THE FUTURE OF ENGLISH IN INDIA

By KHASA SUBBA RAU

(Editor, Swatantra, Madras)

A month or so after the transfer of power I had occasion to discuss the future of English in India with Sir Archibald Nye, then Governor of Madras. He was of the opinion that if English was not compulsorily banned within a year or two by the new National Government of India, it would manage to survive for ever. His argument ran thus wise: It is in the first flush of freedom that sentimental objection to the use of a foreign language is at its intensest. That is just the time when thought of consequences is least oppressive. Drastic changes are therefore made then more easily than later. If in the first excitement of freedom, English is not straightway abolished as one of the emblematic needs of the new era, later on the intensity of the feeling against it will diminish, and a process of adjustment will take place, affording the English language sufficient security against legal banishment.

As I made no record of Sir Archibald’s argument at the time, I have put it in my own words without, I hope, impairing the sense of it materially. One factor, which perhaps he failed to take into due account, has taken the course of events in a direction different from his prediction. With the advent of freedom there has been a resurgence of the demand for linguistic division of the country, and this demand has broken up the cosmopolitan outlook that provided, the congenial atmosphere for the spread of English in the days of British rule, even more than State patronage. It is a remarkable fact that it was, under foreign government that the unity of India was achieved as a psychological reality, more than in any of the period when native rulers held the country. Multi-linguality became the basis of national integration as British power spread from province to province. There was unrestricted migration of people from one part of the country to another, and one natural consequence of it was the multiplication of multi-lingual centres where people speaking different languages drawn from all parts of the country established their homes, feeling quite at home in their new surroundings. This multi-linguality was by no means confined to the towns and cities. It became an all-pervasive process and it extended to the rural areas as well as to the urban, though in a lesser degree.

Multi-linguality had two effects. It bred a spirit of tolerance for other languages besides one’s own, and provincial Governments in India did not limit their concern to any one language deemed regional; they took a lively interest in all the languages spoken within their jurisdiction, without conceding priority or importance in accordance with numerical strength. Without any oppressive feeling of majority or minority, people speaking different languages in the composite provincial administrations of the British pattern, felt themselves cherished under a common umbrella of protection and hospitality. For the purpose of inter-communication between different linguistic groups, English fulfilled a role that could be supplied by no other language and it flourished under the double impetus of State support and practical necessity.

With the rise of the spirit of linguism every State is now tending to regard itself as the special patron of a regional language, and languages other than the regional are being driven into forlorn condition in a large part of the country. The passion of linguism is not likely to diminish with the efflux of time, as the excitement of attaining independence might. The real threat to the position of English comes, therefore, not from the momentum of political forces traceable to the attainment of freedom but to the reactions of bigotry arising from the insurgence of linguism. We have evidence of this in Bombay where an attempt is being made to ban the use of English in University teaching.

For the next ten years, as a result of State action in response to unimaginative popular clamour or engineered fanatic pressures, a progressive decline in the position of English, in educational institutions as well as in public life, may be expected. But this decline seems to be likely to have only a temporary duration. As the first generation of educated youth under the new system of exclusive vernacular teaching are thrown out into life, they are bound to feel at every stage the pitch of if adequate equipment and insufficient knowledge. With appetites roused for knowledge and information, but with facilities for their satisfaction denied, they are sure to turn to some foreign language to supplement the deficiencies of their tuition, and in the rush of this inevitable quest of the future which may begin about ten or fifteen years hence, English will have a far greater appeal and wider spread in India than it ever had, for it will come out of intellectually stimulated mass hunger and not superimposed administrative action. Language is tile expression in concrete form of the experience of the race, and it is because of the phenomenal superiority of the English speaking race in economic, scientific and historical achievement, that their language is an incomparable treasure-house or knowledge and culture, such as none of our languages is able to provide even in remote approximation. Only when our experience as a nation outdistances that of which the English language is the compendium, can we dispense with recourse to English with any degree of hope for the sustenance of our present status in the competitive setting of the world’s comity of nations. This attractive destiny is certainly unattainable in ten or twenty years. If at all it comes, it will take a couple of centuries at the least.

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