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English: an advantage toIndia?

Mark Tully

This is an edited version of the Oxford University Press/BB C Lecture givenat the English-Speak ing Union, London, and broadcast on the BBC WorldService in February 1996.

Introduction This lecture is about English in India and the problems that arise out ofthe use and role of English in the sub-continent. It also attempts to

suggest some of the answers to these p roblems.

Recently I was at the Book Fair in Delhi. It was noticeable that therewere five halls occupied by publishers very familar to readers of thisJournal: Penguin, Oxford University Press, Macmillan, and many others,including Indian publishers in English. How ever, there was only one hallwhich was specifically set aside for Indian languages.

Near to where I live in Delhi, there is a market which has a lot of Englishbookshops, but does not have a single bookshop selling books in Hindi.In fact, it is quite difficult to find a bookshop selling books in Hindi inDelhi. The Times of India group publishes an English daily newspaperand a Hindi daily newspaper. The circulation of the Hindi daily, TheMabarat Times, is far greater than the circulation of the English one, butits advertising rates are considerably lower.

I tell you this to demonstrate what I have to describe as the inferiorposition of Hindi and other languages in India, almost fifty years afterindependence. Yet the strange thing is that Hindi is one of the five mostwidely spoken languages in the world. On the other hand, the highestfigure I have seen for Indians who can manage English adequately is 5

per cent, and some would argue it is as low as 2 per cent.

Of course even 2 per cent of 900 million is a sizeable number ofpeople—18 million—so it is no wonder that all those commercially-minded international publishers were represented at the Book Fair. Butthat still leaves a huge number of Indians who cannot speak thelanguage which dominates so much of the life of their country.

I want to suggest that this dominant role of English is not just anunhealthy hangover from colonialism, but also a means of continuing the

suppression of Indian thought, and of preserving an alien, elite culture.I have many views on India which people in the UK regard as eccentricin some ways. I am not surprised because it is my belief that India is avery different country; and it is my hope that India will remain a very

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different country. Therefore I believe that problems seen through Indianeyes look very different from those seen through English eyes.

Of all the eccentric ideas I have, the one which I find produces the

greatest sense of amazement is the suggestion that the present status of

Englishin

Indiais

unhealthy.I am

asked with incredulity 'Surelyyou

don't want to rob Indians of the gift of English now that it's the

language of international business, science, publishing, and compu-ters?'. Or I am told 'It's essential to keep English as the link language',as though that could not be questioned. I am accused of wanting to rob

Indians of an advantage that no one can take from me. I am told I am an

inverted snob, or that I have gone native—incidentally, the verysurvival of that phrase, and I can tell you it does survive, is proof thatthe colonial mentality in this part of the world still, to some extent,survives, too.

The simple answer to all those allegations is that I do not want to robIndians of English. I do not want to stop the teaching of English in India,and I do not want to kill off Indian English. I want to maintain Englishas one of the languages of India. And I am strongly in favour of the

development of Indian English—but more of that later. As someonewho makes no secret of my affection, and indeed loyalty to the countrywhich has been so generous to me, I am extremely proud of the highesteem of Indian writers in English like Vikram Seth, R. K. Narayan and

many others. But what I do not want to maintain is English on top of

Indian languages. I want to see the other languages flourish, and I do not

believe that Indian culture and Indian civilization can survive healthilyand flourish unless the original languages of the country flourish too.

The origins of Let us look at the origins of English in India, because they are veryEnglish in India significant. In 1813 the Charter of the East India Company was renewed

for another twenty years, and an annual sum was set aside for 'the

revival and improvement of literature, and for the encouragement of thelearned natives of India, and for the introduction and promotion of

knowledge of sciences among the inhabitants of the British territories in

Ind ia'. W hat is significant is that at that time no mention was made of the

language to be used for that education. That was left ambiguous. Butthen along came Macaulay's famous recommendations of 1835.

Macaulay's attitude to Indian languages and literature was summed up

in his famous words 'I have never found one who could deny that a

single shelf of a good European library was worth m ore than the wholenative literature of India and Arabia'. The result of Macaulay'srecommendation was the acceptance by the Governor Gen eral, WilliamBentinck, that 'the great object of the British Government ought to be

the promotion of European literature and science among Indians'. All

funds, he said, would be utilized for 'imparting to the native population a

knowledge of English literature and science through the medium of theEnglish language'.

