Deprivation’s real cause: English
Mohan-ji recently forwarded me this excellent article by Madhu Kishwar* titled, “Deprivations real language” .
Madhu-ji writes how amidst the furore over reservations and quotas, people are forgetting the fundamental issue regarding English – specifically English as a critical factor in professional and career advancement in the India of today.
I have experienced this first-hand and have strong views on this matter. In fact, one of the “dreams” I have is to have a piece of software that could translate this blog in Hindi and Indian regional languages so that more people can access it and read it. I could of course choose to blog in Hindi but there are numerous practical difficulties (keyboard layout/ my Hindi typing speed etc); a podcast may be a viable idea – but I have not tried it yet. Anyways, here are a few excerpts from the article (emphasis mine):
all the suggestions have one thing in common and they share this with the reservation policy itself: the flawed assumption that deprivation has only two facets in India – being born in a caste or tribe listed in government records as backward or depressed, and/or being born in a poor family. In reality, the single most influential factor that determines access to elite educational institutions, and hence to important avenues of economic and social advancement, is command over the English language. The advantage that English-based education provides often trumps the traditional divides of caste and class. However, despite the dominance of English in our education system for over a century, proficiency in English is unattainable for most and creates conditions of unequal competition for the vast majority. More than a century and a half after English came to be imposed as a language of governance and for the elite professions, no more than 1 per cent of our people use it as a first or second language.
The rest find all avenues of advancement firmly shut before them. A person who has failed to acquire this magical skill may be a first-rate scholar in Marathi, Hindi or Assamese but that will not make that person eligible for anything more than a peon’s job even within the linguistic boundaries of Maharashtra, UP or Assam states in which these languages are spoken by millions of people.
This is sad but appallingly true. As Madhu-ji points out:
Consider this: there are no medical or science and technology journals in any of the Indian languages, including those that are spoken by millions.India is the only country where no social science journal is published in any of the Indian languages. All “eminent” historians write their histories of India in English. All “eminent” sociologists publish their micro and macro level studies of Indian society in English. For those who are not well trained in handling the English language, all the new knowledge being generated about the past and present of Indian society is inaccessible.
Not surprisingly, high status scholarly conferences on Indian history, politics, sociology and even Indian religions are mostly held in American, British, even Australian and German universities, rather than in Kurukshetra, Patna or Meerut universities. Scholarly studies and translations of Indian epics and dharmic texts are also mostly done by Western scholars. As a result, their biases, their interpretations, their critiques become ours. We begin to view our successes, our failures, and our problems and delineate even our aspirations through the eyes of outsiders.
No medical school conducts courses in any of the Indian languages even though India has one of the oldest and most sophisticated traditions of medical knowledge and expertise. The medium of instruction and examination in all our schools of architecture as well as the course content is in English, even though India has an exceptionally well-developed and distinct architectural tradition of its own. No business management school would condescend to teach in any Indian language even though the entrepreneurial genius of our traditional business communities is legendary. India is one of the very few places in the world where pharmaceutical companies do not bother to write the names of the medicines they produce in any Indian language. Our lawyers draft petitions in English on behalf of even those clients who do not know a word of English. Court proceedings, especially at the higher levels, are all carried out in English. Unfortunately our political leaders do not consider this new source of inequality and disempowerment worth any attention because attacking this source of deprivation would require serious thought and effort. There are no quick fixes here.”
This is beyond being merely tragic. For unconsciously, we are creating an underclass whose only handicap is that they have (or had) no access to English. It is a pity and a shame because millions of bright children and youth are being kept out of the workforce simply because they are unable to confidently or fluently converse in English or are unable to read an write beyond the most basic sentences.
What can be done? I think the solution needs to be attacked from two directions: one, make English teaching more affordable, more accessible and more widespread. Two, consciously create a sense of pride in our own languages, promote their literature, encourage translation of scientific and socio-economic research, academic journals, produce textbooks in these languages. This is not impossible.
Japan, with a language system that does not even have a phonetic base, has managed to do it and almost all European countries have an extensive amount of scientific, technical, literary and commercial body of work in their own languages. With political will, it can be done. The problem is, as Madhu-ji rightly says, “this would require serious thought and effort – and on that count alone, it is safe to assume that politicians would never attempt it.”
Harsh, but sadly, the truth.
Image courtesy: Madhu Kishwar’s Blog
“…With political will, it can be done…”
Political will? In India, there seems only one political will among all parties – Vote Bank Politics Will.
Btw, good article 🙂
Sadly true Ravi.
Shantanu, I’m seized by Dr Sunil’s comment to you today over at About-Me and your response to it.
I think this is the most crucial thing — you need to reach the masses. All the best!
