Fwd: Did English Education destroyed our Minds and Skills? - excellent article by Madhu Kishwar

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: sri venkat
Date: Sun, Jun 2, 2013 at 2:06 AM
Subject: Did English Education destroy our Minds and Skills? - excellent article by Madhu Kishwar
To:


fwd comment - An excellent article by Madhu Kishwar on how english has
destroyed both minds and skills of our people..   Its a lengthy
article, but a must to read, if we want to understand why india is in
a mess today..

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http://creative.sulekha.com/the-dominance-of-angreziyat-in-our-education_103472_blog

Destroying Minds and Skills
                       The Dominance of Angreziyat in Our Education
Societies which have put vast amounts of energy and thinking into
providing good quality education and opportunities for acquiring
diverse skills for their people are today not only prosperous but also
well ordered. We seem to have done the very opposite. On the one hand
our policy makers have helped destroy through wilful neglect and
contempt the vast reservoir of indigenous skills and knowledge systems
acquired and nurtured over centuries by our own people. On the other
hand they have failed to create a viable system for the acquisition of
modern skills and education for all those who are abandoning their
traditional occupations. Consequently, it is not just corruption but
also sheer incompetence which is leading to a breakdown in our
society.

The New Colonisers
So far the world knows India primarily as a country which has earned
the dubious distinction of producing the largest number of illiterate
people in the world. In the next 50 years we will also be able to
claim that we are among the distinguished few nations of the world
which has the largest number of people illiterate in their own mother
tongue! By retaining English as the medium of elite education,
professions and government functioning, even after being formally
freed from colonial rule, we have ensured that the schism that was
deliberately created by our colonial rulers between the
English-educated elite and the rest of society has grown even further
and acquired deadly dimensions. A hundred years ago our
intelligentsia, even when it learnt English, still remained rooted in
its respective regional languages and mother tongues. Tagore knew
English but chose to write in Bengali, thereby nurturing his language
as well as the overall intellectual climate of Bengal. Likewise,
Mahatma Gandhi could express complex ideas in English more simply,
elegantly and effectively than most British. Yet he wrote with even
better grace in Gujarati and even Hindustani. However, the
great-grandchildren of our Tagores, Ranades, Premchands and Gandhis
are today all writing mostly in English. Worse still, even our
scriptures and ancient literary texts are read by our educated elite
mainly in English. Consequently, the mental, emotional and
intellectual colonisation has proceeded with greater rigour and pace
in post-Independence India than during colonial rule. The brown sahibs
of the British era spoke English only in office. The brown sahibs of
today have let English become their language for love making, talking
to their infant children and even scolding their pet dogs!

However, this does not mean that they have acquired enough proficiency
in the language for it to act as an effective instrument of knowledge
aqcuisition and communication. Far from it. Teaching quality is so
poor even in our English-medium schools that, barring a few
exceptional institutions, too many of our students are ill-equipped to
make sense of even newspaper reports, leave alone read serious books
in English. The few who have a good command over the English language
consequently behave and get treated like an imperial race, and the
others who cannot are viewed as a sub-human species. The former are
largely cut off from the lives, feelings, problems and aspirations of
the non-English knowing population. Their aspirations are directed
either towards migrating abroad or attempting to create small pockets
of affluence for themselves so that while being situated, for example,
in New Delhi, they can pretend they are living in New York.

In well-functioning societies, the educated elite tend to provide
intellectual leadership to the rest of the society. In our case, our
colonised intelligentsia is so alienated from its own people that it
has made our society resemble a body whose head has been severed from
its torso. However, the head is arrogant enough to pretend it can
manage on its own. In reality, both are rotting, the headless body and
the bodiless head.
This communication gap exists not just between the different strata of
society but also within families. The elderly, especially
grandparents, have traditionally played an important role in the
socialisation of children, giving them sanskars and an initiation into
their community's culture, values and knowledge systems. Today's
English-educated children tend to treat their non-English speaking
relatives as ignorant and illiterate. Tarzan comics and cartoon films
are taken more seriously than grandmother's stories. Thus the future
generations of the educated minority may be more information-rich
about computers and business opportunities, but will grow up lacking
wisdom which can best be imbibed from a close intergenerational
interaction.

