Language Policy & Planning in the EU and India

When one spoke earlier of the European integration, one had to face the challenging question, whose integration is being talked about, for the erstwhile EU constitutions themselves pursued the rhetoric of European integration and the preservation of national identities at the same time. The 1st of December 2009, however, marked a turning point in this series of events because – after nearly a decade of negotiations – the ‘Lisbon Treaty’ entered into force on this day. This has been a historic development in the sense that the new treaty promises to convert the former seemingly futile efforts at integration into a movement. Looking at the measures undertaken by the EU in fields of Educations & Culture, one cannot deny that the EU has made sincere efforts to keep its promise despite the severe economic crisis. As the ‘language question’ is an important aspect of this movement, it is to be examined, to what extent it has contributed and can contribute to achieving the goal of integration, which the EU has been striving for long. In view of that, it’s time to check, to what extent Europe can learn in this field from the other traditional multilingual societies (i.e. societies from Africa or Asia). This requires critical and comparative study of language policies in these polities as well as a systematic assessment of the relevant political linguistic research. This is precisely the focal point of the proposed research work, whereby a comparative study of EU’s and Indian Language Policy & Planning is undertaken. I want to examine in my doctoral thesis to what extent these two polities have been able to achieve their goals and to what extent their language policies have helped protect their linguistic diversity.