English and Hindi have been the media of the examination, since the inception of the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) in 2013. Gujarati was introduced as an optional medium in 2014, following a special request from the Gujarat state government, which took the initiative to publish quality text books for higher secondary education in Gujarati, way back in early 1970s.

In alignment with the tenets of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, beginning in 2021, additional ten Indian languages were introduced in the JEE Main examination. This paradigm shift was explicitly designed to ensure level playing field, enabling brilliant rural and semi-urban minds to demonstrate their mathematical and scientific capabilities in their respective mother tongues.

The first year of introduction, 2021 saw about 43,000 students, opting for Indian languages, as the medium for JEE Main examination, the largest of about 23,000 being in Hindi, followed by Gujarati (about 18,000), with the balance languages contributing the rest.

However, over the last five years, the registrations in Indian languages did not keep pace with the growth of students appearing for JEE. Though National Testing Agency does not reveal the language break-up of registered students, the aggregate pool of non-English regional language takers is estimated to have levelled off at roughly 55,000 to 60,000 candidates annually, constituting a mere 4-5% of the total registrations. While Hindi and Gujarati have sustained healthy participation rates due to strong regional state board alignment, the participation in South Indian languages has remained minuscule, with some of them dipping below a few hundred candidates per language script.

Nearly 1,500 out of them are expected to have qualified in the JEE Advanced in 2025 and around 250 students of them were estimated to have joined the IITs, predominantly confined to those, who chose the Hindi medium.

It is not difficult to understand why only a tiny fraction of regional language students ultimately enroll in IITs. Though JEE Mains is conducted in 13 languages, JEE Advanced is conducted only in English and Hindi. This structural bottleneck filters out non-Hindi regional language students, explaining why final admission numbers drop so sharply.

While the % success of the students taking Indian languages as media is lower, compared with overall success, the prominent coaching centres claim that not less than 15 out of the top 100 ranks in 2025 were garnered by the students that opted for Hindi and Gujarati. Various studies revealed that Hindi medium students show a remarkably strong conversion rate once they clear the initial language barrier.

The student communities and the social media narratives of the students that opted for Indian languages provide an unvarnished look at the real student journey and the issues faced by them.

A recurring complaint centers around the way the technical questions in JEE are translated from English to Indian languages. A student from a zilla parishad school in Maharashtra explained his harrowing experience to understand a question in Physics on ‘Moment of Inertia’, which was translated into such an archaic, formal Sanskritised word that he had to spend three minutes, just trying to figure out what topic the question belonged to! Ultimately, he had to switch the screen view to English to solve the question.

Students also highlight the lack of availability of advanced JEE study materials in regional languages. In the recent times, there has been good progress in respect of the material for JEE Mains in Hindi and Gujarati, as more of these students join the coaching classes. Most top tier coaching centres in northern states of India as well as online preparatory resources use “Hinglish”, teaching in Hindi, while using English technical terms. Rest of the Indian languages have a lot, to catch up, in this regard.

The most poignant stories come from these few students who made it to an IIT campus. On anonymous student forums, they write on how their IIT dreams tuned nightmares, due to the intense alienation during their first semester and the consequent mental pressure, they go through, due to their inability to cope with the classroom discussions, which are all in English.

In order to make multilingualism work for JEE, a few structural adjustments are necessary. JEE Advanced must also be offered in all 13 languages, matching the JEE Main framework. Offering multiple languages in the preliminary round means little, if the final selection round maintains a linguistic duopoly. Examination boards should stop using literal, archaic dictionary translations for technical terms. Transliteration of specialised terms like “Electrons”,”Resonance,” “Matrix,” or “Centrifugal Force” directly in the regional languages retains contextual clarity and prevents confusion. Rather than leaving the regional medium students to navigate the transition for equal participation in the classes all alone, the IITs should introduce non-graded, empathetic English communication and technical writing bootcamps during the first semester. This enables the students to effectively navigate the transition without compromising academic standards.

Linguistic diversity should serve as a bridge to the opportunity, not a barrier to the entry. True inclusivity means enabling the students from their regional-medium roots all the way through their journey into the lecture halls of the premier institutions.

(Prof O.R.S. Rao is the Chancellor of the ICFAI University, Sikkim. He is an alumnus of IIT Madras. Views are personal.)