This dual system of education has taken away so many opportunities
from the vast mass of our people that the new generation which is
being denied good quality English education is going to grow up
feeling even more demoralised, incompetent and inferior than the
present cohort. In the next few decades, as India integrates more with
the global economy, the lifestyles of the Indian elite will become
even more alienated from the rest of the people. Since the moneyed
elite of today flaunt their opulence more and more before the deprived
through television, cinema and even the print media, the anger and
rage of those excluded are going to get far more explosive than at
present. They will avenge themselves in the Laloo Yadav way through
politics. A person who knows no English at all is virtually
unemployable except as a peon or labourer. However, he/she can, like
Phoolan Devi, become an M.P., or like Yadav, hope to become a Chief
Minister and get power and money through politics because he/she
cannot hope to get it through education and talent.

Deskilling of India
The tragedy we have created for our society through this educational
policy is of epic proportions. India was not too long ago known the
world over for its industrial skills and crafts. Indian steel was
world famous and so much in demand that ancient Roman historians are
known to have expressed concern that their coffers were getting
emptied buying steel swords (and silks) from India. Our architectural
tradition created many more wonders than the famous Taj Mahal, the
temples of Khajuraho and Konarak, perhaps more than the rest of the
world put together. Our weavers produced fabrics which have been the
envy of the world for centuries. Our craftsmen produced jewellery,
icons and art objects which are unparalleled in beauty of design and
exquisite workmanship. Yet none of our engineering colleges would
condescend to admit sons of lohars even as students, leave alone
teachers, in their metallurgy departments. This, when their practical
knowledge, honed through centuries of practising that craft would be
far superior to that of our formal degree holders. Why? Because they
do not have the English education necessary for "studying" today's
science and technology books.

Likewise, our traditional sthapathis who inherited the skills required
to design and make architectural wonders like the Jantar Mantar, the
beautiful ancient temples,havelis and palaces found in every corner of
India -- that too made with environment-friendly materials -- have no
place in modern colleges of architecture. They have been degraded to
the level of masons, mistris and labourers at the lowest rung of our
building industry only because they do not have access to
English-medium public schools. Similarly, our traditional weavers
capable of designing and making fabrics of a spectacular variety, do
not find jobs as textile designers and engineers in the modern
factories because they could never hope to get the degrees required
for those jobs. Our agricultural universities can be blissfully
ignorant about the vast knowledge reservoir of our farmers whose
produce -- long staple cotton, varieties of spices and fruits, wheat
and rice -- have eager buyers in the world market. Their knowledge of
food storage, soil conservation, use of safe pesticides, biodiversity
and medicinal values of plants has hardly any takers in the scientific
establishment because they cannot write research papers in English. We
learn to value neem and turmeric only when the international
scientific community endorses their many wondrous qualities.

Thus, by making English education the hallmark of qualification for
careers, we have marginalised and impoverished all those who carried
the rich legacies of our traditional skills and technologies. We have
destroyed the self-respect of the majority of our people, making them
feel worthless and despised. All we are giving by way of "social
justice" to a few among these deprived millions is reserving a few
thousand government jobs of peons and clerks.

The children of these skilled technologists are deserting their
inherited occupation at a rapid speed because they earn pitiful wages
in them. The makers of Kanjeevaram sarees would rather have their
children get a peon's job in a government office. Children of our
traditional metallurgists have taken to menial unskilled jobs like
rickshaw-pulling and street vending. Those who merely buy and sell
gold, make crores of rupees, but a skilled goldsmith, after 20 years
of being on the job, even in a city like Delhi, would not be earning
more than Rs. 3,500 a month. A bank clerk earns at least four times as
much. His only advantage: he has acquired a smattering of the English
language.

When sons of skilled weavers turn rickshaw-pullers, children of
sthapthis become bus drivers, and skilled shipbuilders take to
vegetable vending, it amounts to a genocide of skills. Stalin
destroyed the economic base of his country by physically exterminating
the peasantry in the name of collectivisation. We may not have
physically killed our farmers and other skilled groups, but we have,
by undermining their skills and knowledge, destroyed their
self-respect, marginalised them economically and destroyed their
capacity to compete by making English the magic key which opens the
doors to opportunity. If we take away the disadvantages that ignorance
of English brings with it, our traditional technologists --
ironsmiths, weavers, carpenters, sthapathis and other metallurgists --
would fare much better in gaining entrance to scientific and
engineering institutions as well as in the world of manufacturing.