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It is generally assumed that Bentinck and Macaulay wanted to create anarmy of clerks who could fill the lower ranks of the Britishadministration in India, and in that they were superbly successful. Thebabu raj of which they laid the foundation still survives. Macaulay didsay he hoped that the babus would be 'interpre ters' between the British

and the people they ruled. But in fact they turned out to be theoppressors, not the interpreters, proud of their status as brown sahibs,although never accepted as such by the white sahibs. Mahatma Gandhionce wrote 'It is we the English-knowing Indians that have enslavedIndia. The curse of the nation will not rest upon the Enghsh but uponus.'

Macaulay also hoped that the Indian English speakers would enrichwhat he called 'vernacular dialects', not dignifying them with the title'language'. He wanted them enriched with the terms of science

borrowed from Western nomenclature, and to render them by degreesfit vehicles for conveying knowledge to the great mass of the popula tion.Ironically, one of the arguments still used for the maintenance of thestatus of English in India is that the Indian languages are not rich inscientific terms! They would have been if Indian science had developedin Indian languages.

Macaulay's recommendation set the pattern for the development ofEnglish in India, a pattern that survives, to some extent, to this day. Itwas intended to be the language of the Indian elite and it still is. R.K.Agnihotri, a Professor of Linguistics, and A.L. Khanna, a Reader inEnglish, in their joint introduction to a collection of papers calledEnglish Language Teaching in India (1995) have said that the mostsignificant sociological consequence of sustaining English in India hasbeen a major social division between those for whom English is themedium of instruction in prestigious public—that is to say private—schools, and those who largely study English as a subject in ordinarygovernment schools. The route to power, prestige, and riches, eventoday, lies through English.

The present Obviously there have been changes since independence. In theory, atsituation least, the position of Indian languages is much stronger. There is what isknown as the three languages policy in schools, under which students arerequired to learn the federal language, Hindi, the language of their ownstate, and English, or any other European language. And in Hindi-speaking states they have to learn another Indian language, so that theburden remains the same. Officially the medium of instruction in schoolsis the regional language. But in India, perhaps more than in many othercountries, there is a wide difference between what the law says or whatthe government says and what actually happens in practice. And, of

course, all the linguistic laws and educational laws are bypassed by theever-expanding English-medium private sector.

In one of India's most prestigious public schools, the Doon school, theemphasis on English is so strong that the students emerge with a very

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faulty knowledge of Hindi. Once when I was interviewing perhaps themost famous son of the Doon school, Rajiv Gandhi, I said in Hindi 'Putthe microphone a little lower'. When he heard this, Rajiv G andhi said tome 'You speak very good Hindi.' I said 'I wish I spoke it better.' Helaughed, and said 'I wish I did, too.'

Recently I was talking to a member of the civil service who had workedvery closely with Rajiv Gandhi and we were discussing why he wasdefeated in an election after five years, having made very little progressin his plans for m odernization. The civil servant said to me quite simply'He was not educated as an Indian and so he did not understand India.'And a part of that was, of course, his own admitted weakness in Hindi.

A deep knowledge of a culture, one might almost say the acquisition of aculture, can only be obtained through the knowledge of the language orone of the languages of that culture. In an article in English Today,

Robert Phillipson and Tove Skutnabb-Kangas (1996) have written 'theconsequence of the current language policy is that many among theyounger generations of Indians are being deprived of familiarity withtheir cultural heritage, and quite probably of an education that wouldenable them to contribute to the solution of Indian problems in thefuture'.

In employment, as in education, the position has improved, in theory,for those who come from homes where English is not spoken, but inpractice there is still a long way to go before opportunities are equal.Applicants for the elite cadres in the civil service, police, custom s,foreign service, and all the rest are now allowed to sit their exams intheir regional languages. But I sometimes wonder what happens to thosewho sit their exams in regional languages, because when you go roundthe Secretariat at Delhi and see the senior civil servants there you do notfind many of them who are not extremely fluent in English, and almostcertainly sat their civil service exams in English.

The renowned economist Amartya Sen has argued that India is aparticularly elitist society and that is why so many of the problems of therest of India have received inadequate attention. He has pointed, for

instance, to the emphasis on expanding universities when the cryingneed has been and still is for primary education.

In a recent book A martya Sen and his colleague Jean D reze (1996) haveproduced copious figures to show that India's economic backwardness isin large measure due to the failure of its education and health policies,and their implementation. He has also stressed the need to empowerwomen, which of course can only come about as a result of morewidespread education and better health policies. They contrast thesituation in India with that in China. 'The magic of China's market rests

on the foundations of social change that had occurred earlier, and Indiacannot simply hope for that magic without making the enabling socialchanges—in education, healthcare, land reforms, etc.—that help makethe market function in the way it has in China.' This is a sober rem inder

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to all of us, and to everyone in India who at the moment seems tobelieve that economic liberalization on its own is going to be the answerto all the problems of the country.

