For
a people blessed with over a thousand tongues, fascination with languages
is nothing if not understandable. Even a couple of millennia ago, a man (or a
woman) with a polished tongue was held in high esteem. Poets who could compose
dreams in words were revered and among the graces which were sought from the
Gods, was vak (power of speech). Few cultures other than India would
have had instances were rules of grammar were codified and universally accepted.
The Indian’s urge to ‘perfect’ the word was so strong that the language itself
was called ‘polished’ (Sanskrit).
Yet, like any other aspect of life, too much of a good thing may not really be good. Blessed with intellect, but made arrogant by belief in their achievement, for many - mastery over the word became the yardstick for knowledge. It mattered little if this mastery resulted in anything productive or worthwhile; if a snatak could utter perfectly formed words, in the perfect meter, woven together in a flowery tapestry, other mere mortals were supposed to shake their heads in amazement and utter - Ah. Me!
History records that the East India Company offered to set up colleges offering Sanskrit and Arabic languages to the Hindus and Muslims respectively. However, the Bengali Hindus, petitioned that there were already numerous native institutions to take care of the Sanskrit language. What Hindus needed was a modern educational institution which would open them to modern sciences and the English language.
200 years have passed since then. Today, India boasts of among the largest English speaking populations in the world. Not only is English an official language of governance; culturally, it is the prime language of India. If this seems outrageous, let’s just look around. Signages, hoardings, IT systems are all in English. Somehow it is a given that each Indian possesses or should possess knowledge of English to move around, if not ahead.
Many nationalists are astounded that despite a robust freedom struggle, Indians have refused to reject English in favour of native languages. Yet, it is hardly surprising when one considers that for over 800 years, Indians have preferred foreign languages over their own. Not very long back, the test of a person’s education was his knowledge of Persian – Haath kangan ko aarsi kya, padhe likhe ko Farsi kya? Not only did Indians embrace Arabic and Persian, many till date consider these languages more sophisticated and polished than ‘crass’ Indian tongues. A case in point would be the contrived truism of Urdu being the most mellifluous of languages. Quite interestingly, while Indians (particularly of the secular variety) consider Hindi peppered with Turko-Arabic-Persian loanwords to be a better (and secular) language compared to Hindi proper, Greeks consider Turko-Arabic loanwords as uncouth and uncivilized. The reason is very simple – while Islamic rule managed to inflict a fatal blow to the Indian’s sense of accomplishment, the Greeks, despite being under the Ottoman rule for centuries, treated the Turks as barbarians and their civilization, worthy only of contempt.
No wonder that the Indian’s historical predilection of foreign languages, coupled with a Macaulayed education system and supplemented by a British system of governance, has resulted in English being the de facto National Language of India.
Nothing would prove the argument on primary of English better than the “Sanskritisation’ of English. By the virtue of its rules, each Sanskrit word has to be used and pronounced in a particular way(s). While when compared to Sanskrit, English does not have much of rules, the Indian elites have ensured that only the Queen’s English, spoken with the oh-so-propah accent is seen as English. So, while other English speaking Nations manage beautifully well with their local variants of the language, Indians find ‘Indianisms’ a matter of ridicule. If English is indeed an Indian language, as many votaries of English claim, what is wrong in Indianising English? A language can enrich itself only through cultural interfaces. Even Sanskrit has been influenced by Dravidian and Austroasiatic languages, so why so much of resistance to letting Indians speak English the way they are comfortable with? Will not a working knowledge of the language suffice, like it does for vast sections of the world? Or does the Indian elite expect each English-speaking Indian to produce a literary tome worthy of a Nobel? Funny, when you consider that in the last 100 years, none of such Indians have managed to even come close to winning recognition for their language skills.
The fact of the matter, as the Dalit activist, Chandrabhan Prasad said –English is the new caste system. Those who know English are the new dvija (twice-born); those ignorant are the Shudra and ati-shudra. And since all the twice-born cannot be equal, the institution of study, the accent, usage of words not commonly used in general conversations, become those filters which define the caste hierarchy further. It would be ironical to all others but these elites that while intermixing of native language loanwords in English communication would be considered a sign of ill-education, a person conversing in pristine Hindi would also be considered un-sophisticated, if not uneducated. When the forced controversy over Ved Pratap Vaidik’s meeting with Hafeez Saeed cropped up, a striking feature of the commentaries were the ridicule heaped on Vaidik being a vernacular journalist!
The moot question is – are Indians falling in the trap of language worship yet again? Pray, what benefit would the Nation accrue if all the Indians start conversing only in the dialect preferred by the Queen of Buckingham palace? Will the Nation not be served better, if these energies are diverted towards achieving excellence in vocational skills or simply improving product/service quality?
