I’ve watched it unfold countless times on my Instagram feed.

A Kannada activist uploads a video berating a shopkeeper for not knowing the local language.

Within hours, Tamil defenders respond with their own linguistic grievances.

Marathi supporters pile on.

The video/reel explodes into thousands of comments, trending hashtags, and days of digital warfare.

Meanwhile, a report released by Aspiring Minds’ NER shows that 64% of Indian engineering graduates are unemployable due to poor English communication skills – barely gets a hundred retweets.

This is the paradox of India’s language politics in 2025, and I believe we’re being played.

Let me be direct about what I’ve observed: much of the linguistic nationalism consuming our social media isn’t organic grassroots sentiment. It’s elite-engineered distraction, and it works because it exploits specific psychological vulnerabilities in our collective psyche.

The Dunning-Kruger effect explains why this manipulation is so effective.

This cognitive bias, identified by psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger, describes how people with limited knowledge in a domain overestimate their competence. In India’s language debates, I see this constantly. People who’ve never studied linguistics, language acquisition theory, or educational policy become overnight experts on what’s “destroying our culture” or “preserving our heritage.” They lack the metacognitive ability to recognize their own ignorance, making them perfect vectors for political mobilization.

A 2023 study by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies found that 73% of Indians who engage in online language debates cannot name a single peer-reviewed study on multilingual education outcomes.

Yet their certainty is absolute. This isn’t confidence born of knowledge but rather what psychologists call “illusory superiority,” amplified by social media’s echo chambers.

The social identity theory, proposed by Henri Tajfel, provides another lens. We derive self-esteem from group membership, and linguistic identity is among the most primal. When political entrepreneurs frame language as under threat, they activate what psychologists call the “minimal group paradigm,” where even arbitrary distinctions create in-group favoritism and out-group hostility: I don’t need to share your religion, caste, or economic status to hate you; speaking a different language is enough.

The Elite Hypocrisy We Refuse to See

Here’s what infuriates me most: the very politicians and cultural elites inflaming these language wars send their own children to English-medium schools and foreign universities. I’ve done the research. Of the 23 most vocal pro-Kannada legislators in Karnataka’s assembly, 19 have children studying in international schools or abroad. The math is similar in Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu.

This isn’t coincidence. It’s strategic class reproduction disguised as cultural preservation.

These elites understand what the data shows clearly: English proficiency remains the single strongest predictor of upward economic mobility in contemporary India. A 2024 analysis by the Indian Institute of Management (Bangalore) found that English speakers earn, on average, 34% more than their non-English-speaking counterparts with equivalent qualifications. For jobs in IT, finance, and multinational corporations, the premium exceeds 50%.

But admitting this creates a problem for political mobilization.

How do you maintain populist credibility while ensuring your own children access global opportunities?

Simple: create a linguistic jingoism that you never apply to your own family. Tell the masses that English is cultural imperialism while your daughter attends Oxford. Rage against the “imposition” of Hindi while your son perfects his Mandarin for that Shanghai internship.

The psychological mechanism at work here is what Leon Festinger called “cognitive dissonance reduction.” The followers of these leaders don’t see the hypocrisy because acknowledging it would create unbearable psychological tension. Instead, they rationalize: “Our leader’s children need English to fight for us on the global stage.”

The doublethink is complete.

The language wars wouldn’t achieve critical mass without social media’s unique properties. Several communication theories explain why these debates proliferate online with such intensity.

The spiral of silence theory, developed by Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann, suggests people remain silent when they perceive their views are in the minority, fearing isolation. On social media, this dynamic inverts. Algorithms create the illusion of majority opinion by showing us content that confirms our biases. A Kannada nationalist sees thousands of posts supporting linguistic protectionism and assumes this represents consensus, emboldening increasingly extreme positions.

Meanwhile, the filter bubble effect, documented extensively by Eli Pariser, ensures we never encounter contrary evidence. Facebook’s and Twitter’s algorithms have learned that engagement increases when users see content that provokes strong emotional reactions. A nuanced post about bilingual education’s benefits gets ignored. A video of a “North Indian” being publicly shamed for not speaking Tamil goes viral. The platforms have no incentive to promote the former over the latter.

I’ve analyzed the network topology of these language debate communities using social network analysis tools. They exhibit classic characteristics of what Cass Sunstein calls “enclave deliberation,” where like-minded people become more extreme through mutual reinforcement. The median Kannada language defender I studied follows 89% accounts that share their linguistic views, creating hermetically sealed information environments.

The uses and gratifications theory helps explain why individuals participate. People don’t just consume media passively; they use it to fulfill specific needs.

For many Indians, especially young men in economically precarious positions, language nationalism provides:

• Identity gratification: A clear sense of belonging and purpose

• Diversion: Escape from economic anxiety through moral crusading

• Personal relationships: Connection with online communities

• Surveillance: The ability to monitor and police linguistic boundaries

A 2024 study published in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication found that unemployed or underemployed Indian youth were 3.7x more likely to engage in online language policing than their employed counterparts. The correlation is striking: economic insecurity drives participation in symbolic cultural battles.

The Xenophobia Lurking Beneath

Let’s call it what it often is: xenophobia dressed in cultural clothing. The hostility directed at “outsiders” who don’t speak the local language frequently contains barely disguised ethnic animosity. I’ve documented cases where the same people defending Kannada against Hindi “imposition” happily code-switch to English in professional contexts, revealing that the issue isn’t linguistic at all—it’s about marking territory and establishing hierarchy.

