LANGUAGE POLICY FOR INDIA

By P. KODANDA RAO

In evolving a language policy for India, it is necessary to evaluate and reconcile the somewhat conflicting claims of the several languages. While nobody should be prevented from learning as many languages as he pleases, nobody should be obliged to learn more languages than he needs for his work and enjoyment.

Rational consideration of the language policy has been complicated by some current concepts. Each language has been claimed to be the cherished inheritance of a group of persons. For instance, the Andhras cherish the Telugu language as their own; similarly, the British cherish the English language, and the Muslims cherish the Arabic and Urdu languages, and so on. But, as a matter of fact, there is no correlation between a language, and a religion, a race, a sex or a nationality. Urdu is not the exclusive language of the Muslims, for millions of Hindus speak it, and millions of Muslims in the world do not speak it. All the Hindus do not speak the same language, though they have the Hindu religion in common. All Christians in the world, who share the Christian religion, do not speak the same language. The Swiss people have a single nationality, but not the same language. The British and the Americans have the same language but not the same nationality. Anybody of any race, religion or nationality, can learn any language for work or enjoyment, if he has the need and the opportunity, even as he can learn any branch of knowledge. Even as no knowledge can be “foreign” to anybody, so also no language is “foreign” to anybody. “Foreign” is a political concept, denoting a foreign nationality. If the English language were of British “nationality”, Indian and American nationals would not be able to use it.

The concept of “my” language and “your” language is also invalid. For no language can be “mine” since “you” can learn it; it is “ours” then. Similar is the case with all non-material culture elements like religions, sciences, arts, customs, etc. They cannot be “owned”, much less exclusively, by anybody. Material culture elements, on the other hand, can be “owned”. Property can be owned, but not language. The teacher willingly shares his knowledge with his pupils, but not his salary!

Since languages are media for the communication of thoughts, the most rational approach to the choice of languages is their current communicational utility, and the extent of their utility, and not their ancestry. Few that love ‘Shakuntala’ speak today the language she spoke. The nature and the number of the languages that one need learn should depend largely on the range and variety of his communicational needs. About ninety per cent of the people who speak a well developed language like English may not need any additional language for most of their communicational needs. Less developed languages need supplementary ones. The great majority of the people in any part of the world are not likely to need more than the local major regional language for most of their communicational needs. A few may need more, because their needs transcend linguistic boundaries, and are national and international . For instance, members of the Diplomatic Service need to learn several languages. While a working knowledge of a language is enough for most needs of most people, a more intensive knowledge is necessary for the enjoyment of literature and, even more, for its production.

If India’s language policy is to be based on present communicational needs, what are the current needs and how would they be best met with maximum efficiency and minimum strain? There is a tendency to exalt the mother-tongue. The census of India, 1951, listed over seven hundred and fifty mother-tongues. Some of them were spoken by one citizen each! It is obviously impossible to provide education or administration at even the lowest level in each of these mother-tongues. Some sixty languages are the mother-tongues, each of a lakh of citizens or more. It is nearly impossible to provide education and administration, except at the lowest level, in each and every one of them. All of them cannot be used or developed for all modern needs. A book corresponding to, say, the Encyclopaedia Britannica, much less whole libraries on all subjects, can hardly ever be produced in most of them, if only because of their very small reader-potential; Whatever be the sentimental attachment to them as mother-tongues, most of them must perforce be allowed to survive only as museum specimens. Kalidasa’s Sanskrit has practically died out as a current language, and only a rare scholar sheds tears over it. In any event, it is not seriously proposed that each and everyone of the sixty languages should be developed for use in higher education and administration. The Indian Constitution recognized only fourteen languages. Among them is Sanskrit, which is the mother-tongue of only five hundred and fifty-five Indian citizens!

Every child needs the local major regional language, if its mother-tongue be different, for its daily communicational needs. Generally speaking, it is now the medium of instruction for certain or all subjects of study in the pre-college stage. It is also the language at the lower levels of administration, where it comes into contact with the great bulk of the population, namely, the village and the taluq.

There are those who advocate that each major regional language should be the sole language at all levels of administration and education within its linguistic area. They think that it is an unmerited slur on the regional languages to suggest that they are not fit for purposes of the highest administration, executive, legislative and judicial, and of the highest education in arts and sciences. Some of them concede that some of the regional languages are today not quite competent for certain purposes, they will soon be competent, if they are made the sole media of administration and education and given the necessary incentive. They are inspired by the sentiment of linguistic patriotism and by the theory that the efficiency of education and administration would be best served thereby. They are, however, prepared to ignore similar arguments on behalf of the aborigines and of those who speak some of the minor languages and do not hesitate to impose the regional languages on them. It amounts to linguistic autonomy for themselves and linguistic imperialism over others.

