INDIA’S LANGUAGE DISPUTE

A Battle without a Cause

The latest political slugfest going on in India on the three-language versus two-language system of education is rather exasperating. Is it that important an issue that the leaders of the centre and state governments should attribute so much of their valuable time to?

Prior to independence, India had no national language. For that matter India as a nation itself was merely a cultural concept and not a geopolitical entity until 26 January 1950, when we affirmed ourselves as a republic. At that time, the only language that people from all over India, at least the educated ones, could communicate with each other in was English. No wonder, it was accepted as an Indian language. Seventy-five years on, it continues to be the only official language that links the entire country. Meanwhile, despite no specific governmental policy of support or encouragement, the number of English-speaking citizenry has increased multifold, making India’s one of the largest English-speaking populations of the world, although it makes up for only 15 percent of the country’s population. Nevertheless, it has given us a tremendous edge globally by possessing the world’s largest English-speaking work force. Is it a bad thing?

Indeed, the popularity of English language in the country is a legacy of our colonial past; but then, so are the railways, the army and umpteen other institutions of the country that have come to stay. Should we get rid of all those, merely for their colonial lineage? It would be naïve to imagine everything that began in the colonial era as to have been bequeathed to us by the British. All those were built on Indian money and Indian toil to meet the colonial ambitions of plundering the country, except that it turned out to be a shortsighted strategy. The British foolishly assumed that their empire in India would last eternally, whereas it lasted barely a century, before being dismantled by multiple forces of purely Indian origin.

It’s not the case that the British conquered our country by their military might and we ought to feel ashamed. They had usurped it by deceit and chicanery and ended up being outwitted by forces they couldn’t foresee in their greed-fixated, pea-brained state. It is a fact of history we need to be wise to. Yes, but for the disunity and incompetence of our native rulers, we probably would never have had to undergo the shame of being colonized; but that’s done and dusted and we have emerged as a democracy and a modern nation, many times more powerful than Britain. It’s time for us to look forward instead of brooding over the past. You cannot have your eyes glued to the rearview mirror while you are driving.

Yes, I am making a case for English to be made the official language of India with no ambiguity thereof. Look at Singapore, they didn’t bother to find a new official language after independence and continues with English. Does it deprive them of their international standing or progress in any manner? The point I wish to make is that why are we wasting our time and efforts for finding a ‘national language’ when we already have an official language which is proving eminently suitable for the job? Let’s not compare ourselves with smaller nations like France or Germany, where the entire population speaks one language. We are a multi-linguistic country, where there can be claims and counter-claims of which language is ‘national’. If we are talking about a language, which the non-English-speaking majority of the country can communicate with each other, Hindi is already working out very well as a link language, although many may not be able to read or write it. It wouldn’t come as a surprise if you hear people humming a Bollywood tune or conversing in passable Hindi in places as far from the Hindi belt as the Northeast or the South.

In fact, Bollywood has done a far better job of popularizing Hindi than the Hindi Prachar Sabha or the 3-language education policy the Central Government keeps harping about. Even in Tamil Nadu, which staunchly opposes the 3-languge system, Hindi movies run house-full in cinemas and salespersons at the shops and establishments of cities and towns across the state interact effortlessly with Hindi-speaking customers. What does it tell us? There is no need to impose any language for common people to talk to each other. All we need is a lingo that connects people. As far as the officialdom goes, we already have a language in place. Therefore, wouldn’t it be far more prudent to dump the language issue as irrelevant and focus our efforts and energies on more significant areas that cry for attention, say universal medical care or job creation for instance?

That said, speaking of the 3-language formula, why would some states so adamantly oppose their students learning a third language after primary level, as long as it is one of their choice? Of course, whether the schools can afford to employ multiple language teachers, if at all the scheme is implemented, is altogether a different matter. Nevertheless, in principle, what’s wrong with the students learning a new language? Any fear of a state’s language being overwhelmed because of the children learning other languages is misplaced, because how do you promote your own language if you do not know any other? The best way to promote one’s own language is to learn others, thereby opening vistas of cross translations of literature. The state governments which are concerned about the status and future of their languages must focus on instituting chairs in universities outside the state and overseas for those, rather than resorting to protectionism.

The central and various state governments have, over the years, tried to throttle the English education by foolhardy education policies in the pretext of promoting a national language or mother tongues, with disastrous consequences. Today we have a vast number of engineering and medical graduates, who came from government schools with regional language as the medium of instruction, struggling to converse in English. This puts them at a clear disadvantage in their career progression.

In old days, before the present language mania set in, even ordinary government schools imparted reasonable level of English education, which enabled even a matriculate to fit into a situation where a working knowledge of English was called for. And the political bigwigs who engineer this travesty over hapless poor children, cunningly have their own children enrolled in elite private schools or sent abroad. While the worst affected states are in the Hindi belt of UP and Bihar, even states like Tamil Nadu and West Bengal cannot be absolved of this transgression. Mercifully, the latter states are doing course corrections, but the northern states continue to deny a reasonable level of English education to the children of government schools, buoyed by the government policies rendering it irrelevant, such as permitting the UPSC exams in regional languages. This depravity bespeaks a nonsensical mindset, which instead of grooming the children to be competitive, condemns them to perpetual victimhood of the frog-in-the-well syndrome. In a way, it is akin to the freebies’ culture which every political party in India subscribes to, instead of promoting an environment wherein people work and earn.

When will our political class learn to focus on addressing the country’s real problems, instead of perpetually squabbling over myriad non-issues they marvel in propping up, the language dispute being just one of those?