Elitism, It may seem that I have gone off at a tangent here. How do this elitism

economics, and and these economic problems concern English? Well, I think veryEnglish directly, because first, and most obviously perhaps , the s tatus of English

is directly related to the failures of the Indian education system. TheEnglish-medium schools attract the best teachers, the resources toprovide modern facilities, and the brightest pupils, or I would prefer tosay, the pupils with the home backgrounds which give them the bestchance of making good use of their natura l ability. W hat's m ore, becausethose with the influence to improve education do not send their childrento Indian language-medium schools, they take no interest in theeducation provided there.

The result of all this is that the vast majority of schools remain beyondthe pale for all those with the means to educate their children. It is asthough we were back in Britain in the days when I was educated, whenprosperous parents really didn't even consider anything but a privateeducation.

One of the problems which English creates for the economicdevelopment of India is that of not concentrating on the education ofthe mass of people, and on Hindi or other language-medium schools.Another problem created by English is that only those, as I said earlier,

with a proper understanding of Indian languages can also understandthe problems of the majority of Indians. These problems are heightenedby the way that English is taught. The texts which are studied are still thetraditional texts. The result is that I am often ashamed by my Indianfriends' knowledge of Shakespeare and other branches of Englishliterature, which is rather better than mine.

But in relation to this, N. Krishnaswami and T. Sriraman (1994) havewritten, 'Our glorification of Western literature and critical traditions isnot even clearly m otivated as it was in the case of Macaulay: it is based

rather on conditioned thinking and ignorance. Those who know Englishare ignorant of vernacular literature, and those who are pundits in ourregional literatures cannot express their ideas in English. Unless we endthis exclusion of our native literature and our aesthetic sensibilities fromthe study of English literature our English studies will be rootless andsolitary.'

The heroes of most Indians are not to be found in Shakespeare, but inthe Mahbaret, the Raman, and other great epics. This is shown by theenormous popularity of the television versions of those epics. But what

is the response of the elite to those epics? They condemn them aspromoting communalism, as against the Western idea of secularism.

So, what is the answer? Well, I believe the answer to this particularproblem is that the elite should care and develop a deep understanding




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of Indian literature; they can then ensure that the versions of the epics

which are made for television reflect the greatness of the literature,

rather than suggesting, as they sometimes seem to do, that such great

literature should be thrown in the dustbin because some politicians seek

to gain political advantage from it.

But perhaps the most damaging of all the effects of English is to promotethe snobbery of the English-speaking elite. There is no doubt that

English as a status symbol means a distinctly inferior status for Indian

languages and sadly, for some reason, particularly for Hindi.

I often tell the story of my early attempts to learn Hindi. I asked the

head clerk in the BBC office to help me by conducting our business in

Hindi, but each time I spoke to him in Hindi he would reply to me in

English. Eventually, in frustration, I turned to my driver and said 'You

speak to me in Hindi, why will he not speak to me in Hindi?', and the

driver laughed and said 'Oh well, it's all right for you to speak to me or

the messengers in Hindi, but to speak to the burra babu in Hindi is very

insulting to him indeed.'

The strange thing is, however, that most Indians actually welcome

English-speaking foreigners who attempt to learn their language. With

considerable temerity I recently agreed to do an interview on Zee TV in

Hindi. And I found that all my grammatical infelicities, my speaking of

Hindi rather like my father did and the other English people who used to

be in India did—all that didn't seem to matter. Wherever I went I w as

greeted like a hero for having done this interview in Hindi, and the bigge st

round of applause I got during the interview from the studio audience waswhen I said my problem with Hindi is, of course, partly that I'm not a very

good linguist, but also more than that, that I meet far too many people

who whenever I speak to them in Hindi answer me in English. So it is not

as though many, many Indians are not aware of this problem.

And the tragedy of this is that Indians, living as they do in a multilingual

society, have a natural talent for learning languages. There is no reason

why they should not be educated in what I would contend should be

their mother tongue and yet become highly proficient in English too.

They would then have the best of all worlds, instead of—as they oftenhave now if they go to one of the many not-so-good English medium

schools—the worst of both worlds, an inadequate knowledge of any

language. But then, English must be taught in an Indian manner, and it

must be linked to India as well as to international culture, and not to an

archaic concept of British culture. At the same time it must be taught,

not crammed. At present almost all Indian education is orientated solely

towards passing examinations, and in no subject is that more so than in

English, because of its value in the employment market.

