India's English Vinglish

Irony couldn’t have been starker. And the timing couldn’t have been more perfect. Watching the acclaimed Hindi movie titled English Vinglish within the comforts of my living room environ on India’s 67th Independence Day and witnessing the churning of my emotions and resurfacing of a niggling view about my country’s inherent language complexities, I thought of sparing a few moments for a deeper reflection. 

English Vinglish is not just Sridevi’s problem in the movie; it is India’s linguistic challenge equally. Though nowhere in the world the Indians are regarded essentially as English speakers but we – the so called English literates -  take immeasurable pride in our conversational skills in a language which is still ‘foreign’ to the majority of Indians!  

We Indians love to believe that our self-perceived so called economic status in the world is due to our ability to talk in English, a status which is in past tense now anyway. The fact of the matter is that none of the developed countries – economically – except the UK and the US whose mother tongue is English – have their business conducted in a language which is not their native one. Whether it is China or Germany or Japan or other European nations, the obsession with English is clearly missing from their psyche. And India, with all its self-boasting English language skills, is still to qualify as an English speaking nation; let’s forget about it being clubbed with the developed countries any time soon. One just has to open the facts books and see India’s performance on various parameters, education being one of the primary indicators and the data is self-revealing, rather shocking.  

A glimpse into the history books uncovers that India, the land of Sanskrit, the ancient primary and complete language of antiquity from which have proliferated various Indo-European languages including English and other European and Indian languages, could not conserve the Mother Language in its own country of origin.  

Funnily, in name of saving Sanskrit from getting lost into oblivion, we have smartly relegated it as one of the language subjects in schools – taken by students as an easy source of scores! Because, in scoring marks in Sanskrit – as per the Indian education system - the only requisite is one’s temporary memory power, to be spent for mugging the things up for exams and deleting everything stored thereafter for other more important things! The net result is that Indians cannot understand a word of Sanskrit in spite of having it as one of their major subjects in school. But being a Sanskrit-illiterate has never been an issue in India!  

However, Heavens fall when an Indian is seen – heard – to be English ignorant!  

It is easy to accept the argument that when ‘change’ is the mantra for moving forward in life including how people converse, Sanskrit had to undergo changes and develop into ‘local’ lingua-franca. Going by the same logic, was it not crucial for India to preserve its rich linguistic heritage ? 

The Indian Constitution lists 22 languages as scheduled languages and includes English as a ‘subsidiary’ language. However, India’s de facto functional language is English as it is the language of higher education and all administrative works. The roots of English have reached so deep into India’s structure that only a social revolution can change the scenario and accord due respect to the Indian languages  which are complete in all sense and are as rich in vocabulary and literature as India’s esteemed English! But we Indians delightfully kept English as a ‘souvenir’ from departing Britishers on our day of Independence almost seven decades ago which in effect ensured that we remained chained to our colonial masters’ tongue  for the rest of our future. The blame is solely ours; to accuse the Englishmen for India’s English obsession will not be fair at all.   

The pet Indian line of reasoning is that with numerous active languages it would be extremely difficult to function as a cohesive country. This logic is so far from the truth as the Earth is from the most distant star in the Universe! A reading of India’s modern history – post Independence – clears all purposefully created confusion and bares the root cause of India’s continuing linguistic woes.  

By default the official coronation of English as India’s official language can be credited to its first prime minister; and a segment of ignorant Indian souls may attribute it to his well known Anglophile character. However, the major contribution cam from the Indians residing in the southern parts who strongly opposed Hindi being declared the National Language of India in spite of it being spoken by a vast majority of free India. The Southern folks felt that by being made to speak Hindi they would be subjected to North Indians’ dominance. The most unfortunate part of the whole story is that these freshly free countrymen were willing to accept the supremacy of a foreign language in their everyday lives which had enslaved them for centuries but were severely opposed to Hindi, the major language of India. The continued agitations led to succumbing of the government to their demands by making amendments in the Official Languages Act of India and letting English continue as the official language of India.  