The Costs of Neglect
The entire society is paying for this crime. Our modern architects
functioning with borrowed knowledge make unlivable and ugly buildings
and homes. Our modern offices need to use artificial lights even in
broad daylight in a country where sunshine is abundant. There is no
provision for ventilation, with windows sealed for air conditioning in
a country where power breakdown is a daily occurrence. All these
stupid buildings result from simply copying designs from western books
and magazines. Our Ambanis and Singhanias produce fabrics whose
designs are either straight copies of western designs or so garish
that their own wives would not be seen dead in those sarees. In fact,
they are seen proudly wearing the "ethnic chic" produced by our
traditional weavers. It is not a coincidence that only the products of
our illiterate or semi-educated, poor artisans have eager buyers in
the international market. India's foreign exchange earnings come
primarily from exporting cottage crafts, handloom textiles,
traditional jewellery, leather goods, handmade fabrics, spices, raw
cotton, mangoes, basmati rice and other farm produce.

It is our traditional artisans' products which act as reminders that
we were once a great civilisation. The famous iron pillar of Qutab
Minar in Delhi made centuries ago by our traditional lohars still
stands proudly without rusting or corroding. The steel being produced
by our modern degree-holders is of such poor standard that even the
not too quality-conscious Railway Ministry has alleged that tracks
made of SAIL steel crack up and corrode within months of installation,
causing numerous rail accidents. Temples and houses made by our
traditional sthapathishave withstood the ravages of centuries. Even as
ruins, they look aesthetic and grand. The housing colonies designed
and constructed by our modern degree-holding architects look like
eyesores from the day they are built and start falling apart before
they are occupied.

The modern sector of our economy is not an earner but a guzzler of
foreign exchange. Our industries have become a dead weight on our
economy and dare not face international competition. They are either
grovelling for government protection or foreign collaborations --
often both, and yet not able to put their act together. This is the
reward our western educated elite get for treating their own people
like colonial subjects. There was a time when only the West treated us
with derision and contempt. Today, even our Asian neighbours laugh at
the pretensions of our educated elite. The Japanese, Chinese and
Korean elites may not speak as good English as the products of our
Doon School and St. Stephen's, but they communicate much better with
the world and are more respected in international fora than our
self-styled representatives. After all, what do they represent?
Grovelling poverty, mass illiteracy, a sickly malnourished population,
a rich land turned into one of the worst environmental disasters, an
inefficient and corrupt government! And it's a callous elite which
does not even believe in sharing a language with its own people, leave
alone wealth and education. Today, we are merely ridiculed and spurned
in international forums, treated as pompous failures and
self-righteous beggars. If we continue in the same manner, we will be
treated as virtual untouchables by the rest of the world. Our leaders
will be put through quarantine before being allowed to attend
international meetings for fear that they may be carrying the many
deadly disease germs India is so famous for. Today, our educated elite
laugh at and express disdain for the likes of Laloo Yadav, his rustic
manners, his dehati accent, his strong-arm tactics, his semi-literate
wife brought in as a dummy Chief Minister. If we don't start fixing
our education system immediately, we will be saddled only with such
tragi-comic figures for our leaders. Our Chidambarams and Jaswant
Singhs might as well forget about coming to political power through
the electoral route.

After all, a man like I. K. Gujral could not win a seat in the
parliament on his own strength. He has to be beholden to Laloo Yadav
for his present seat and to Akali Dal for winning his previous
election.

From Clerks to Peons
Actually, the problem is not just that the educated elite are divorced
and alienated from their country's people. Our education system is
poor even from the point of view of the elite themselves. The British
are accused of having introduced a system of education designed
primarily to promote an army of clerks, Indian in colour, but English
in habits, tastes and values. They at least functioned to a purpose
and produced efficient clerks. However, our post-Independence schools
and colleges are not even producing clerks, but people whose skills
don't qualify them for anything more than a peon's job. The following
extract from a letter we received from the secretary of an NGO gives
an idea of the communication skills of our college educated:
Yours consolidary and collaboration may kindly be solution to the
[XYZ] Yuvak Sangha.… Which works in the filed of education, Adult
Education, pre School Health and Family Planing. Forest and
Environment to check the Environment polltion, Sport and cultural
activities, Social developments, Women development, Youth activities
and tribal development etc.
For the wide spread functioning of the above said activities. The
organisation seeks your concolidation and collboration in the above
said activities. If your organisation is going land with hand.
Intimation maybe requested to Yours sincerely, XYZ

