SPECIALS
INTERVIEWS
CAPITAL BUZZ
REDIFF POLL
DEAR REDIFF
THE STATES
YEH HAI INDIA
ARCHIVES

Ashwin Mahesh

Extolling English has become a convenient tool to keep the opinion-makers happy and the underprivileged caged in their ignorance and poverty

Every culture boasts a literary heritage that tugs at the hearts and minds of its keepers. Vivid descriptions of idyllic landscapes, searing prose filled with stories of valour and justice, and ordinary tales of everyday lives present a window to the past, keeping it close. The world of our ancestors, seen through this window, is the anchor to which our lives' ships are firmly tied. It is also the foundation for our own stories, passed on to future generations. Education policies and socio-economic trends in India, instead of promoting this tradition, are destroying it.

The vested interest of the educated class has more or less made English the national language. Despite the overwhelming numbers of those who cannot speak English, the corridors of power and prosperity are lined almost exclusively by those who have some proficiency in the language. The ability to converse and write in English has become a requirement for upward mobility in Indian society. We now boast the world's second largest number of English speakers. Lost amidst grand visions of wealth and position associated with "our" foreign language is the fact that the legacy of Indian languages is eroding.

Not only does our singularly unimaginative education promote English as a necessary weapon in the quest for economic progress, it gives short shrift to our own languages at the same time. Desultory ideas on national and global integration are invoked to dilute the literary traditions of our many languages and replace them with marginal links that have no substance, let alone style. Together, they are turning the screws on our literary heritage, until its rich past is preserved only in small worlds of folklore, theatre and drama, and in vernacular on the streets that has no written form. Increasingly, we have only a little knowledge of our own languages.

In the famous words of Alexander Pope, this little knowledge is a dangerous thing. It is ironic, even sad, that the greatest threat to India's literary heritage is exemplified by this famous pithy of the English language that readily comes to mind.

Why are we systematically and energetically decrying our own languages? True, we have inherited the academic system of the colonial past, and the leanings towards English are rooted in this. My gripe is not with English; being myself fluent in the language, I should hardly lament its widespread use. It is not the increasing use of English that I bemoan, but only the accompanying decline in Indian languages. I mourn only the vigorous stupidity of a system that mistakenly promotes the unconnected literary heritage of alien lands over the umbilical ties of our own.

Most of us take some measure of bilingual education to be a given. Almost all readers of Rediff will be able to speak at least two languages, often many more. This merely reflects life in India, both in society and in the academic system. We learn two, if not three languages at school, and we almost daily run into people who can speak other languages besides the ones we know.

All of which is certainly desirable. Our ability to understand one another and to be more inclusive in our actions is clearly enhanced by being able to speak one another's tongues. Unfortunately, this process is twisted out of shape by a system that promotes O' Henry over Tagore, and Wordsworth over Bharati. Residents of our states are not really learning to speak each other's languages, they are instead trying to forge a common identity in a tongue that neither, for the most part, can speak with much proficiency.

My literary abilities are derived from my learning, principally in English. As such, my imagination is filled with images created by English prose and poetry. In the confines of my heart, however, the images of my land and myself are rooted in Subramania Bharati, Kamban and Valluvar. My mind's eye presents a curious mix of this reality. I can imagine the scales in Shylock's hand as he prepares to strike. Frost brought wintry woods to life in a way that was all too real when I first set eyes on them. The waterfalls at Kuttralam are as splendid in my imagination as the mighty Victoria. The seat-back inscriptions of Thiruvalluvar are as inspirational as the musings of de Tocqueville or Mark Twain.

In this picture, there is little space for the literary gems of such languages as Bengali or Urdu. In short, my literary consciousness is entirely occupied by English and (less prominently) Tamil writing. The only hope that this can promote any sense of brotherhood with my Gujarati or Oriya fellow-citizens lies in their ability and willingness to learn English, often at the cost of their own literary traditions. This is integration at its warped worst, where togetherness is reached by the deliberate downplaying of both our pasts. This process promotes a false unity that is easily shattered each time regionalism rears its head.

Moreover, the disproportionately high value that is placed on English has slowly eroded the power of my mind's eye. Despite a certain style and admiration with which I can recall a famous line from Tamil literature, I really don't have the sort of familiarity needed to talk about such lines at length. And I'm not alone in this predicament. Hundreds of thousands of Indian families can relate to the grandparents whose English is limited, parents whose English is better, and peers whose English is good. The unfailing associate to that process is that the grandparents' familiarity with Indian languages often far exceeds that of our generation.

