Sanjaya Baru: Empire talks back

Six decades after Independence, more Indians than ever before are profiting from English

If on the eve of its 64th Independence Day India should be protesting visa restrictions on Indian professionals seeking employment opportunities in the United States, it is a fitting tribute to the lasting legacy of British rule in India — the English language!

Lord Macaulay wanted to create an army of English-speaking clerks to run the Empire. Free India has created more than an army of English-knowing information technology professionals that the “Empire” cannot do without. Call them “chop shops” if you will, but they protect corporate bottom lines in the English-speaking West and keep it competitive.

At a time when continental Europe is in such despair about its future, the English-speaking world is more hopeful, thanks to the flow of creativity and enterprise — from the English-speaking former colonies, especially India.

In its “50 Years Ago” column last week, the Deccan Chronicle reminded us that on the eve of the Independence Day in 1960, the first and only Indian to be governor-general of India, Chakravarty Rajagopalachari, described Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s announcement of a few days earlier that “English will continue almost indefinitely till such time as the non-Hindi people want to change it” as the “Magna Carta for non-Hindi people”.

Today, it’s a Magna Carta for millions of upwardly mobile middle class professionals not just from Bangalore (oops, Bengaluru!) and Hyderabad, but also Patna and Raipur.

Jawaharlal Nehru once famously claimed that “English is our major window on the modern world”. Today it has become the door that opens to new worlds of opportunity for newer generations of Indians.

As the name of an anti-establishment movie released on the eve of Independence Day, Peepli Live, shows, English has also become the Magna Carta of the Hindi-speaking people! While Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra — homes to the original Presidency towns and British ports — obsess about Bengali, Tamil and Marathi, respectively, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh are busy learning English.

Two decades ago when I wrote an editorial in the Times of India calling English “an Indian language”, the newspaper received dozens of angry letters denouncing the idea. Even Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav, who was then sitting outside the offices of the Union Public Service Commission, demanding that the use of English be completely discontinued in all civil service examinations, wrote protesting against the editorial. Today Dalit leaders in UP are demanding more schools that will teach English, and Mr Yadav had to hastily withdraw some anti-English comments on the eve of the last elections. UP’s wannabes wanna learn English!

In keeping with the hypocrisy and duplicity of so much in our political culture, India’s opposition political parties protested loudly when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told an Oxford University audience in 2005, “Of all the legacies of the Raj, none is more important than the English language and the modern school system.”

Dr Singh went on to add, tongue-in-cheek, “Of course, people here may not recognise the language we speak, but let me assure you that it is English! In indigenising English, as so many people have done in so many nations across the world, we have made the language our own. ...English in India is seen as just another Indian language.”

There was a time when Indians from English-medium schools would chuckle when those from vernacular-medium schools made grammatical mistakes and spoke wrong English. That is now so uncool and passé. Words like “prepone” are used even by true-blue English language newspapers. The “India vs Bharat” dichotomy is getting blurred as “India, that is Bharat” becomes “Bharat, that is India”.

One factor that has contributed to this change in attitudes is the new-found wealth of first generation English-speaking Indians. In the era when the best jobs going were in government and the banking sector, and one had to write entrance tests in English, when companies in Bombay and Calcutta employed only those who could speak proper English, there was a premium on knowing what was called “convent school English”. It is not just India that is becoming wealthier, Bharat has its billionaires too.

At a major international gathering recently, Suzlon’s Tulsi Tanti addressed a packed hall in his highly Gujarati-accented English that was often difficult to follow. His grammar was all over the place. Yet, no one smirked or chuckled. In pin-drop silence, CEOs and diplomats from around the world heard him talk about the future of wind energy. They gave him a handsome ovation. At the end of his talk, Mr Tanti’s Oxford-educated media relations executive, a handsome blue-eyed Englishman, briefed the media on what his boss had to say!

Mr Tanti comes in the long line of the likes of the Late Dhirubhai Ambani. Self-made Indians, for whom the English language was neither a passport nor a barrier. It was just one more tool in their enterprising hands to be used in a practical sort of way to get the best results from one’s effort.

Yet, India cannot take its growing facility with English for granted. Not only is India not doing enough to sustain the flow of English-speaking skilled persons, but others, especially China, are doing more. The Chinese are learning English with a vengeance.

The stilted and artificial debate about English vs Indian languages no longer makes sense. It is not a question of either/ or. Every educated Indian must be proficient in her mother tongue. A two-language policy — mother tongue and English — must be made compulsory after secondary school. If some schools wish to offer three languages and families opt for it, there is no harm. Most children in non-Hindi-speaking states learn three languages anyway. The whole world is going bilingual. One day, England will too!