Google CEO Sundar Pichai has become part of a debate in Tamil Nadu about the three-language system in schools. People are discussing whether Pichai, who is from Tamil Nadu, learned Hindi during his school years.

Pichai studied at Jawahar Vidyalaya and Vana Vani Matriculation Higher Secondary School on the IIT Madras campus before going on to study engineering at IIT Kharagpur. He finished school in the 1980s and learned Hindi as a third language at that time.

Back then, Jawahar Vidyalaya followed the matriculation syllabus, which included Hindi as a third language. The school later changed to the CBSE syllabus in the late 1990s.

Some people who are against the three-language policy say that many successful professionals from Tamil Nadu studied only English and Tamil. Pichai’s name was brought into the argument by Tamil Nadu IT Minister P T R Palanivel Thiagarajan, who questioned whether not knowing Hindi ever affected Pichai’s career.

“It (three-language formula) is a failure model and there is no need to replace it with a successful two-language formula. Alphabet, Google’s parent company, CEO Sundar Pichai says he doesn’t know Hindi. Did not knowing Hindi hurt him in his career?” Thiagarajan asked.

After Pichai said he had learned Hindi in school, BJP leaders criticised the DMK minister, saying that private schools had the three-language system even in the 1980s. Some BJP supporters even shared a video of Pichai speaking in Hindi, but Tamil fact-checking website YouTurn said the video was fake, as reported by Deccan Herald.

In the video, Pichai is heard saying, “I am from the South, and I come from Chennai. I learnt Hindi in school and I never spoke it much.”

BJP state chief K Annamalai also shared the video on X and said, “Pichai studied three languages in his school, including Hindi, contrary to your claim, Thiru @ptrmadurai.”

BJP state secretary S G Suryah also said that Pichai himself admitted to learning Hindi in school.

“The moot point here is not Hindi but PTR Thiyagarajan’s lie that Google CEO studied in a 2-language school. Mind you, when Sundar Pichai studied at his school in Chennai, it was under the TN Matric syllabus & not CBSE Board. This proves even before the boom of CBSE Schools in Tamil Nadu, private matric schools had a 3rd language policy implemented,” he wrote on X.

The debate about using a third language in Tamil Nadu schools continues without signs of stopping.

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