European nations, many of them very small, face the risk of losing their linguistic heritage much as we do. Even relatively large nations like France are now facing this threat as the Internet, dominated by English, charges in. There are at least two lessons that we can learn from the way these nations are responding.

First, we must make the all-important distinction between learning a language and learning in it. It is important to know English, there is no doubting that. But must geography and history, science and commerce, be learned in English as well? Not necessarily. And that is precisely the approach that the Europeans have taken. They have not equated the process of learning English with unlearning German, Flemish or Spanish. The arts, science, and commerce classes in schools and universities are held in their own tongues, which is only natural. As such, English is learned as what it is -- a foreign language and a marketable skill.

Are they any the worse for this approach? Not at all. We may have the numbers on the Belgians or the Germans, but I suspect that an equal if not larger fraction of the populations of those countries can converse in English reasonably well. They simply know German or Flemish a lot better. As a result, significant knowledge is not vested in those with access to a foreign language. There is no premium on English except in specific jobs and industries, this is no different from knowing carpentry or plumbing. Knowledge of a foreign language is akin to possessing any special skill, and must be treated as such.

Admittedly, there are several public schools in India that teach in Indian languages, but their standard is so abysmal as to make them nothing more than temples to sinecurism. This is, unfortunately, derived from the prejudices of those who control education policy. Being for the most part highly educated and more importantly, having learned in English, this group is too caught up in elaborate ideas of its own self-importance to appreciate the value of learning in Hindi or Assamese. When even the policy makers display this bias, there is not much hope for the survival of strong literary traditions in Indian languages.

To the horror of those who cherish our own linguistic ancestry, this means that the qualified and able products of our academic systems are usually graduates of private schools, the majority of which use English as the medium of instruction. And university education being in English, this has simply weeded out even the few products of public schools who might have acquired some pretext of an education. This has created a powerful class of individuals well versed in English, and more importantly, very poorly versed in Indian languages including their own.

Even more demoralising, this is leading to a segregation in society based on language. Private educational institutions can be forgiven for their preference for English, they are simply supplying a commodity for which significant demand exists among the middle and upper classes. But when public education in universities shows this same propensity, it is shameful. An important ingredient in the process of helping people rise out of poverty is to provide them quality education in their own language. Extolling English has become a convenient tool to keep the opinion-makers happy and the underprivileged caged in their ignorance and poverty.

We should be stressing the value of learning in Kannada, Punjabi, Hindi or whatever our native language is, not English. One other language, ideally that of a neighboring state, should be taught as a second language. Other Indian languages, along with English, should be taught as a special skill for those who choose to acquire it. Additionally, university education should be in Indian languages; without this essential rider, all the other efforts will fail. This is not just rustic nationalism -- it is a common sense approach that will serve the interests of the downtrodden without affecting the privileged. Such an approach will also integrate our people better than anything else. As it is, the only semblance of an Indian togetherness exists among the affluent, who interact mostly in English.

The other lesson we can learn from the European experience is this -- to give no quarter. The French have tight laws regulating the use of languages other than French in commerce. Systematically, English is forced to play second fiddle. Apart from relying on the legal powers it holds, the French government also continually appeals to French nationalism and patriotism to garner support for the laws it enacts. "We are French, it's up to us to protect that identity" resonates across the land. Our government, on the other hand, has succumbed without a fight to the self-serving interests of the literate (and often thereby wealthy) class and mostly given up on learning in Indian languages.

The power of language cannot be underestimated. The loss of linguistic traditions results in the loss of an established means of being heard. French linguistic nationalism, not only in France, but elsewhere too, reflects this truth. The Quebecois look to France as a spokesman for them. Part of the reason Mobutu's despotic regime lasted a long time is that his rivals had all grown up in exile in English-speaking Uganda; the French did not want to see their influence undermined, and they helped prop the tyrant up. Language is a good part of the reason Britain looks to America as a natural ally.

If we act to cherish the languages that we call our own in a planned manner now, we might ward off their death. Else, they will go the way of hundreds of other languages in South America and Africa. The Dravidian resistance to Hindi has died down for the present, but in truth we learned nothing from that experience. The resistance was not only to the acquisition of Hindi, but also to the erosion of southern languages in the same step.

Language does not merely portray our lives, it is the human experience. Every word has a story behind it, and the stories collectively are the history of the people in them. If our stories are to be preserved, we must continue to tell them in ways that are unique to us. Embracing English is a legitimate and worthy exercise insofar as it meets our economic objectives, but in doing so, we should be careful that we do not simultaneously throw away the literary traditions that espouse and glorify who we are.

ALSO SEE:
Don't throw English out of India!
Dear Rediff

Ashwin Mahesh