Why losing our language means losing ourselves

At a recent event,RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat remarked that many “Bharatiya people today don’t even know their own languages.” It sounded harsh, but somewhere it rang true. We all know at least one family where parents speak to each other in Telugu or Hindi, but switch to English when talking to their children—almost as if mother tongue is a burden, not a blessing. This discomfort with our own language is no longer a rare phenomenon; it has become a cultural trend. And that trend is quietly reshaping how India thinks, learns, and connects.

The idea of mother tongue is not just about vocabulary or grammar. It’s about identity, a kind of emotional anchor that holds us steady no matter where we go. Children first understand the world in the language spoken at home. Their earliest emotions, first friendships, first fights, first memories all are coded in the mother tongue. When that link weakens, it’s not just a language that is lost; a part of cultural memory fades with it.

Scientists and education experts have stressed this for decades. A child learns faster, thinks more clearly, and expresses more confidently in their first language. But in India, practicality often beats principle. English-medium education is seen as the ladder to jobs, social mobility, respectability. Parents fear that without English, their children might fall behind in a competitive world. So, English becomes not just a language but a social currency. Unfortunately, the result is that thousands of children grow up knowing English “well enough” but not knowing their mother tongue well at all.

But do we really have to choose? Bhagwat’s comment whether one agrees with its tone or not—does remind us of a basic truth: knowing your mother tongue doesn’t prevent you from excelling in English or any other global language. In fact, bilingual and multilingual children often perform better academically. They have sharper memory, stronger reasoning skills, and greater empathy. So the question is: why treat mother tongue as competition to English instead of treating it as a foundation?

The deeper issue is the cultural discomfort many urban Indians feel. For some families, speaking English is not just about education it’s about status. Mother tongue feels “local,” “ordinary,” or even “backward.” This mindset has been shaped by decades of colonial hangover and by today’s corporate, digital world where English dominates. But if we proudly celebrate local food, local crafts, local traditions, why not local languages?

Another point often ignored is the impact on mass communication. India is a country of storytellers our literature, folk tales, cinema, songs, theatre, and poetry are all rooted deeply in regional languages. When younger generations drift away from these languages, they also drift away from the artistic richness that shaped their ancestors’ worldview. Language loss leads to cultural thinning, a kind of slow erosion that we don’t notice until it becomes irreversible.

From an educational perspective, policy makers have repeatedly pushed for multilingual learning. The National Education Policy 2020 clearly recommends using mother tongue as the medium of instruction in early grades. This is not nationalism it is neuroscience. Children think in the language they understand best. When they are forced to learn complex concepts in a foreign tongue, learning becomes memorisation, not understanding. The sad truth is that millions of Indian students struggle not because they lack intelligence but because they lack linguistic comfort.

The irony is that the global world today celebrates diversity more than ever. French parents don’t switch to English at home. Japanese families don’t abandon their language for global fluency. Koreans proudly promote Hangul as a symbol of identity. In contrast, many Indians shy away from their own tongue even while staying in their own country. That contradiction is at the heart of Bhagwat’s remark though the politics around it may vary, the cultural point remains strong.

The importance of mother tongue is not about rejecting English. It’s about refusing to reject ourselves. India is one of the few nations blessed with such a breathtaking variety of languages Telugu, Tamil, Marathi, Bengali, Odia, Malayalam, Kannada, Hindi, Gujarati, Punjabi, Assamese, Kashmiri and many more. Each one is a worldview, not just a tool. If we allow them to weaken, we aren’t just losing words, we are losing ways of thinking.

So what can be done? The change begins not in Parliament or party speeches but in our own homes. Speak to children in the language you dream in. Let them learn English at school, but let them feel their mother tongue at home. Encourage them to read one book a month in their regional language. Show them movies, tell them stories, introduce them to poetry, let them listen to old songs. Let them know that their mother tongue is not a burden but a cultural inheritance.

In the end, languages survive not because governments protect them but because families use them. The mother tongue is our first rhythm, our first emotional map. In a world becoming more automated and globalised every day, that emotional anchor matters more than ever. If we lose our language, we lose a bit of ourselves. And that is far too big a price to pay for a little linguistic convenience.