Many of the black elite, who send their children to English-speaking private schools or former white state schools, may accept English emerging as the sole national language.

ECONOMIST: English is dangerously dominant

But the change of name comes at a sensitive time in Karnataka, where the government recently went a step further and threatened with closure more than 2, 000 private schools that taught in English, not Kannada, the local language.

ECONOMIST: The politics of English in India's IT capital

Wisconsin's constitution has similar language about "uniformity, " but its state supreme court upheld Milwaukee's voucher program for private and public schools.

FORBES: Fact and Comment