Ministry of Education approves setting up of five Centres of Excellence for Indian languages

The Ministry of Education has approved the establishment of five Centres of Excellence (CoEs) dedicated to studying and preserving five classical Indian languages. These languages are Assamese, Bengali, Marathi, Pali and Prakrit. The initiative aims to strengthen academic research, preserve linguistic and literary resources, and support the wider dissemination of knowledge associated with these languages.

The centres will be established across five states, with each institution assigned responsibility for one classical language.

Tezpur University in Assam will host the Centre of Excellence for Classical Assamese, while Visva-Bharati University in West Bengal will house the centre for Classical Bengali. The Centre for Classical Marathi will be established at the Deccan College Post-Graduate and Research Institute in Pune, Maharashtra.

For Classical Pali, the designated institution is the Central University of Odisha, while the Central University of Gujarat will host the Centre of Excellence for Classical Prakrit.

According to the Ministry, the centres will work across four broad areas. These include providing institutional platforms for advanced academic research, scholarly work and academic engagement in the respective languages.

Another major focus will be the documentation, preservation and digitisation of linguistic and literary resources. This is intended to support the long-term conservation of India’s textual heritage while facilitating greater academic access to linguistic and literary material.

The centres will also work towards the wider dissemination of classical-language heritage and strengthening regional academic ecosystems in the five states where they will be located.

The initiative places higher education institutions at the centre of efforts to build specialised research and scholarship around the five languages. By creating dedicated institutional platforms, the government aims to support sustained academic engagement rather than limiting the study of these languages to individual courses or departments.

The move follows the Union government’s decision in October 2024 to grant Classical Language status to Assamese, Bengali, Marathi, Pali and Prakrit. The addition of these five languages expanded India’s list of officially recognised classical languages. The newly approved centres will now provide dedicated institutional support for research and preservation related to these languages.