Anti-Hindi agitations had regional politics at its core; the ascent of southern regional political parties is directly connected with their anti-Hindi stance. There was certainly no great love for their own native tongues. In any other advanced country of the world opposition to country’s main language could be construed as anti-national, but not in India. India has been so accommodative in its postures that it has lost most of its treasures due to lack of courage under challenging situations.  

But why blame the South Indians solely for India’s English Vinglish? The so called superiority complex acquired with English speaking was equally engrained in Indians from the northern parts.         

These post Independence pro-English gestures could have rewritten Indian history – in English?! – but it never happened in the manner it was envisaged to be. Political calculations could only force the alterations in Official Languages Act of India and make English its official language but it could not make inroads into lives of majority of Indians. English remained an elite language, being taught in English medium schools both in South as well as North India. The percentage of people who could speak proper English remained same in both parts of the country; the widely held perception that every person in South India knew English was soon recognized as one of the biggest myths of the modern India. And we could never become a member of the elite English speaking nations! How sad :(  

The height of self-believing English speaking India’s woes is that the real English speaking world does not recognize we Indians as Englishmen or English women! The peculiar Indian accent – the syntax of which is so wide spectrum that even an Indian cannot understand the English of another Indian if the latter happens to be from a different part of the country – cannot be followed by majority of the world population.  

Foolishly Indians love to assign the ascent of the Indian IT sector to the language of English, however, they choose not to accept the fact that China, a non-English country, is far ahead in all fields of IT including in numbers of Chinese IT professionals employed in English speaking developed economies. This is besides the fact that they are the 2nd largest economy of the world with their businesses being conducted in their own language, which the so-called English speaking India choose to ignore for its own convenience. 

The linguistic landscape is a bit bizarre in India. As the so called quality education is imparted through English medium and as the entire higher education is also given in the same language, and as the entire business is in the hands of a small portion of people trained in English, we strongly prefer to believe that we are superior to the non-English speaking fellow Indians. And, of course, we also equally bizarrely believe that we are superior to the fellow non-English speaking humans in rest parts of the world. So what if the feeling is not reciprocated by them! 

What is absolutely nonsensical about India’s English Vinglish is that almost every English educated Indian loves to believe that a person’s capabilities are directly proportionate to his/her English speaking skills! And the rest of the population – ironically majority of Indians fall in this latter category – are fools and fit for nothing. And that is the reason why “communication skills” is given top ranking in evaluating a person for any job in India. It is a different matter altogether that majority of the Indians with English conversational capabilities lack the grey matter in the same proportion as seen in non-English literates!  

The major disadvantage with this skewed attitude of the English speaking minority India is that the capable people with less or no knowledge of English language get left out from the mainstream and all spheres of life and society become a loser.  

Another interesting point about the so-called English speaking India is that they are comfortable with English only in education and work, beyond that they are as alien to their preferred language as a goat is to a guitar! No body has any love for English movies or songs or even literature. The proof of it lies in the fact that we Indians have forced the English music channels on television to convert to Hindi music 24x7! And to justify this dichotomy in our character and hypocrisy in our attitude, we shamelessly take refuge in the arms of the so-called Indian tradition and culture! @#$%&*^! (Beep, Beep …) 

When one analyzes various factors which led to India - with its limitless capabilities and opportunities -  remaining at the bottom of the grid on the global scale, its failure to preserve its invaluable heritage comes at the top. Because when one tries to emulate others, one loses all what one has; you remain neither here nor there. Because, one’s national identity is one’s passport in this world … 

I pray for my country that we realize the value of all we have as a country and leverage those priceless treasures – including linguistic wealth – and come out with head held high on the world stage. We understand that English is just a language for communication like all other languages of the world and that education and businesses – and life - can be comfortably conducted in every Indian language as well – as successfully as demonstrated by all non-English speaking developed nations.  

Simply saying: We get rid of our English Vinglish complexities …