FORKED TONGUE
Indians will gain by resisting political attempts to oust the English language
The Encyclopedia Britannica Year Book 2008 gives the percentagewise linguistic composition of India thus: Hindi - 27.58, Bengali - 8.22, Telugu - 7.8, Marathi - 7.38, Tamil - 6.26, Urdu - 5.13, Gujarati - 4.81, Kannada - 3.87, Malayalam - 3.59, Oriya - 3.22, Punjabi - 2.76, Assamese - 1.55, Bhili/Bhilodi - 0.25, Santhali - 0.62, Kashmii - 0.47, Gondi, Sindhi and nepali - 0.25, Konkani - 0.21, Tulu - 0.18, Kurukh - 0.17, Manipuir - 0.15, Bodo - 0.14, Khandeshi - 0.12, Others - 3.26. It also informs that 66 persent of Indians speak Hindi and 19 persent know and speak English, the "foregn" language.
The above figures clearly show that 27.42 per cent of the non-Hindi speakers have voluntarily chosen to follow Hindi, the language of 38.58 per cent Indians. The statistics also indicate that a sizeable number of non-English-speaking Indians is taking to the language of the British.
What would happen if leaders vow to work against the use of English in education and in computers to take the country “forward”? Has anyone thought of the possible ramifications of such an absurd proposition? Indians seeking mandate from the people should desist from inciting unrest because of the existence of several faultlines in Indian society. Leaders need to take lessons from past follies: how can one forget the language riots that took place in the recent past?
Indians must remember that the nation-building process has no place for dogma, inflexibility and rigid ideology. Those who are speaking of banning English would do well to remember that even during the 19th century, Sir Syed Ahmad Khan defied all opposition to propound the necessity of English education.
The price that one pays for eschewing English can be seen in West Bengal today. The Bengalis, who once reaped the benefit of English education, have made a monumental mistake by ignoring the ‘foreign’ language for the sake of the vernacular medium.
Meanwhile, the ultra-conservative Chinese went all out to ensure the success of the Beijing Olympics by arming themselves with the knowledge of English. Today, Indians are teaching English in China as well as in the West. If India were to discard the English advantage, one would surely find thousands of Chinese teaching English all over the globe ten years from now.
Since elections bring Indians closer to their prospective rulers, they witness fantastic proposals and grandiose schemes that promise to ‘uplift’ the people. Seen in this light, the demand for a separate Dalit regiment in the army, for instance, is not surprising. But what if similar demands are raised by other groups too? Not too long ago, the former Gujarat chief minister, Keshubhai Patel, L.K. Advani and Narendra Modi had demanded a separate Gujarat regiment. Fortunately, the idea was shot down by the then chief of army staff, General V.P. Malik, who felt that the army could not be divided on linguistic lines. Indians — voters and netas — stand to gain from understanding the importance of unity. They should shun divisive utterances and remain united.
The above article of Abhijit Bhattacharya has been taken from "the Telegtraph" of today.
It gives the same argument which I had given some time ago.
When English is known and spoken by 19 percent of the population, it cannot by any chance be considered a foregn language.
It comes second after Hindi as the most spoken language in India, ahead of Bengali - 8.22 percent, which comes third.
The sooner our leaders of the Hindi speaking cow-belt realize this and stop English-bashing for vote bank politics, the better will it be for the unity of India.
And this bashing is done by those politicians who themselves put their children in English medium schools.
Radheshyam
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