The Supreme Court has issued a notice to the Rajasthan state government in response to a plea advocating for the inclusion of the Rajasthani language in the state’s teacher recruitment exam syllabus. The plea argues that the absence of Rajasthani, spoken by approximately 4.62 crore people, from the Rajasthan Eligibility Exam for Teacher (REET) undermines the state’s cultural heritage and violates the right to education in one’s mother tongue.
Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta, presiding over the case, heard arguments from senior advocate Manish Singhvi, who represented petitioners Padam Mehta—a veteran journalist and editor of the vernacular magazine Manak—and Kalyan Singh Shekhawat, a renowned scholar and advocate for the Rajasthani language. The court has sought responses from the state government and relevant officials including the principal secretary and the coordinator of REET.
The petition highlights that while other regional languages such as Gujarati, Punjabi, Sindhi, and Urdu are included in the examination, Rajasthani is notably absent. This exclusion, the plea contends, violates Article 350A of the Constitution, which stresses the importance of facilitating education in the mother tongue, and is contrary to the principles set out in the Right to Education Act and the National Education Policy 2020.
The petition also references a resolution passed by the Rajasthan State Assembly more than two decades ago, which advocated for the inclusion of Rajasthani in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution. Despite this resolution, official recognition of Rajasthani as a distinct language remains unimplemented.
The petitioners assert that their plea does not seek to remove any existing languages from the syllabus but rather to ensure that Rajasthani is treated on equal footing to foster and preserve the state’s linguistic heritage. They argue that recruiting teachers who are proficient in Rajasthani is essential for providing effective education to students in their mother tongue, aligning with constitutional guarantees for linguistic minorities.