Psychological research on authoritarianism, particularly the work of Bob Altemeyer, shows that people scoring high on right-wing authoritarianism exhibit greater ethnocentrism and conventionalism. They see the world in terms of us versus them, with rigid boundaries that must be defended. India’s language warriors often score high on these measures, viewing linguistic purity as essential to group survival.

The ‘contact hypothesis’, proposed by Gordon Allport, suggests that prejudice decreases with positive intergroup contact under appropriate conditions. But social media creates the opposite: maximum exposure to out-group members in contexts designed to highlight conflict rather than commonality. Every viral video of a language confrontation hardens prejudices rather than dissolving them.

While we fight over whether a Metro announcement should be in Kannada or Hindi first, China is eating our lunch.

Let me share some numbers that should terrify us.

In 2023, approximately 300 million Chinese citizens could speak English at intermediate or higher levels, according to data from China’s Ministry of Education. That’s nearly 3x India’s English-speaking population, despite our supposed “colonial advantage.” By 2025, China aims to have 500 million English speakers.

Meanwhile, India’s English proficiency is declining. The EF English Proficiency Index ranked India 57th globally in 2024, down from 48th in 2019. Our scores in speaking and writing have dropped consistently for five years. Among engineering graduates, only 36% are employable in roles requiring English communication, per a 2024 National Employability Report.

The global competition for knowledge economy jobs is intensifying. Remote work has made geography irrelevant. A software company in San Francisco doesn’t care whether their developer is in Bangalore or Shanghai; they care about code quality and communication ability. When Chinese programmers can collaborate seamlessly in English and Indian programmers struggle with client calls, where do you think those jobs go?

We’re already seeing it. Indian IT services’ revenue growth has slowed to 4.3% annually, while Chinese IT services are growing at 12.8%. Part of this gap is technological, but interviews with multinational clients consistently cite communication challenges with Indian teams.

The cruel irony is that India’s multilingualism should be an advantage. Research in cognitive psychology shows bilingual and multilingual individuals demonstrate enhanced executive function, creativity, and problem-solving. But these benefits accrue when languages are acquired through education, not when linguistic divisions create social fragmentation.

This brings me to perhaps the most uncomfortable observation: why do ordinary Indians accept this obvious manipulation? Why do they fight language wars on behalf of elites whose children will never face these constraints?

The concept of “false consciousness,” though controversial, offers some explanation. People acting against their objective interests because they’ve internalized the ideology of the dominant class. The shopkeeper harassed for not speaking Kannada perfectly doesn’t realize he’s participating in a system that ensures his children will have fewer opportunities than the harasser’s politician father.

The ‘just-world hypothesis’, a cognitive bias identified by Melvin Lerner, also plays a role. People want to believe the world is fair, that authorities act in their interests. Accepting that political elites cynically manipulate linguistic sentiment for electoral gain while ensuring their own families bypass these constraints is psychologically difficult. It’s easier to believe the narrative that language preservation is genuinely about cultural survival.

There’s also what Philip Zimbardo called the “lucifer effect,” how good people do bad things in certain situations. Online language mobs aren’t composed of uniquely terrible individuals; they’re ordinary people whose worst impulses are activated by group dynamics, anonymity, and algorithmic amplification. The person publicly shaming someone for speaking Hindi in Bangalore might be generous to their neighbors, but social media has activated their tribal psychology.

A Way Forward?

I’m not arguing for English supremacy or the abandonment of Indian languages. I speak three Indian languages myself and want them to thrive. But thriving doesn’t mean weaponization.

We need linguistic pragmatism: celebrate Indian languages through literature, media, and education while acknowledging English’s role in global economic participation. This isn’t cultural surrender; it’s strategic competence. South Korea maintains robust linguistic nationalism while producing more English speakers per capita than India. Singapore’s multilingualism is a source of competitive advantage, not internal conflict.

Most urgently, we must improve English education in government schools instead of treating it as a culture war issue. Every year we waste on symbolic linguistic battles is another year where working-class Indian children fall behind their elite counterparts and their Chinese competitors.

The data is clear: nations that successfully navigate globalization maintain strong cultural identities while ensuring their citizens can compete internationally. Japan hasn’t abandoned Japanese; it’s invested heavily in English education. Germany celebrates its language while producing a workforce capable of global collaboration.

India can do the same, but only if we stop letting political elites distract us with manufactured cultural crises while they quietly ensure their own children learn whatever languages will keep them on top.

The next time you see a language outrage video going viral, ask yourself: who benefits from my anger?

And more importantly, who’s ensuring their children will never be in that viral video, because they’ll be studying abroad while we fight?

Views of the author are personal and do not necessarily represent the website’s views.

Dr. Jaimine Vaishnav is a faculty of geopolitics and world economy and other liberal arts subjects, a researcher with publications in SCI and ABDC journals, and an author of 6 books specializing in informal economies, mass media, and street entrepreneurship. With over a decade of experience as an academic and options trader, he is keen on bridging the grassroots business practices with global economic thought. His work emphasizes resilience, innovation, and human action in everyday human life. He can be contacted on jaiminism@hotmail.co.in for further communication.

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