Many of our court judgements similarly sound like total gibberish. The
following sample is an extract from a judgement by a session's judge
in a case of child sexual abuse:
Besides all these, how it seems to be unnatural that the thing for
concealing to which the accused was hiding himself here and there and
was frightened in coming home, on call only he came to the house, on
coming not before anybody else, except before those persons who were
bent upon to punish him immediately and further were furious on him
and tried to assault him, and who chould have sent him in jail for the
statement givenby him against himself, has confessed before them his
offence willingly. In the back ground of this, the accused who is not
only literate but is doctor and is living in the present atmosphere,
and confession of such offence by him in this manner seems to be
unnatural in itself… More unnatural to these all is the confession of
the offence before his father which he made before his father… in
presence of five persons stated above. The family of the accused is
also the family of the learned persons. On account of the last night's
incident they would have not become purturbed rather they had so much
time they would have come under the influence of the shock as of the
family of Madan Gopal Kakkar and would have thought of the saving
themselves, and out of them atleast one would have been who would have
not admitted the offence again. In this way the story of confession of
the offence by the prosecution by the family of Kakkar and Bhasin
family is wholly unnatural, fabricated, and product of legal advice.
This could not at all be trusted.
One can well imagine what brilliant grasp of law such a linguistic
genius would have acquired. This particular judgement, in fact reads
as if the honourable judge neither knows nor respects the ABC of law.
It is not surprising that he went out of his way to exonerate a
medical doctor accused of child rape.

Very few of our policemen know how to register an F.I.R. in legible
hand leave alone one that is factually accurate and grammatically
correct. Their ignorance of the law is frightening though expected.
Their low educational skills make it virtually impossible for them to
read and understand even bare acts leave alone legal treatises in
antiquated Victorian English. But they take no time to pick up those
provisions of law which help them fleece money. A linguistic analysis
of the petitions filed by our lawyers even at higher levels, leave
alone district courts, reads like products of a deranged brain. Here
is an extract from an F.I.R. drafted by a Chennai lawyer in a murder
case:
…two members going to received the money...at the Time of medicine of
mind effect and drinking methyl Alcohol for compulsory husband over
drinking..This person Elumalai over drinking and tired staying my
house. Again Drinking of Methyl Slcohol for my husband. After my
husband wanted meals please take it by Anunchalam. But overtake of
again and again attacked the Neg. Suddenly my husand Rolled to Land
and earth. Retenched husband again and again attacked. Over attack for
snag for my husband place...Husband sounded stoned some place.
Ramaraja...warming Drinking of person attack for Arunchalam unattack
of call to go and Sang removed...Five members joined attacked for my
husband Head, mouth nose, attacked things of goods for stones. Some
place suddenly number of husband…
My husband's sister Lands of aggiculture lands buying try to
Arunchalam. But my husband overtake same Land buying my husband
another sister's husband for 9 months. The problem dated warning for
my husbands dated 27th April 1993 murder to my husband. The 5 members
of speeches of my husband murder to doing ease for you. Also warning
for me. My husband murders above 5 members promised. Related persons
but deployed for me. Department of police something rupees alloted for
received anybody. No action and Responses.
Respected Sir, this problem solved for me. The murder of my husband
and brother Annamalai warning. Enquired for the problems solved
please, Sir, Thanking you...[XYZ]

Linguistic Cripples

I hear similar gibberish even in elite business chambers and
ministerial pronouncements. Most of us Indians sound mentally retarded
when we propound our ideas in English. We are today becoming a nation
of linguistic cripples which is an important reason why the work
calibre of our professionals is so shoddy. A person who cannot handle
any language competently is unlikely to be able to handle concepts or
ideas required to think things through. Most of even our MBBS doctors
are so poorly equipped in English that they cannot possibly follow the
latest medical information already available in international journals
even if they are inclined to access it. Therefore, too many of them
practise quackery after having procured medical degrees of doubtful
worth.

