Supreme Court Tells Tamil Nadu to Shed Anti-Hindi 'Mindset' in Navodaya Schools Case

The Supreme Court on Thursday told Tamil Nadu that it must change the "mindset" that Hindi cannot be taught on its soil, cautioning that individual States cannot function as separate countries. The oral observations came from Justice B.V. Nagarathna during a nearly hour-long hearing on the adoption of the Navodaya Vidyalaya Scheme in the State.

The Bench, also comprising Justice A.G. Masih, granted Tamil Nadu three months to comply with a December 15, 2025, direction to identify land for Navodaya schools in every district. The court said this would be subject to final orders to be passed later, and asked State and Central representatives to hold discussions in the meantime on the policy of setting up such schools in Tamil Nadu. The next hearing is scheduled for December 14, 2026.

Addressing both governments, Justice Nagarathna said Chennai should not alienate Delhi, and vice versa. The court noted that its earlier order on land identification had not been complied with.

Tamil Nadu has opposed the scheme as "fundamentally incompatible" with its two-language policy. In an affidavit filed in March, the previous Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam government said the scheme, based on the three-language formula, deviated from the mandate of the Tamil Nadu Tamil Learning Act, 2006, and alleged it was a "backdoor" attempt to make Hindi compulsory. The current Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam dispensation maintained the same objection, asserting that the choice of language is a fundamental right.

Appearing for the State, senior advocate Jaideep Gupta and Additional Advocate General Haripriya Padmanabhan contended that the scheme, being only a policy, cannot be imposed against the State's own policies and laws. Gupta rejected the characterization of the dispute as a "mindset" issue, arguing that every State is entitled to its own policies and that the Centre could have legislated had it wanted uniform implementation.

When Justice Nagarathna observed that India is ultimately a unitary form of government, Gupta disagreed, describing the country as a federal government and stating that federalism is part of the Basic Structure. The judge responded that the governance structure is unitary in spirit and federal in structure.

Gupta further submitted that education falls under the Concurrent List, that language is a fundamental right, and that the Navodaya scheme is optional. Issuing a mandamus to adopt an optional policy, he argued, would upset 75 years of the court's decision-making. He also said cooperative federalism cannot work only one way, and noted that the Centre still owed the State ₹5,000 crore under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan. The State, he added, has a ₹45,000 crore education outlay for around 1.24 million students — the largest in the country — against the Centre's nationwide outlay of ₹78,000 crore.

Justice Nagarathna suggested the State could view the scheme as an opportunity to enhance its educational capacity, to which Gupta replied that the State was opening its own model schools. When the court observed that land ultimately belongs to India, Gupta questioned whether the Centre could dispose of any land in Tamil Nadu. The judge warned that the federal structure would suffer if every State disagreed with Central policies and went its own way, adding that a change of government changes nothing as education is a constant.

Additional Solicitor General K.M. Nataraj, appearing for the Union government, along with advocates G. Priyadharshini and Rahul Shyam Bhandari for an association of former Navodaya alumni, said the State's only responsibility was to provide land. They pointed out that Tamil is taught in these schools, which have a 99% pass record.