The English world advertises India's success as reason for the rest of the world to shed its languages and embrace English. This won't happen. English will remain as first among equals in a multi-polar world and will not enjoy dominance at the exclusion of others. In India's case, English is not a complete blessing as is made out to be. It turned us into a nation of imitators, apart from creating an army of self-loathing intellectuals.
I enjoyed the article especially because it highlighted Indian education's focus on mathematics and science, something critical to India's positioning as an intellectual and higher-end producer in the near future. However, I also do agree that Indian education is extremely poor in promoting its own language and history and culture properly, due to which Indians will never have the same level of self-respect and self-confidence as other nationals (unless of course some lucky ones start taking some initiative in researching their own language and culture, such as many who frequent this blog).
Hi all, I would like to relate an incident today in relation to the topic of Indian language versun English.
While driving to office I was hearing to a radio program in Telugu in which the 'chela' asks the guru, what is the difference between English and Telugu (Keep any Indian language in place of it, esp. a regional language). The guru replies that in case of Telugu, a person knowing it speaks as if he doesnt know it and in case of English, even a person not knowing it speaks as if he knows it. This is the sad state of Indian languages today. (maybe with a exception of Hindi, Tamil, Punjabi, Marathi and Bengali - I find these language people to be proud of speaking their language, esp. in their states, I do not mean that others are less proud, this is just an observation.) But overall English, though doing some good, has done a lot of harm...
I am a Tamil and I say the situation in TN is equally bad. I thought other states were better but looks like it is not the case. I think this is due to the inferiority complex fed to our children from their school days thru McCauley education. If you try to get rid off it or change it, as Murali Manohar Joshi tried, you will be branded a “Saffronite” or “Saffronisation of education”. What the hell that means? nobody knows including the morons mouthing it.
4 comments:
The English world advertises India's success as reason for the rest of the world to shed its languages and embrace English. This won't happen. English will remain as first among equals in a multi-polar world and will not enjoy dominance at the exclusion of others. In India's case, English is not a complete blessing as is made out to be. It turned us into a nation of imitators, apart from creating an army of self-loathing intellectuals.
I enjoyed the article especially because it highlighted Indian education's focus on mathematics and science, something critical to India's positioning as an intellectual and higher-end producer in the near future. However, I also do agree that Indian education is extremely poor in promoting its own language and history and culture properly, due to which Indians will never have the same level of self-respect and self-confidence as other nationals (unless of course some lucky ones start taking some initiative in researching their own language and culture, such as many who frequent this blog).
Hi all,
I would like to relate an incident today in relation to the topic of Indian language versun English.
While driving to office I was hearing to a radio program in Telugu in which the 'chela' asks the guru, what is the difference between English and Telugu (Keep any Indian language in place of it, esp. a regional language).
The guru replies that in case of Telugu, a person knowing it speaks as if he doesnt know it and in case of English, even a person not knowing it speaks as if he knows it.
This is the sad state of Indian languages today. (maybe with a exception of Hindi, Tamil, Punjabi, Marathi and Bengali - I find these language people to be proud of speaking their language, esp. in their states, I do not mean that others are less proud, this is just an observation.)
But overall English, though doing some good, has done a lot of harm...
Sameer,
I am a Tamil and I say the situation in TN is equally bad. I thought other states were better but looks like it is not the case. I think this is due to the inferiority complex fed to our children from their school days thru McCauley education. If you try to get rid off it or change it, as Murali Manohar Joshi tried, you will be branded a “Saffronite” or “Saffronisation of education”. What the hell that means? nobody knows including the morons mouthing it.
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