The Ministry of Education has approved the establishment of five Centres of Excellence for studies in Classical Assamese, Classical Bengali, Classical Marathi, Classical Pali and Classical Prakrit.
The approval was issued by the Department of Higher Education's Language Division through an Office Memorandum dated October 1, 2026, with the Ministry announcing the decision on October 3.
The five centres will be established across five states at Tezpur University in Assam, Visva-Bharati University in West Bengal, Deccan College Post-Graduate and Research Institute in Pune, Central University of Odisha and Central University of Gujarat.
Five Centres of Excellence
According to the Ministry, the centres will provide institutional support for advanced academic research and scholarly work in the respective languages. They will also work on the documentation, preservation and digitisation of linguistic and literary resources.
The centres will also facilitate wider dissemination of the linguistic, literary and knowledge traditions associated with the five classical languages. Their location across Assam, West Bengal, Maharashtra, Odisha and Gujarat is intended to strengthen regional academic ecosystems for higher education and research in classical languages.
Five languages received classical status in 2024
The five languages covered by the new centres were granted Classical Language status by the Union Cabinet in October 2024.
The decision to include Marathi, Pali, Prakrit, Assamese and Bengali brought the total number of recognised Classical Languages in India to 11. The six languages that had received the status earlier are Tamil, Sanskrit, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam and Odia.
The 2024 decision followed recommendations from a Linguistic Experts Committee under the Sahitya Akademi. The revised criteria included high antiquity of early texts or recorded history over 1,500 to 2,000 years, a body of ancient literature regarded as a heritage by generations of speakers, knowledge texts including prose as well as poetry, and epigraphical and inscriptional evidence. The criteria also recognise that a classical language and its literature may be distinct from its present form or discontinuous with later forms.
The government's earlier framework for promoting classical languages has included Centres of Excellence for Classical Kannada, Telugu, Malayalam and Odia under the Central Institute of Indian Languages, as well as the Central Institute of Classical Tamil for research, translation and preservation of Tamil's classical literature.
The new five centres extend this institutional framework to the languages that received classical status in 2024.