India's future is in English. Not in Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam or Marathi. As more and more people bob their way to the sticky sands of the big cities from various parts of the country, they tend to shed inhibitions of insular geography and take on, initially perhaps with varying degrees of discomfort, the role of the cosmopolitan. Jeans replace dhoti, briefs replace loincloth, black hair gives way to unlikely blonde: The city as an agent of alchemy. On the whole, you tend to change, become part of the Consuming Ethos of the City. Eventually, you become a tourist of the place you were born in. You return to your natal culture to remind yourself of what you had lost, but you know in your heart that to regain it, is to retire.
Along with the carapace of riverine traditions goes that fond currency of communication, your mother tongue. English which was once a Jinni of the Elite is now the handyman of the Commoner. Your maid and driver still may not or dare not converse with you in English. But their children will. Because your maid and driver know, from the hardy practice of their hand to mouth existence, that the age of Marathi and Malayalam, Bengali and Bhojpuri are over. The world transacts business in English. If their children want to partake of that feast, they must learn English. English is the social revolution Marx never thought of. It's not just a language. English is an instrument of radical change.
China, the neighbour we often secretly fear and even more secretly envy, as usual is quick off the mark in the English game, too. Since we were meek enough and so, despite ourselves, inherited the legacy of English, a 19-year-old girl in Bangalore now in her spare time can earn the money for her higher education abroad. How? Because, she is the one informing the British commuter of the timing of the train from Manchester to Paddington. With what agility history eludes the grasp of linear logic! And when she gives, gives with such supple confusion that the giving nearly famishes the craving. So then, our ex-colonial masters are actually paying for our children's school fees, and, in extreme cases, our milk bill as well.
China was never a colony of the British. Yet with characteristic, murderous, monomaniac motivation, she is overcoming possibly her only business drawback which, as it happens, is linguistic, not racial. Nearly 220 million Chinese now can read, write and converse in English. But the economy demands more. And China is on the case. The number of Indians who understand basic English is estimated at around 350 million, the combined English speaking populations of Britain, the US, Australia and New Zealand. When this number acquires critical mass in the Market, the Best Seller list in New York Times will have to factor in what Crossword and Oxford bookstores sell in this country.
Now, 350 million is clearly much, much more than the 4-5 per cent of the population that was thought to have had the know-how of the language in the 1980s, the decade before liberalisation. In a little over 20 years then, we are where we are thanks to the computers and English. Indeed the two are really one. Click is an English word. Why then are we busy translating — in a manner of speaking — the names of familiar landmarks to regional languages? Losing in the process, whole cities in translation? Madras to Chennai, Calcutta to Kolkata, Trivandrum to the interminable Thiruvananthapuram, Delhi likely to Dilli, Orissa likely to Odisha, Bangalore certainly to Bengaluru?
Wherever the names have actually changed, the politicians in power at the time and cultural quidnuncs agitating for novelties in nomenclature have said the new name was the last nail in the coffin of colonisation. This is, of course, pure poppycock. Exorcising the ghost of the white man from the woodwork and landscape of this nation is an exercise in anachronism. Today's young do not give a damn what their city is called. They are busy looking to be the next Indian Idol or practising painful steps through the night for Ka Boom or, what's only slightly more difficult, preparing for the IIM. Their problem is no longer culture, it's career. They know only too well that Bombay might elide overnight to Mumbai, or the other way round. But New York (formerly, New Amsterdam) or the state of mind corresponding to it, is where they are headed for.
As a matter of fact, in 2001 alone, the number of Indians flocking to the US was 70,290, making India the second largest source of legal migrants in the world. Clearly, Young India wants to be colonised. Equally, if you take into account the reverse osmosis, as exemplified by the IT townships of Bangalore and Pune, the New India wants California to come home. We want to be Them.
Along with the carapace of riverine traditions goes that fond currency of communication, your mother tongue. English which was once a Jinni of the Elite is now the handyman of the Commoner. Your maid and driver still may not or dare not converse with you in English. But their children will. Because your maid and driver know, from the hardy practice of their hand to mouth existence, that the age of Marathi and Malayalam, Bengali and Bhojpuri are over. The world transacts business in English. If their children want to partake of that feast, they must learn English. English is the social revolution Marx never thought of. It's not just a language. English is an instrument of radical change.
China, the neighbour we often secretly fear and even more secretly envy, as usual is quick off the mark in the English game, too. Since we were meek enough and so, despite ourselves, inherited the legacy of English, a 19-year-old girl in Bangalore now in her spare time can earn the money for her higher education abroad. How? Because, she is the one informing the British commuter of the timing of the train from Manchester to Paddington. With what agility history eludes the grasp of linear logic! And when she gives, gives with such supple confusion that the giving nearly famishes the craving. So then, our ex-colonial masters are actually paying for our children's school fees, and, in extreme cases, our milk bill as well.
China was never a colony of the British. Yet with characteristic, murderous, monomaniac motivation, she is overcoming possibly her only business drawback which, as it happens, is linguistic, not racial. Nearly 220 million Chinese now can read, write and converse in English. But the economy demands more. And China is on the case. The number of Indians who understand basic English is estimated at around 350 million, the combined English speaking populations of Britain, the US, Australia and New Zealand. When this number acquires critical mass in the Market, the Best Seller list in New York Times will have to factor in what Crossword and Oxford bookstores sell in this country.
Now, 350 million is clearly much, much more than the 4-5 per cent of the population that was thought to have had the know-how of the language in the 1980s, the decade before liberalisation. In a little over 20 years then, we are where we are thanks to the computers and English. Indeed the two are really one. Click is an English word. Why then are we busy translating — in a manner of speaking — the names of familiar landmarks to regional languages? Losing in the process, whole cities in translation? Madras to Chennai, Calcutta to Kolkata, Trivandrum to the interminable Thiruvananthapuram, Delhi likely to Dilli, Orissa likely to Odisha, Bangalore certainly to Bengaluru?
Wherever the names have actually changed, the politicians in power at the time and cultural quidnuncs agitating for novelties in nomenclature have said the new name was the last nail in the coffin of colonisation. This is, of course, pure poppycock. Exorcising the ghost of the white man from the woodwork and landscape of this nation is an exercise in anachronism. Today's young do not give a damn what their city is called. They are busy looking to be the next Indian Idol or practising painful steps through the night for Ka Boom or, what's only slightly more difficult, preparing for the IIM. Their problem is no longer culture, it's career. They know only too well that Bombay might elide overnight to Mumbai, or the other way round. But New York (formerly, New Amsterdam) or the state of mind corresponding to it, is where they are headed for.
As a matter of fact, in 2001 alone, the number of Indians flocking to the US was 70,290, making India the second largest source of legal migrants in the world. Clearly, Young India wants to be colonised. Equally, if you take into account the reverse osmosis, as exemplified by the IT townships of Bangalore and Pune, the New India wants California to come home. We want to be Them.
No comments:
Post a Comment