While we are churning out millions of unemployable matriculates, B.A.s
and M.A.s, the country is facing a real shortage of skilled
electricians, plumbers and a host of such technicians because we are
simply not investing any money or energy into this area. Under our
traditional occupation-based caste system, every child picked some or
the other valuable skill from his parents, a skill which had been
developed and perfected through generations. Today, everybody wants to
be a white-collar pen pusher because that alone brings status and
money. Only those who cannot make it, take to blue-collar occupations,
but without the required skills for them. The electrical wirings in
our public buildings are a virtual death trap; our water treatment
plants are a scandal; our power stations are forever breaking down,
our municipal sewage pipes frequently leak into water pipes. Most of
those actually operating these services could not spell the word
"hygiene" leave alone know how to provide a clean water supply. The
fault is not theirs. The children of our impoverished farmers and
artisans learn what they can by simply watching other ill-trained
people. Their own educational skills are not such that they can
acquire this knowledge through self-study.

Our colonial rulers could at least run their exclusive enclaves
efficiently and provide functional civic amenities for Civil Lines
areas. Our post-Independence elite cannot even ensure clean water
supply or regular electricity in the opulent and exclusive New Delhi
areas. Frequent tragedies like mid-air collisions of planes, collapse
of newly-built bridges, breakouts of fire in public buildings, power
breakdowns, dysfunctional telephones and general civic chaos are as
much the products of sheer incompetence and inefficiency as they are
the offshoots of corruption.

Destroying Minds
Thus while our policy makers have destroyed the traditional skills of
our people, they have denied them good quality modern education and
opportunities for acquiring new skills necessary for running today's
economies. The sarkari school system meant for the poor is a mockery
in the name of education. These schools function mainly to provide
naukris for the teachers and a host of babus of various grades who man
our education departments and ministries. Consequently, there is very
little teaching going on in them today. The little that happens is of
such poor quality that anyone who has gone through 11-12 years of that
exercise has for all practical purposes become a dysfunctional human
being, and is unlikely to be able to think coherently on any subject
except those areas of life not touched by school education. To top it
all, they acquire contempt for any manual work. A son of a farmer or
lohar who has studied up to matriculation or B.A. is likely to despise
his father's occupation even while he himself is skilled for no other,
and therefore, likely to end up adding to the large army of
unemployable youth.

Among the many very saddening exposures to how our schools are
destroying brains, I would like to cite one. While I was on a visit to
Vitner village of Maharashtra some years ago, the people there proudly
introduced me to a teenage boy as the brightest and most diligent
student of that village. I asked him to write an essay on himself and
the boy sat down dutifully to do the exercise. After about 45 minutes,
he brought a two-page neatly written essay on Mahatma Gandhi. I was
puzzled and asked him why he didn't write about himself. Somewhat
embarrassed he told me that they had not "taught" him to write on
"that topic" in school. If this is what our school system is doing to
our brightest and most hard-working, we can well imagine the fate of
our not-so-bright and less-than-average students.
I have been experiencing the products of this devastation year after
year in the Delhi University college where I teach. As with that
village student, my first assignment to even my B.A. students is an
essay on themselves. Most of them (except the few from really
well-functioning schools) look as bewildered as that village boy and
many simply cannot write more than 6-7 lines that do not go beyond
giving the student's name, father's occupation, the area he/she lives
in and a couple of other identification points. Their excuse is the
same: this topic was never a part of their curriculum. Over the years
only a handful have given me something resembling an essay. This was
the case even though many of them came from non-sarkari schools.

Even our private sector in education functions abysmally because of
the very low standards set by government schools. Most of the private
schools, especially those that have mushroomed in small towns and
villages are worse than teaching shops because, for all the money they
charge, they give students very little in return.

Brain Drain
Nehruvian socialism has wrecked our economy with its policy of
nurturing the supposed commanding heights of our economy by exploiting
and depressing the farm sector and other segments of the vast
unorganised sector. Its counterpart in education was the belief that a
handful of institutions like Mayo College and St. Stephen's will
provide us the talent to run our entire society and economy for one
billion people. The result is there for all to see. The few talented
people this country produces are desperate to find a foothold in
foreign countries largely because they feel threatened and choked by
the inefficiency and corruption all around.

If we do not begin to put our act together in the field of education,
think beyond a few elite schools and colleges, and aspire to high
quality secondary level education for every child in this country and
opportunities for acquiring real skills, in a few years we will need
to start thinking of importing skilled manpower and well-trained
professionals to run even our basic services and civil amenities, as
well as our universities and colleges, perhaps even our primary
schools.

