The noise around English and its role in India’s cultural disintegration has not subsided after 78 years of independence. Whenever someone discusses language extinction, English is invariably the villain of the story.
This characterisation of English is incongruent with lived reality. But the language serves the purpose of a common enemy.
The harrowing, brutal way in which it came to Indians and its role in the construction of the postcolonial Indian elite makes English a sore spot. It is also the language of a great many institutions with a pronounced British heritage. Understandably, the popular narrative renders English as the prime culprit driving the shrinking footprint of India’s native languages.
But if one looks closely at how local languages actually recede in everyday life, the story appears far more intricate. English is certainly the mighty queen in a globalised world-order, but Hindi is the local feudal lord that subdues a plethora of mother tongues.
Standardised Hindi, as it is taught in school and in which students are expected to speak and write, is the language that is learnt to sound respectable, educated and urban. In India’s hierarchical society, language dictates one’s place in the pecking order. Languages also arrange themselves on a ladder, depending on the status of their users.
Hindi is at the top in most parts of North India where users of other languages find themselves in a state of constant shame. To command respect, at least in the North, one may or may speak English but must speak polished Hindi. With Hindi, one can argue in most courts, read official documents and participate in higher education.
But one cannot be “just Bhojpuri” and claim the same benefits and status. A Bhojpuri speaker appears as much a dehati, or a country hick, to a Hindi speaker as they are to an anglophone elite. So, what does the Bhojpuri speaker do?
In the North, the desire for the provincials is to be recognised by Hindi counterparts as their equal. English remains the domain of a small and now exceedingly powerless elite. One needs English at the airport or at a fine-dining restaurant. But Hindi is the language one uses to communicate with their landlord, friends, teachers, the security guard – that is, the everyday world.
Hindi is certainly a factor in the decline of a host of languages such as Bhojpuri, Maithili, Braj and Awadhi. Hindi may be syntactically similar to these languages, but similarity does not ensure survival. The unnoticed shift away from these languages – at home, in the market, in school corridors – does not announce itself as the death of a language but assumes the face of “better manners”, “appropriate speech” and “dignity”.
Linguistic aspirations
Growing up in a migrant Kumaoni community in Agra, none of us learnt to speak in Kumaoni – and it is not because we were immersed in learning English or French. Our parents’ desire for us to speak in Hindi led to a distancing from our roots. We also saw our fellow Braj speakers in poor light. English was desirable but far too distant and perhaps even unattainable. It was only heard on a few channels on cable television.
Parents everywhere are aspirational, yes. But all linguistic aspirations in India do not culminate in English. There are local and immediate absorbers of desires.
Often the arguments made by the proponents of Hindi appeal to abstract notions of honour and nationalism, but their desire for supremacy stems, ultimately, from an envy of the anglophone elite who are seen as deracinated, their allegiance to India questionable and their access to power and status illegitimate.
It is said India should follow Japan or Germany in instituting one language that unites the country, making it a stable entity. But the comparison is inappropriate. Many countries in the world are strictly monoethnic and monolingual. Only other countries in South Asia can be compared with India, with caveats.
Recent history shows that language battles have caused civil wars in Pakistan and Sri Lanka, India’s closest neighbours. Urdu has failed to unite Pakistan’s varied ethnic and linguistic groups while in Sri Lanka, Sinhala nationalism often discriminates against Tamil-speakers.
A neutral language
India needs a language for administration and interstate and interregional communication that is equidistant from all native languages and which a vast majority of Indians are open to learning. Here, India can learn from Singapore, which found English a neutral language, in a multilingual country, that facilitates social cohesion.
This is not to say that English can perform the function of cultural transmission. For that, training in other Indian languages is an important feature of academic studies, but at least the Centre will not be seen promoting one regional language to the neglect and detriment of others.
If one leaves aside a tiny segment of Hindi political elites who eagerly await the triumph of Hindi for their vested interests, most Indians would prefer a two or three-language model in which English holds importance for managing domestic and global affairs.
It is said that Hindi is inclusionary while English excludes the vast majority. But, leaving aside non-Hindi speakers, even most Hindi speakers – here, speakers of “dialects” – find it difficult to make sense of official documents replete with Sanskritised phraseology. The idea that Hindi will be inclusionary is yet to be studied with rigour.
The statements made by powerful ministers in favour of Hindi and the government’s sly way of imposing the language do not do much except upsetting non-Hindi speakers. We need less government in the business of language.
A language becomes popular or obsolete despite politics in a market economy. Hindi has gained more popularity and speakers post liberalisation. This development should not be disturbed by announcing Hindi’s takeover. The battle for language is ultimately a battle for power, but it could snowball into major strife and destabilise all that we hold close to our hearts.
Suraj Gunwant is Assistant Professor, Department of English, Ewing Christian College, University of Allahabad.
This is the first part of a debate on whether Hindi or English are weakening other Indian languages and constricting linguistic diversity.