There are those who hold that the regional languages of India are not yet adequately developed for the purpose of higher administration and education, and that the progressive modernization of India, which is very urgent, should not be made to wait on the adequate development of the regional languages. They would accept and continue the present bilingual policy, under which, broadly-speaking, the regional languages are used at the lower levels of education and administration, and the English language at the higher levels, not only because the English language is better developed but also because of the need for an All-India medium for such higher purposes. They would continue to have English as the medium for the State and Central Governments, the High Courts and the Supreme Court, and the Central, if not the State, Legislatures and for the Universities and centres of higher education. The. communicational needs in these cases transcend the boundaries of regional languages.

This attitude is criticised by those who, while conceding the necessity for bi-lingualism, wish the second language to be Hindi, rather than English. Broadly speaking, they consider Hindi an “Indian” language and English a “foreign” language, and prefer the former to the latter on the ground of patriotism. They insist that India, as a nation, should have a common “national” language, if only as a second language in non-Hindi areas. They have also the Indian Constitution on their side.

But is English “non-Indian” and Hindi “Indian”? The Linguistic Census of India of 1951 classified languages spoken in India under “Indian” and “non-Indian” and listed over seven hundred and fifty languages and dialects as “Indian”. Among them were over ten, each of which was spoken by just one Indian, though it was not clear to whom that person could speak in that tongue if there was no second who understood it! They were classified as “Indian” because they were each spoken by an “ Indian National” as his mother-tongue. Sanskrit, which was spoken by just five hundred and fifty-five Indian nationals, was also listed among the “Indian” languages. But English which was spoken by over one lakh and seventy thousand people was listed as “non-Indian”. Most of these were Anglo-Indians who speak it as their mother-tongue, and they are hundred per cent Indian nationals. To acknowledge them as Indian nationals and describe their mother-tongue as “non-Indian” and its use in India as a humiliation to India is, to say the least, unreasonable, besides being humiliating to the Anglo-Indians. English is as “Indian” as any other “Indian” language and more useful for modern needs.

It is generally conceded in India that the English language is very useful, nay essential, for higher education and administration, at any rate for some time. But its universal utility is not yet fully realized. The UNESCO has listed over 1,500 vocations practised in the world. A good many of them are practised in India also. The efficiency of most of them is being constantly improved by an endless stream of inventions and discoveries. Most of them find almost immediate publication in some periodicals which are published in the English language and which are sold at comparatively low prices because of their vast circulation. Almost every vocation, however humble, has a magazine or two, which publishes the latest developments in it. Many of them are well illustrated. It will take a long time before such illustrated magazines at such low prices are produced in any “Indian” languages because of the small market for them. Most people have to work for their living and have to learn to do the work. It pays them to keep abreast of the times. The best source of information at present and for a long time to come are the vocational journals published in the English language. Every Indian worker, skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled, stands to gain by acquiring a working knowledge of the English language. The more it is universalized, the better for the efficiency of Indians.

For all practical purposes, bilingualism, consisting of the local regional language and the English language, is both necessary and enough for most Indians. Other languages may be learnt by those few who need them for their special purposes. For instance, those who wish to study the literature of other languages in the original, like Greek, German, Tamil, or Japanese, may learn them.

Most modern knowledge reaches India through the English language. In so far as Hindi replaces English, it has to be translated into Hindi, while the non-Hindi people of India must learn Hindi to acquire that knowledge. This procedure is likely to slow down the flow of modern knowledge into India while India needs to be flooded with it, as it were. It is best, therefore, to continue the present bilingualism of the local regional language and the English language, and extend a working knowledge of the latter among a wider circle of Indians, as will be the case when the Three-Language-Formula is universalised. It is best to continue the present system of horizontal bilingualism in the administrative sphere, namely, the local regional language at the lower levels where it touches most people, and English at the higher levels where it has to transcend the local linguistic areas for national and international purposes.

Such bilingualism will also avoid the current feeling that if Hindi be made the all-India language in education or administration or both, the people of North India will have an undue advantage over the people of South India and the consequent sense of unfairness and jealousy. It is highly fantastic to insist that, as a measure of reciprocity, the North Indian should learn a South Indian language! It is a reciprocity in disability. If the all-India services are conducted in Hindi, the natural advantage which the Hindi-speaking North Indian will have cannot possibly be obliterated by the imposition of a South Indian language on him, which is of no use to him and which he need not and will not learn as the South Indian will have to learn Hindi. It is an unfair reciprocity which is likely to accentuate the sense of the just grievance of the South Indian against the Hindi imperialism of the North Indian. Far from strengthening the sense of Indian nationalism, it will not only weaken it but will stimulate to an unhealthy, and even dangerous, degree local linguistic pride and patriotism and the demand for linguistic autonomy and sovereignty. If, on the other hand, the English language is continued as the chosen medium for all-India, as for international communications, its value, whether an advantage or a disadvantage, will be common to both the North and the South, and neither will have an undue advantage over the other.