Our leaders have given us a sickly legacy of substituting ideology for
ideas, using radical rhetoric as a substitute for sensible politics.
We, the educated elite, not only swallowed phoney rhetoric avidly but
were deeply mesmerised by it as long as it was being mouthed in the
correct Oxonian English. Today, when Laloo Yadav or Rabri Devi use
similar rhetoric of "social justice" we feel outraged because they are
speaking in dehati tones that we so despise. No democracy can be made
to function meaningfully by a tiny informed elite who shut out all
information and knowledge from others by speaking, reading and writing
in a language no one outside their charmed circle understands.

Those who feel convinced that the country can't manage without English
should at least have the good sense to ensure that it becomes the
language of mass literacy and education, and that there are enough
schools and teachers available to provide quality English education to
our people. Today's ruling elite may not know how to manage our
economy and society, but at least can appear as respectable
suited-booted beggars before IMF and the World Bank and do a bit of
crisis management. Tomorrow's ministers and bureaucrats will not even
know how to write a coherent letter to various aid agencies asking to
be bailed out. Fifty years from now we might have to hire foreigners
to beg on our behalf just as today we hire western professionals to
lobby with foreign governments because our diplomats know little
diplomacy.

Dependent Yet Estranged
My Growing Discomfort with English
This article will look strange coming from someone who earns her
living teaching English literature, does most of her writing in
English, edits Manushi in English, and could not keep alive its Hindi
edition for more than nine years.

Closing Hindi Manushi was a source of great grief for me. Its
publication had to be suspended because we could neither mobilise
enough subscriptions for it nor get good writing to fill up its pages.
As long as it survived, the Hindi Manushi lived off the English
edition. Most of the articles were translated from the English
edition; its printing and related costs were also subsidised from the
funds mobilised by the English edition. Had we kept it going longer,
it would have killed the English edition as well.

However, this set back with the Hindi edition cannot simply be
attributed toManushi's failure. The last 15 years have seen the
progressive collapse and closure of almost all serious magazines in
Hindi -- Dinman, Dharmyug, Saptahik Hindustan, Sarika, Ravivar and so
on. Even a half serious magazine like Vamacould not be kept alive by
the Hindi world. Many small magazines in Hindi were started, but died
prematurely. Today, apart from Hans which is indeed an important and
serious literary forum for the Hindi readers, the market is dominated
by magazines that cater to the needs of housewives or supply gossip
about film stars or semi-pornographic sensation mongering types of
glossies.

We too could have kept Hindi Manushi going if we had opened our doors
to grants from the government or international aid agencies. However,
I am convinced that the long-term consequences of taking that route
are more harmful, even though in the short run it seems to pay off.
Hindi and other regional languages will become vehicles for serious
thinking, learning, analysis, higher education and planning only if
English is put in its proper place, as a language of communication and
understanding developments in different countries of the world, a
language for accessing the latest in science and technology. The
Chinese, Japanese, Thais, the Koreans and the Germans all use English
in that way without becoming slaves of it as we have become.

I came to understand the full implications of the great harm being
done by the dominating position of English in India as I went through
the process of acquiring proficiency in it. For all my English-based
education, I find myself a linguistic cripple. Even today, despite
years of working in it, writing or even speaking in English does not
come easily to me. I make all kinds of silly mistakes and find myself
groping for words, unable to fully express my ideas and thoughts in
English. I rarely make such mistakes when I write or speak in Hindi or
Punjabi. English has not become the language of my dreams, my prayers
or even humour. I find it really hard to crack a joke in English. At
the same time it has seriously impaired my ability to write in Hindi
or my mother tongue, Punjabi because most of the information giving
material on important issues as well as literary writings from other
languages are available only in English. Hindi and regional languages
starve for want of such material.

As someone educated in English-medium public schools, I too grew up
thinking that the English language opened many new windows to the
world, and took for granted a whole range of new opportunities it
provided to those of us who acquired some skill in using it. Yet, I
was not prepared to downgrade learning Hindi as well as my mother
tongue, Punjabi in the way our school system encouraged us to do. For
instance, we were given black marks every time any of us was caught
speaking in Hindi. I got golden stars for everything else, but
persevered in earning occasional black stars for relapsing into Hindi
while conversing with friends. This was still the way convent and
other elite schools operated, even when the days of Irish nuns were
over and we were being taught by South Indian "sisters". This
discouragement was institutionalised in other ways too. As a school
affiliated to the Indian School Certificate system modelled after the
British Senior Cambridge exam system, we were offered a choice of
"lower" or "higher" Hindi on reaching class IX. The lower Hindi course
was the obvious choice of all my classmates because it was absurdly
easy -- as though designed to give a smattering of knowledge of Hindi
to a foreign tourist. Therefore, it was easy to score high in it for
those who had a working knowledge of Hindi. I insisted on opting for
higher Hindi even though my school refused to provide me a teacher for
the relatively far more difficult course. From class IX to XII, I
studied Hindi on my own, and scored very well despite lack of any
guidance.

