The top business executive attended Jawahar Vidyalaya and Vana Vani Matriculation Higher Secondary School on the campus of the Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT-M) before studying engineering at IIT Kharagpur. He completed his schooling in the 1980s and learned Hindi as a third language.
At that time, Jawahar Vidyalaya followed the matriculation syllabus, which included Hindi as a third language; however, it adopted the CBSE syllabus in the late 1990s.
Opponents of the three-language policy have cited examples of successful engineers and professionals from Tamil Nadu who learned only English and Tamil in school. Pichai was dragged into the boiling controversy recently by Tamil Nadu Information Technology Minister P T R Palanivel Thiagarajan, who questioned whether not knowing Hindi hindered the Google CEO’s successful 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.
With an undated video of
Pichai claiming that he learned Hindi in school, BJP leaders and supporters attacked the DMK minister, claiming that private schools have been using the three-language policy as early as the 1980s. Some BJP handles also released a video of the Google CEO speaking in Hindi, but the Tamil fact-checking website YouTurn labelled it ‘doctored’, Deccan Herald reported.
In the video, Pichai can be heard saying, “I am from the South, and I come from Chennai. I learnt Hindi in school and I never spoke it much.”
State chief K Annamalai also shared the video on X and wrote, “Pichai studied three languages in his school, including Hindi, contrary to your claim, Thiru @ptrmadurai.”
Learnt about DMK Minister Thiru @ptrmadurai avl’s response to my question yesterday on the hypocrisy of DMK Ministers allowing their children/ grandchildren to learn three languages in school while compelling Govt school students to learn only two languages.
Thiru PTR Palanivel… pic.twitter.com/X5BFhGghrw— K.Annamalai (@annamalai_k) March 13, 2025
BJP state secretary S G Suryah also alleged that Pichai himself claims he learned Hindi in school.
.@ptrmadurai is a congenital liar.
Google CEO himself says he learnt Hindi as 3rd language 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 his school in Chennai was… pic.twitter.com/TyJVHQRptZ
— Dr.SG Suryah (@SuryahSG) March 13, 2025
“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 on the third language adoption in the state seems in no mood to die down soon.
