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Lingua Fracas

The Tamil Nadu government wants to teach Tamil. Anywhere else in the world, this natural alignment of a language and the people who speak that tongue wouldn't rate as news; indeed it would in all likelihood be established practice of eons past and intended to be carried into the future. But the same, when it emanates from the deep south of our celebratedly diverse nation, is cause for consternation among those wielding pen and imagination alike against it. And suddenly, we are regaled with tales of Tamilians against Tamil and the exaggerated moaning of our supposed policy wonks.

Writing in rediff.com, Ganesh Nadar, for example, would have you believe that the decision of Muthuvel Karunanidhi's government is regressive, and offers many thanks that his own child can learn other languages than Tamil in Maharashtra instead. This looking-out-for-himself approach, however, is a combination of two things neither of which is in the interest of public dissemination of the facts. One, that the teaching of the native tongue is not limited to Tamilnadu and takes place routinely in other states. And two, that whereas a partisan elite might prefer learning in languages spoken by more people in pursuit of greater opportunity, this stance is meaningless to those who must exist within the confines of the societies in which they are born and raised.

Mr Nadar observes, and I will go as far as to concede he is right in this, that if one only knows Tamil, one is limited to opportunities in Tamilnadu, or at best in the small Tamil-speaking worlds elsewhere. Whereas, he says, armed with Hindi, he can traverse the nation, and with English even larger worlds. But why stop here? The logical conclusion to this line of thinking, is that his daughter should learn Chinese and Spanish, to truly widen her opportunities; the former, especially, is spoken by 1.2 billion people in the world's fastest growing economy! With some Arabic, Bengali, Bahasa and Russian, the whole world will be her stage.

This view of education completely side-steps the core issue. The question is not if his child gets the learning she needs to have opportunities all over India and around the world; instead it is whether the hitherto underprivileged, who along with their children rarely if ever leave their home states, need access to education in a language they already know. True, the small percentage of Tamilians who know Hindi and English will find opportunities elsewhere in India and in other nations, but those who do not leave the state, and who in our agrarian nation constitute the vast majority, have no particular benefit from learning in English. It is only reasonable that government policy be tailored to address them.

To put the vested learning interest of a few million upper class people above addressing the near-illiteracy of a much larger group reflects little more than the maximization of personal advantages. I don't blame Ganesh Nadar for this, but such insular benefit-seeking is hardly a sound basis for public policy. But hey, who's looking? Throw in a few references to Tamil politicians being LTTE sympathisers, the odd reference to burgeoning Internet in our homes, and populations kept in purdah, and it will all seem quite plausible. Right? Careful, Sir, in the fanciful world of the liberated self-absorbed, purdah is not a bad word, don't let them catch you with the veil down. And do you really want to know what fraction of Tamil homes have Internet connections?

For all the elitism of his family's opportunities as part of mobile middle-or-upper class India, the celebration of being liberated from Tamil-smothering is couched in egalitarian terms. What about the millions, Nadar asks, who cannot afford to move out of Tamilnadu to other states? A bit late in the day for this, for if those very millions had been offered the opportunity to learn in Tamil very many years ago, they might very well have established a robust and literate political and social system that would render this question silly. Instead, the education policies of the past taught a few privileged children in English and sent them off in search of global treasure and conveniently forgot the little man on the street.

The people of Tamilnadu already know Tamil. This is not a novel and magically intuitive component of education policy, instead it is the bedrock of common sense. Given that they know this language, it makes perfect sense that the early years of learning be in Tamil, for it makes education universally accessible to one and all.

The average matriculation school which teaches in English is neither interested in those who do not have proper access to education, nor is it genuinely seeking to integrate Tamilians with the rest of the world. Instead, the politics of teachers' unions and other gatherings of the privileged indifferent merely put the word out that Karunanidhi and Tamil Kudimagan are retrograde fellows with no sense of the real world.

And to help in this charade, what could be better than news reporters who blur the line between public opinion and news? Look at George Iype's report on rediff.com, titled 'Students and Teachers angered by imposition of Tamil', and ask yourself where in that report there is any significant mention of students being angered by this move. At any rate, given that only early schooling is mandatory in Tamil, is it really conceivable that a bunch of below-fifth graders were angry, and that they had brought this to the attention of the media somehow?

That brings up to another point, conveniently overlooked in the tirades against local languages. With all the brouhaha over the issue, one can be forgiven for thinking that the Tamilnadu government is out to eliminate English from the state. Which is far from the truth, English language education is restricted only at the earliest levels, and in recognition of the fact that university education continues to be in English, the transition to learning in English is set to take place several years ahead of graduation from high school. If five to seven years of learning in English is insufficient preparation for university programs, then perhaps those unable to make that switch shouldn't be going to university in the first place.

The other issue, often attached to this emotive matter, is of Dravidian sub-nationalism. The emphasis on Tamil, it is said, will encourage a separate identity disconnected from mainstream India. Frankly, there is very little evidence of this, whereas on the other hand there is considerable history to the other side, wherein emphasis on other languages, notably Hindi, led to the sense of alienation when in fact it was purportedly designed to facilitate integration with the rest of India. There is, quite simply, no truth to this allegation.

For all that, sub-nationalism is neither against the law nor counter to the spirit of federalism which every government at the centre is wholeheartedly championing. The real shame in the smear campaign against genuine federalism is that a prime minister like Deve Gowda, obviously poorly versed in the northern tongue, would nevertheless attempt to read his speeches in Hindi, after having them written in Kannada! While news commentary is busy investigating whether Murasoli Maran speaks English with or without an accent, or if Jayalalitha learned good English in a convent, the main thrust of the discourse, finding ways to educate the populace as quickly as possible, is entirely lost.

To me, this is the crux of the issue. In any state of India, or in any nation with large uneducated sections, teaching in local languages is imperative to the process of eradicating illiteracy. Elites who glorify their own English-language education, without considering its proper perspective for the masses, merely toe the established game, wherein a limited number of opportunities are controlled by those with access to this privileged education. That's why the positions of power are filled with those who can speak English, whereas those on the outside mostly do not. To argue that this is indicative of the value of English is to attempt to recast the illiterate in the self-image of the elite. This is bombastic at best, and teaches nothing.

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