Who’s Afraid of English?

 AFTER MY PREVIOUS column on Macaulay Putras, a friend who is not so much a champion of Hindi but a staunch opponent of English, invited me to coffee pe charcha. The venue was his favourite coffee shop in one of the capital’s well-regarded five-star hotels.

“I’m so glad that the prime minister has put you English-wallas in your place!” he exclaimed, firing his opening salvo. As a lifelong English professor and an Indian English writer to boot, I knew I was an easy target.

That he had shot off in English against English was an irony lost on him. And rightly so. Since colonial times, the fight against English rule, which included the fight against the hegemony of the English language, was often conducted in English. By Indians. Very patriotic and nationalistic Indians too. Who took great trouble learning the language of their conquerors, partly learnt from them and partly to overthrow them.

I have written about this in my book Making India: Colonialism, National Culture, and the Afterlife of Indian English Authority (2012). The fight for Swaraj is inconceivable without Indians wielding the English language against English imperial power. Today, some 250 years after its introduction into the subcontinent, many Indians who rail against English do so, quite naturally and unconsciously, in that very language. Most discussions for or against English, especially in elite circles in India, also happen in English.

That English is no longer a foreign language or a link language in India is a truism. It is not even a second or secondary language. It has so permeated into Indian consciousness and society that there is hardly anyone I know who speaks in any Indian language without using at least a few English words in every other sentence. Even in Parliament. Check this out and correct me if I am wrong.

Being a smart businessman, my friend claims never to hire English-educated subordinates. “They think no end of themselves and expect a higher salary.” He adds, with a confidential smirk, “My attrition rates are very low.” Naturally. Those who don’t know English find it harder to switch careers.

“But,” I persist, “did you care to find out where your employees’ children study?” He dodges a straight answer, “What can I do if government schools aren’t good and there is a craze for ‘convent’ education?” Obviously, his employees and their children have understood the close connection between English and upward mobility in India.

I cannot think of any job in which knowing English is a disadvantage. No wonder, his own children go to the best English-medium schools, with enough laid aside for higher education in greener, if costlier, pastures abroad.

I try again: “We Indians need not be apologetic even if we are not proud of our English prowess. Knowing any language well, including English, is definitely not a crime, let alone a handicap.” My friend raises his voice after banging down his coffee cup: “Are you trying to say that we should know and promote English at the expense our mother tongue and other Indian languages?”

I smile. “That is the typical strawman fallacy. You turn my position into something totally different from what I said or intended only to make it sound so despicable that it can be demonised and discredited easily.”

“Don’t try to be too smart, Professor,” my friend retorts. We are old friends and therefore quite like children when we quarrel. “But I must,” I respond, “Let me give your own side of the argument greater strength before presenting my counter. We used to call it purvpaksha. Though people use this term rather loosely and carelessly, if not incorrectly, these days. At its worst, English is responsible for worldwide linguicide.”

“Linguicide? What do you mean?”

“Small languages which come in contact with big languages often perish.

And English is a guilty party. But so is ‘standard’ Hindi. Many local varieties of the larger Hindi-Hindustani-Urdu- Dakhni family are disappearing because the children of native speakers of these dialects never learn them. They only know the official variety of Hindi. The same phenomenon is much more evident in China where standard Mandarin has ironed out several regional tongues.”

My friend turns thoughtful. “How can ignorance be a virtue? How can not knowing our own languages and adopting English ever work out well for us?”

“The real question is whether we know any language well, whether it’s our mother tongue or English. The younger ones even think digital literacy alone is enough. But digital literacy does not develop mental muscles.”

“STEM is sufficient. Why invest in humanities and social studies? It only corrupts the youth,” says my friend. “Sadly,” I reply, “most AI apps today can write better, apparently, even think better than our graduates or even postgraduates. But pseudo-cognition is different from deep cognition. And the latter accrues only through reading, writing, and thinking.”

We seem to have reached an impasse. I decide to change my approach, “If both of us did not know English, in which language would we be conversing today?” Unhesitatingly, he switches to Hindi. I smile and ask, “But suppose I did not know Hindi?” He looks baffled. “What if you were in a state deep south, say Tamil Nadu? Or the east or north-east? Or even a village in Punjab? Hardly anybody speaks Hindi there. Only Punjabi.”

“No, no; they can talk in any Indian language,” my friend responds. But he himself knows no other Indian language. He tries to turn the tables on me: “How many languages do you know?” “I have an unfair advantage over you,” I reply, “I’ve lived in many parts of India and know several, including some from south of the Vindhyas.”

My friend is frowning. He does not like the way the conversation is going. He retorts, “So what? Google Translate can do most of it today. Why bother?” I reply, “Precisely. That argument also holds true for Hindi or, for that matter, Sanskrit.” I remind him that great Indian political leaders like Tilak, Gokhale, Gandhi, Savarkar, Nehru, and Bose wrote extensively in English.

And great writers too. Not just Bangla masters like Bankim and Tagore, but Hindi- Urdu writers such as Sachchidananda Hirananda Vatsyayan ‘Agyeya’, Harivansh Rai Bachchan, Firaq Gorakhpuri, and Nirmal Verma were adept in English. Bachchan and Gorakhpuri were English professors. The Marathi maestro Bhalchandra Nemade taught English and Linguistics. The major Kannada writer UR Anantha Murthy was a PhD in English and a professor of English too.

But the dominance of English must end, my friend interrupts me, somewhat angrily. “Undoubtedly,” I agree, “but it cannot be coerced top down…”

Our debate is inconclusive. A businessman is always busy: my friend must leave. As he gets up, I notice that the newspaper he has been reading is a leading financial daily, of course, in English.

Now, he calls his driver. He is speaking Hindi, but half the words, including “hotel”, “lobby” and “late” are English. His driver, a Tamilian in Delhi, knows both Hindi and English, in addition to his mother tongue. He knows better, it would seem, than both the Hindi and the Tamil wallas.