse for the failure of most state governments to recognize and respect linguistic rights of the minorities. The present study is an attempt to analyze the linguistic rights of minority groups vis-a-vis the Indian Constitution and the newly framed National Education Policy (2020). The study aims to find the place and role of minority languages in educational and socio-cultural settings. The study will explain the purpose of standardization of minority languages namely the Gojri language and the challenges related to standardization of minority languages which are being subjugated at every front by the dominant languages.