India's second-largest state, Madhya Pradesh, has launched the country's first medical textbooks in Hindi in a bid to make higher education more accessible to non-English speakers, but critics have warned that the move could distance Indian doctors from the global medical community.
Madhya Pradesh has ordered its top medical schools to teach the basics in the Hindi language rather than English, but experts are divided over the unprecedented project.
Anatomy, physiology and biochemistry courses will be offered in Hindi to new entrants in all 13 state-run medical colleges starting the current session this year, while textbooks for seniors will be available from 2023.
The opt-in curriculum was rolled out last weekend in Madhya Pradesh, where 90 percent of 73 million residents speak Hindi.
Madhya Pradesh | Home Minister Amit Shah launches the country's first Hindi version of MBBS course books, in Bhopal in the presence of CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan and State Medical Education Minister Vishvas Kailash Sarang pic.twitter.com/QezQ9bFgFv
— ANI (@ANI) October 16, 2022
‘Hinglish’
Critics described the 3,410-page textbooks, which continue to use medical phrases in English but all written in Hindi script, as a lazy exercise in transliteration.
“It is not a translation of the books but a transformation,” argued Satykant Trivedi, part of the team that worked on the unique project.
“We have written the books in Hindi script and not complicated the things for students by translating terminologies,” he said.
“What is the problem? Doctors will write prescriptions in Hindi,” said Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Chouhan, as his government also ordered all medical colleges to offer prayers to Dhanvantari, the Hindu god of health.
Earlier this week, Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state, also announced the planned roll-out of Hindi textbooks in local schools of medicine next year.
Officials say the shift in the language of instruction will bring higher studies closer to 86 million deeply poor people in the two states, where education in English is costly and seen as elitist.
Both states are governed by the Hindu nationalist BJP party, which took office in India largely with the support of Hindi-speaking voters.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi hailed the experiment in Madhya Pradesh, where until 2016 only 5 percent of students in state-run village schools could read a full sentence in English.
"This beginning in the field of medical education is going to bring a big positive change in the country," Modi tweeted in Hindi.
"With this lakhs [tens of thousands] of students will be able to study in their own language, many doors of opportunities will also open for them."
Global communication
But Rohan Krishnan, president of the Federation of All India Medical Association (FAIMA), asked politicians to revamp basic schooling instead of experimenting with medical education in India.
“Even after 75 years of independence, English in our basic school system is not taught properly,” he said.
“Rather than improving the system in schools you are actually deteriorating a very well established and sacrosanct system.”
The physicians association also pointed out that using exclusively Hindi terminology would cut Indian doctors off from the international medical community.
"We need to view English as a medium of communication rather than a colonial relic as some tend to do," it said in a statement.
We have huge respect for #HINDI Language.
— FAIMA Doctors Association (@FAIMA_INDIA_) October 20, 2022
There is no debate of Hindi Vs English!
Our main focus should be on Improving quality of #Medical Education rather focussing on changing medium of Education!
Worldwide we lags behind in Medical research due to 1-2% of #GDP used here! pic.twitter.com/v9gKylHlcY
Pankaj Agarwal, a contributor to the project, argued that 43 percent of India’s 1.4 billion people use Hindi while a much smaller number communicate in English.
“Also, it is not compulsory but an option,” he told India Today TV.
Concerns over standards
Others warned medical universities that can enroll 90,000 students a year could be overwhelmed by Hindi-speaking aspiring doctors.
The Indian Medical Association, a union of 390,000 doctors, pointed out that existing medical faculties teach only in English.
“If the course has to be launched in Hindi, then the teachers will also have to be trained along with translating the entire syllabus, which is going to be a tedious process,” association leader Srinivasa Raju said.
Opponents of the scheme worry that the newly developed textbooks are not up to international standards and could end up harming the quality of medical education in India, said Karti P Chidabaram, a member of parliament in southern Tamil Nadu state, who wrote an open letter to the prime minister to object.
I have written to the Hon’ble PM @narendramodi @PMOIndia stating my opposition against the introduction of MBBS textbooks in Hindi. Regressive steps like these can hurt scientific temper and the quality of medical education in India.#HindiImposition pic.twitter.com/yUbWUCGWwc
— Karti P Chidambaram (@KartiPC) October 19, 2022
Hindi is the world’s third most spoken language after English and Mandarin.
India is also home to the world's second-largest population of English speakers after the US and their numbers are likely to quadruple in a decade from 135 million at present.
