THE REARVIEW MIRROR FALLACY

English and India’s Colonial Hangover

The last time I was in Kerala, my home state, despite myself, I happened to get into a silly argument with a guy who denounced English education and upheld the need for Indians to ‘find their roots’ by promoting native languages. My argument was, while promoting native languages was laudable, why curb English, which has distinctly given Indians an edge on the global stage. Indignant over his dogmatism, at one stage, I challenged the gentleman to write down a paragraph in Malayalam that I would read out to him from a newspaper, which he gleefully agreed. It was a shot in the dark, but I was not wrong. A para of hundred-odd words he wrote contained seven spelling mistakes! He could not write a para in his own mother tongue without so many mistakes, and he was pretending to be its champion.

Little did he know that, despite topping my class in English language all through my school days because of my love for that language, I had scored more marks in Malayalam paper than the English one in my school final exam. What I myself did not know at that time was that my fascination for English was rooted in my exhaustive reading of Malayalam books as a schoolboy, so much so that the librarian of our village library, which stocked only Malayalam books, once complained to my father that he had no more books to offer me because I had read them all. I still love the beautiful language my mother tongue is, although I have not been able to keep abreast of its thriving literature after I left Kerala more than half a century ago. The point I am trying to make is, if you love one language, you love them all. Linguistic aptitude is not different from the numerical one or any other. Therefore, I find absolutely no conflict in children being given the opportunity to learn multiple languages, indigenous or foreign.

Thomas Macualay might have promoted English language to serve the British interests, but the British are gone and English has remained in India. If anything, it has only served the national cause of Indians. Let’s not forget that our nationalist leaders managed to connect with the whole of India only through English. I would say that the English language proved a double-edged weapon for the British, much as the Indian armed forces and several other institutions they set up did. Those who crow about erasing the colonial legacy are wasting their time and that of the nation on a non-issue. The British Raj was a blip in the long history of our ancient land, brought about by our complacence. The British looted our country to no end, but they also happened to be fools who could not see beyond the tip of their nose. They were a bunch of robbers, who looted and scooted, leaving behind some of the stuff that has proved useful to us. We ought to be pragmatic and move on as a great nation should, instead of a fixation akin to being glued to the rearview mirror while driving.

It’s time we shrugged our negative complexes and moved on. We are too great a country to be stuck with historical rights and wrongs. We are an amalgamation that has retained its originality because of the liberal people we are. Let’s not slide into retrograde tendencies, while we should be moving forward with confidence.