Is there a way to force the format of a README.txt file on github?

I uploaded some code to github with a README.txt file that's in ReStructuredText format. Is there a way to instruct github to format this file as rest instead of just plain text?

What is the format of README.md file?

The default readme file contains the repository name and some basic instructions. The file format is 'md', which stands for Markdown documentation. It is a lightweight markup language that can be easily converted to text.

Should README be MD or txt?

README.md is used to generate the html summary you see at the bottom of projects. Github has their own flavor of Markdown. Order of Preference: If you have two files named README and README.md , the file named README.md is preferred, and it will be used to generate github's html summary.

The file name should end in rest, rst, rest.txt or rst.txt

https://github.com/github/markup