English holds the key to success
Lee Kuan Yew once attended a rally for C N Annadurai, the charismatic DMK politician, who was visiting Singapore. Although Lee didn’t understand a word of Anna’s chaste Tamil, he was entranced by the crowd’s delirium and the knowledge that 40 million people in Tamil Nadu (and more abroad) were similarly captivated. “He had cast his spell over both Sparta and Athens!” Lee exclaimed wonderingly. That experience convinced him “it is virtually impossible for a nation to be strong, united and informed without linguistic unity.” At the same time, a nation cannot shut out knowledge. Lee’s answer for India was “an Indianized version of English which would be understood throughout India and also by English-speaking people abroad.”
However, and ironically, a minority government appears to want to foist a minority language on the majority. While only 26 per cent of Indians speak Hindi, the Bharatiya Janata Party won only 31 per cent of the votes in 2014. But I say ‘appears’ because it is by no means certain that the order regarding government dignitaries, including the President of India, making public speeches only in Hindi marks the beginning of a national campaign to banish English and the regional languages.
One reason why I wonder if implementing some of the 117 proposals to popularise Hindi by the parliamentary committee on official language may be window-dressing is the subsequent clarification that they are not mandatory. Another reason is that although Narendra Modi is Hindi-speaking, he spoke at length in English when it came to an important matter like demonetisation. It could well be that the presidential order on public speeches is only to impress cow belt voters while the real business of living is conducted in English beyond their reach. After all, the language of ceremonial speeches by VVIPs has little bearing on education, technical training or job generation.
The real reason why the vast multitude will keep Hindi at bay, even while their English becomes more and more ‘Hinglish,’ as Lee might say, is that India is young and ambitious. All the inconveniences one grumbles about – packed trains, condominiums towering over every scrap of land, pavements lost to shops and eating stalls – testify to the dynamic urge to survive. More than half of India’s population is below 25; more than 65 per cent is under 35. The average age will be 29 by 2020, making India the world's youngest country with 64 per cent of its population of working age. This youth surge isn’t hamstrung by fuddy-duddy notions of nationalism. The young Indian is not a prisoner of geography. The world is his oyster. And the world isn’t Hindi-speaking.
Even West Bengal, which once firmly rejected English, is now setting up English-medium state schools. The young India’s future often lies in Britain, Australia and the US. Denied legitimate access to the language, he will wangle informal access through crammers, private tuition, correspondence courses, external exams, notes and made-easies. Many more so-called English-medium schools will sprout and flourish. Years of import-substitution austerity have taught us skills of evasion, inventiveness, compromise and manipulation. Come what may, ambitious young Indians will not allow political opportunism and obtuseness to cheat them of the future.
The impression of a Hindi crusade must be balanced against our national predilection for diversionary tactics. Hints about the hidden motive for the suddenly revived CBI action against Lal Krishna Advani over the Babri Masjid demolition are a reminder of how British companies outflanked the government’s quota for Indians in the higher echelons in the 1950s. Instead of filling the quota, they recruited a few sons of influential personalities (irrespective of qualifications or lack of them) as senior executives, which may have been the intention all along. But the impact can be cataclysmic if the parliamentary committee’s proposals ranging from frivolous to dangerous, which have been gathering dust for five years, are implemented.
Only the other day the “ma-pra” (for “mahattvapurna pratishthan” or vital installations) printed in Hindi on an advisory by Uttar Pradesh police intelligence was mistaken for Madhya Pradesh, sending shock waves through the Bhopal secretariat. The ban on singing in Hindi served on the popular musician Zubeen Garg at the Assamese Bihu (New Year’s) festival was a reminder that pushing one language prompts rival claimants, with the danger of plunging us into linguistic anarchy.
Believing like Lee in classical theories of nationhood, Jawaharlal Nehru tried to make Hindi the national language. But being a democrat and sensitive to minority aspirations, he would not force India’s rich diversity into the straitjacket of a single mould. His 1963 Official Languages Act ensured English would remain paramount for a decade. Although often accused of dictatorial tendencies, Indira Gandhi shared his cosmopolitan outlook, appreciation of practical difficulties, and concern for the hopes and fears of people in the South and North-east who lacked the Gangetic plain’s political clout but were equal members of the Indian family. She amended Nehru’s Act to guarantee indefinite extension of English’s official status.
One of Mrs Gandhi’s favourite stories comes to mind. She mentioned two knowledgeable Englishmen who were arguing whether tashri or rakabi was the right word for a small salver. Unable to decide, they consulted their Hindi-speaking bearer. “Huzoor” he replied, “hum toh isko ‘palate’ kahte hain. (Sir, we call this a plate).”
The lower you reach in society, the greater the use of English words. P V Narasimha Rao missed the full picture in telling Singaporeans that India had absorbed every foreign conqueror save the last. The British remained biological aliens but their language and culture are essential to modern India’s identity. I don’t mean the obvious ‘sahibs’ who play golf and attend cocktail parties. I mean people like the Englishman’s bearer who would not dream of calling a telephone shabd ko door bhejne ka yantra which is the official translation. Kanth ka langot for necktie may have been a joke but he has never heard of taar rahit or even betar. Radio is part of his unconscious vocabulary, like telephone and television. Eclecticism is the hallmark of a society on the move, and ours is frantically clambering up the greasy pole. The humbler the speaker’s status the more strenuously he must climb to escape the linguistic prison in which his superiors would confine him.
The information and broadcasting minister, Muppavarapu Venkaiah Naidu, demands that “programmes such as ‘Make in India’ and ‘Digital India’ will become successful only when we use more Hindi in implementing them.” Possibly true, but where in Bihar or Madhya Pradesh will he find the big manufacturing and software industries to promote “Make in India” and “Digital India” in Hindi for locals? Romanized Hindustani won’t solve the problem for, as Lee stressed, language must lead to data. “Where is your store of new knowledge?” he asked. “Are you going to translate all the latest discoveries in medicine – diagrams, everything – from American into romanized Hindustani?” English holds the key to success. And Young India knows it.
A minority government appears to want to foist a minority language on the majority.While only 26 per cent of Indians speak Hindi, the Bharatiya Janata Party won only 31 per cent of the votes in 2014. But I say ‘appears’ because it is by no means certain that the order regarding government dignitaries, including the President of India, making public speeches only in Hindi marks the beginning of a national campaign to banish English and the regional languages.