It is a matter for satisfaction that the prejudice against the continued use of English in India is waning and the importance of that language is being increasingly realised and acknowledged. But the insistence on Hindi has not been given up. Instead, a compromise of Three-Languages has been advocated. It is to include the regional language, Hindi and English. The latter two also are to be made compulsory from an early stage of primary education. When compulsory primary education of eight years is universalised, as it should be as early as possible, English and Hindi will also be universalised in India. In course of time every citizen would know both. But it may well be doubted if both are necessary when either of them will serve equally well for all purposes within India. Two men do not need two languages to communicate with each other, unless it be intended that one language should be used for some purposes and the second for some others, which is odd! If it is intended to eliminate English ultimately, it seems equally odd to universalise it in the first instance at enormous effort and expense! While Hindi can, at best, serve all-India purposes, English can serve them as well as international purposes also and do both much better. The development of English is not likely to wait for Hindi to catch up with it in utility, but will always be ahead of Hindi. It should be noted that the Three-Languages and their alphabets are to be made compulsory for school-children who have no choice in the matter and who need maximum knowledge through a minimum number of languages and alphabets. If English must be learnt and will serve better than Hindi for all-India purposes, it would be cruel to impose Hindi also on children.

If a language is to be used for higher education and administration, it must be highly developed, and its users should acquire high proficiency in it. If the regional languages, as well as Hindi and English, are all to be used for such purposes, all of them must be equally highly developed, and their users must attain equally high proficiency in all of them. “Pidgeon” English, “Bazaar” Hindi and colloquial regional languages are not enough. Since it is not possible to anticipate the future profession of each child when it is still in school, it should be given equal opportunities with others and must be put to the strain of learning the three languages and three alphabets well enough to qualify for higher positions in later life. Two languages and alphabets will reduce the strain without reducing the opportunities for knowledge.

If Hindi or English is ultimately to be the sole all-India language for higher administration and education, and every citizen has to learn it, it may well be used for regional purposes also. The subjects included in the State List of the Seventh Schedule are common to all States, and if each State uses a different language, people in other States will not be able to follow, and it will lead to isolation of each State. The attempt to make Hindi the sole official language of the Central Government has provoked the linguistic States to adopt their regional languages for their official purposes. English is not being replaced by Hindi but by the regional languages. The cost of administration is bound to go up if every communication of the Central Government has to be communicated to the State Governments through their several regional languages. If each linguistic State addresses the Central Government in its regional language, they will have to be translated into Hindi for the use of the Central Government, at enormous cost and delay. If a business firm has to address the several State Governments each in its regional language, and the Government of India in Hindi, the burden of administration will be unduly heavy. If fourteen languages are to be used for executive, judicial and legislative purposes as well as private business, the number of books, documents and codes etc., which will have to be translated from English into these languages Plus Hindi cannot be estimated with any accuracy but the cost is bound to be prohibitive. It appears that the Manual of drill, ceremonial and staff duties of the Defence Forces runs into lakhs of pages; the Railway Code into nine thousand pages; the Post and Telegraph Guides, etc., into over eleven thousand. The number of books in any modern and up-to-date library runs into thousands. Modern progress in science and technology depends more on periodicals than on formal text-books which go out of date by the time they are published! Most of such material is now available in the English language and at a comparatively low price. Simultaneous translation of these into fourteen languages with the desirable accuracy and promptitude is bound to strain the finances of India too much. If English is to be made compulsory for all, as under the Three-Languages Formula, it is best to retain these codes etc., in that language, and divert a small part of the money to improve the knowledge of English among the population.

Hindi is not necessary for the whole population; it is not as useful as English. It may be learnt by those who need it. Sanskrit and Arabic will continue to be honoured classics, learnt as voluntary subjects by those who fancy them, mostly a small number of scholars. Other languages will also be learnt by the few that need them, most of whom will be scholars or diplomats.

English language will continue to be the cementing force of Indian nationalism that it has been, and will be the medium of broader enlightenment to an ever increasing proportion of the Indian population, besides facilitating international knowledge, intercourse and understanding. It will cause minimum dislocation and preserve maximum continuity without loss of efficiency.

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