11th Language & Development Conference 79 Tejshree Auckle Introduction UNESCO’s 2009 world report on cultural diversity and intercultural dialogue makes a strong case for the implementation of mother-tongue-based multilingual education (MTB MLE) programmes which allow for the co-existence of both local vernacular languages and other socially prestigious tongues such as English (UNESCO 2009). The success of these MTB MLE programmes hinges, as it suggests, quite significantly, upon deliberate governmental intervention at the levels of language policy and planning. For instance, though the report bemoans the efforts of most multilingual nations which have set up their own MTB MLE programmes as being, at best, half- hearted, it also celebrates the tentative steps taken by countries such as Cambodia and Zambia which have formally introduced a few minority languages as media of instruction at lower primary level (UNESCO 2009). Such forms of overt language planning are believed to be instrumental to the maintenance or even, possibly, the revitalisation of minority and/or endangered languages (Schiffman 1995). However, as Shohamy (2006) highlights, many communities rely on covert language policies which make no explicit reference to language in any legal or administrative document. Instead, they draw quasi- exclusively from inferences derived from other forms of constitutional provisos. This dichotomy between covert and overt language policy and planning will be at the heart of this chapter as it seeks to explore the challenges faced by post-colonial Mauritius in implementing its own MTB MLE programme through the introduction of the vernacular languages of Mauritian Creole (MC) and Mauritian Bhojpuri (MB) as optional subjects at primary level. Indeed, despite its optimistic report to UNESCO’s International Bureau of Education in 2011 (UNESCO 2011) regarding the concurrent teaching of MC, MB and English, given the absence of an overt language policy governing the Mauritian educational system, decisions taken by the Ministry of Education and its stakeholders operate in what is essentially a legal and constitutional vacuum. Vernacular languages in an English-dominant education system: Mauritian Creole, Bhojpuri and the politics of ethnicity in multilingual Mauritius H. Coleman (ed.). 2017. Multilingualisms and Development. London: British Council. ISBN 978-0-86355-840-5 5