Even before this option of "lower" Hindi was offered to us, I was
among the very few in my class -- perhaps the only one -- who chose to
read serious Hindi literature for pleasure while most of my classmates
swooned over Mills and Boon omances or "school girl" comics. That made
one feel somewhat isolated, but I did not think much of it nor
aggravated myself over the issue. Till then I saw studying or reading
Hindi a matter of personal choice and did not interpret its
downgrading as a serious political issue. In fact, I enjoyed reading
English literature as well, and opted for the English Honours course
when I joined Miranda House as a B.A student. It was then that I was
first jolted into recognising the many harmful effects of the
dominance of the English language in our society. Our school had a
somewhat homogenous population. Virtually every child came from middle
or upper middle-class families, and somewhat similar cultural
backgrounds. Therefore, intermixing was easy and smooth.

In Miranda House, I experienced for the first time the bringing
together of a relatively heterogeneous group of people with enormous
differences in their family's income and educational levels, cultural
background and social status. We had students from extremely affluent,
westernised, high status families brought to study under the same roof
with daughters of bus conductors, small shopkeepers, clerks, scooter
drivers, low level government employees, and even wealthy merchants.
The divide was not merely economic, but also cultural. The symbol of
that divide was the English language. It was not enough that you be
able to speak and write in English -- the accent in which you spoke,
the slang you used, the kind of school you learnt your English in
mattered much more than being a diligent student, just as the
neighbourhood you lived in and the social status of your family
mattered much more than how you performed in class. The contempt of
the English-speaking elite for the Hindi speaking "behenjis" of
Miranda House and their near total refusal to have any interaction
with the latter was far more deadly than the inequities of the
traditional caste system. These new Brahmins were more arrogant and
far less useful for our society. They behaved as though India was a
little island off the coast of England. Too many of them were outraged
when, as President of the Miranda House Union, I began to address all
general body meetings in Hindi and conduct most of the Union business
in Hindi.

The manner in which English literature was taught and the attitudes
sought to be inculcated through it left me thoroughly disgruntled. But
since our university system is not flexible enough to allow switching
courses mid-way I had to stay stuck. After my B.A, I tried changing to
history, but my application was not entertained because I had not
studied History up to then. It was only after getting my Master's
degree in English that I could secure admission in M.A. History. But
in well-functioning universities, even Indian History is taught only
in English. Our ancient India expert, an internationally famous
historian, was proficient in neither Sanskrit nor any other Indian
languages -- modern or ancient.

My job as a teacher of English literature in a Delhi University
college has only deepened my conviction that the domination of English
is causing enormous damage to the people of our country. It is
systematically undermining their self-confidence. For example, most of
my students have very poor skills in the English language; most of
them cannot function efficiently in it, leave alone use it as a
vehicle of creative thinking. At the same time, they have almost
stopped reading anything even vaguely worthwhile in their respective
mother tongues because acquiring skills in those languages brings no
reward. None of my English honours students this year was even aware
of the Tulsi, Balmiki or any other literary versions of the Ramayana
though they had seen Ramanand Sagar's TV Ramayan. Their knowledge of
English literature is confined to reading and mugging up guide books.
Not one of them has seen or used a standard literary text. They could
not follow those texts without help, even if they tried. If six poems
of Donne or Shelley are prescribed in their course, they will never
read a seventh even from the guide book.

Thus the system has effectively destroyed their intellectual curiosity
and undermined their own linguistic and cultural identity. They know
only khichri Hinglish. Lack of deep roots in any language has impaired
their ability to handle ideas, nuanced thoughts, or even emotional,
cultural complexities. Consequently, the thing is put in neat
watertight categories of moral vs. immoral, good vs. bad. They have
forgotten how to ask serious intellectual questions and, therefore,
are not likely to find answers.

--
sent from samsung galaxy note, so please excuse brevity