A discussion of language policy in India's educational system identifies substantive issues of both theoretical and comparative interest; presents a detailed account of the issues associated with policy-making for language in education in the Indian socio-political context; and discusses the current status of implementation of these policies, with reference to the latest statistics on language use in higher education. Two of the conclusions are the following: (1) multilingual countries must provide for a supra-regional language in education that serves a variety of sociolinguistic functions; and (2) in India, language policy has followed a pattern of evolution toward languages lower in the prestige hierarchy, which gain more valued roles in the educational system by weakening the exclusive role of the prestige language. While the non-prestige languages have begun to gain status as a medium of instruction first at the elementary and secondary levels, then in early childhood education, and finally in higher education, even for the major languages this process has only begun, and it has not yet begun for many minority languages. (MSE)