The solution? So what can be done about all this? One apparent answer is simply toencourage the spread of English in India so that it becomes the genuine

link language of the country, not just, as it is at present, the link language

of the elite. There are arguments in favour of doing that.

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In these days of the global market English is a very valuable asset, andwhy shouldn't India capitalize on it? India also has a unique tradition offilm making. It is a country with a great tradition of freedom of speech.So another good reason for keeping English is to take advantage of theinternational TV market and film market in English.

And of course, when we come to com puters, Indians have established avery high reputation in the software business. And again, obviously,here English is a huge advantage to them.

All these arguments are, in my view, reasons for maintaining a highstandard of English in India, for not throwing the baby out with the bathwater. But if the bath water is dirty it must surely be changed. And thebath water is dirty because English is the link language of the elite. Andif an attempt was made to make it the link language of all India or agenuine link language what would happen? Well, first of all I do not

believe the enterprise could ever succeed, but if we leave that ratherimportant point aside, let's see what damage the effort would do. Itwould mean a massive educational effort in just one subject. It wouldrob most of those who had already left school of full access to thenational language, and it would do irreparable damage not just to Indianlanguages but also to Indian culture. And that is a culture, I believe, withits stress on the oneness of nature that we in our nature-exploitingscientific culture need to learn from, not undermine. The politicalproblems caused would be impossible to handle too. Opposition toEnglish is one of the planks of the right wing Hindu Bharatia Janata

Party, and of the left, in the form of the parties backed by thetraditionally deprived castes.

But let's leave aside all those problems. Surely it cannot be right to buildIndian nationhood on the foundation of a foreign language? India is nota linguistic tabula rasa, as one might argue America and Australia were.It is a civilization with languages, with ancient roo ts, which have survivedcolonialism.

I have to admit that the question of a link language is a difficult one, andI have never heard a satisfactory answer to it. Perhaps if the advocates of

Hindi had not been so unwise, and had not given the impression thatthey wanted to impose their language on the rest of India, and therebygain all the advantages a natural mastery of it would give them, theproblem could have been solved. Mahatma Gandhi suggested simpleHindi in the Roman script as an answer, because Hindi is the largestlanguage. Linguistic purists object to that , but it is arguable that if Hindihad been allowed to spread naturally, helped on its way by the all-Indiapopularity of Bombay films, it would have gradually been accepted aspreferable to English as a link language. If the disadvantages of Englishin that role had been spelt out by politicians in non-Hindi speaking statesthat would have helped, too.

But it is not too late. There must, obviously, be no question ofcompulsion, but there could still be a natural spread of Hindi, provided




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every effort is also made to encourage the development of regionallanguages, so that no one could say English imperialism was beingreplaced by Hindi imperialism. But one of the major barriers to Hindi isthat of all the major Indian languages it is, as I said before, the onewhich seems to attract the most scorn from the elite. It's all right to be

proud of Bengali, Tamil, or Gujarati, but not, for some strange reason,Hindi. That's perhaps because H indi is the greatest threat to the elite'sbeloved English. Supposing the elite were to change their attitude toHindi, to take a pride in speaking it, what a difference that would m ake.

Any realistic assessor must accept that English can be of enorm ous valueto India, in its right place, but to find that place we have to accept thedamage it causes at presen t. The present status of English in India givesenormous power to the elite, and they have yet to show they are willingto shed that power and share their knowledge with their fellow Indians.You probably know that Mahatma Gandhi said India lived in its villages.

And these villagers live mainly by agriculture. Yet the language of mostagricultural universities is English. The language of villagers is certainlynot. Isn't there a lesson there?

I hope I have managed to persuade you that English creates problems inIndia, and that it is not just linguistic chauvinism to claim that thepresent position of English in India is divisive, and hence dangerous.

ReferencesAgnihotri, R.K. and A.L. Khanna (eds). 1995.

English Language Teaching in India. New

Delhi: Sage.

Dreze, J. and A. Sen. 1996. Indian Economic

Development and Social Opportunity. Oxford:

Oxford University Press.

Krishnaswami, N . and T. Sriraram. (1994) English

Teaching in India. Madras: DR Publishers.

Phillipson, R. and T. Skutnabb-Kangas. 1996. 'IsIndia throwing away its language resources?'English Today 45: 12/1: 23-6.

The authorMark Tully was born in India, and worked for theBBC in Delhi as Chief of Bureau for over 20years, until he became their South East AsiaCorrespondent in 1993. He still lives in Delhi, and

now works as a freelance writer and broadcaster.

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