“I could of course choose to blog in Hindi but there are numerous practical difficulties (keyboard layout/ my Hindi typing speed etc)”
Shantanu, when we can endeavor to learn Sanskrit (mostly) from scratch, then these practical difficulties are only a tiny roadblock which can be easily surmounted with some patience and practice. And with transliteration tools widely available, a Hindi keyboard is not even required.
Kaffir: Good point. Currently travelling but will respond soon…
nice article but in ENGLISH 🙁
I wonder how our social scientists have failed to understand this simple phenomenon! For anybody who understands the Indian society, may well logically make an analysis on this.
Once I was talking to a rickshaw wala about his life story. I also asked him the how-about his kids upbringing. He simply replied, “Saab, main bhi sochta hun ki bacchon ko angreji school mein daalun. Magar paison ki dikkat hai. Kahan se launga main itni saari fees?” Now to interpret this, the standards of government education is in doldrums. (I call them ‘Ram Bharose chalne wali padhai’.) So its quite natural on a father’s (irrespective of his own profession) part that he would like to see his children excel in a language which can fetch them jobs later.
To make one of the solutions very simple, promote English in Government schools like never before. So that those children coming out of those schools don’t have to face a huge challenge (sometimes it becomes cultural shock for them too) when they compete with big city folks for higher education. Even if regional languages (including Hindi) are been taught in schools or books, magazines and journals are been printed in Indian languages, one language will ultimately rule over the minds, i.e., English. Every job interview (mostly private) demands specific level of English proficiency as they don’t prefer mediocrity. And government jobs is not available for all.
government jobs are*…
Many state governments do not aid English medium schools and government primary schools continue to be in the vernacular medium. A better policy is to have semi-English medium, where English is introduced in the early years of primary school and then mathematics and sciences are taught in English while social sciences are taught in the vernacular. This makes a transition to English-medium colleges easier (especially in the technical professional courses) while continuing to have a hold on the mother tongue / state language. Many schools have this policy and their students are fluent in both English and the vernacular.
Thanks for making some great points here…I will respond once I’m back frm my travels.
(This was written before http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/controversial-upsc-notification-kept-in-abeyance-after-uproar/article4512025.ece)
The recent UPSC Notice only reinforces the UPSC bias against the Indian languages and in favour of English. This is evident from the following facts:
1. For the Preliminary Examination, the UPSC makes compulsory the comprehension of English but not of an Indian language. If you don’t know English at all (and no matter how fluent you are in any of our Constitution’s Eighth Schedule languages), you are very likely to be rejected at this preliminary stage of the selection process.
2. In the Main Examination, there is a compulsory section in English Comprehension and English Precis. If your English is not good enough (and no matter how fluent you are in any Eighth Schedule language), you’ll get rejected at this stage of the selection process.
3a. For the Main Examination, the language medium (other than the compulsory English section) can be an Eighth Schedule language only if the candidate has an Honours degree in that language, and there are at least 24 more candidates also opting for that language medium (other than English or Hindi).
3b. In the Main Examination, an Optional Subject can be English Literature or the literature of any Eighth Schedule language,
3c. In other words, in the UPSC selection system, there is a distinct preference and selection advantage for those fluent in English over those not fluent in English. And now those of any Eighth Schedule language (other than Hindi) are at a distinct further disadvantage – they have to produce 24 more candidates for that language as their medium for the examination. Moreover, the literature of an Eighth Schedule language can be offered as an Optional Subject only if the candidate graduated in it. For the non-literature Optional Subject choices, no such qualification is required.
4. The UPSC Notice itself is silent on the language for the interview but, going by the common experience so far, those opting for English are at an advantage over those opting for Hindi (and even more so over the other Eighth Schedule languages) because all the interviewers know English, and many are not conversant with Hindi (and so cannot really comprehend answers in Hindi). UPSC interviewers themselves prefer answers in English. Thus, in August 2012, the UPSC conducted interviews for the IPS Ltd Competitive Exam 2012. There were candidates who opted for their interviews in Hindi. This was entirely within the UPSC rules yet, to my certain knowledge, a chairman of one interviewing board [IMG Khan] required at least two Hindi-medium candidates to answer only in English. He told them he expected them to know English and that there were board members who did not know Hindi. The candidates had no option but to stumble through their answers in English.
5. The UPSC Notice was issued after the approval of the Government of India.
In 1835 TB Macaulay (in his notorious “Minute on Indian Education” that decided that English must be the language of education in India) enunciated the missionary-colonial objective of introducing a class of brown sahibs between the colonial rulers and the native ruled. Since 1835 the language of our rulers has been English.
The Indian government, in 2013, has just affirmed its loyalty to this colonial legacy of macaulayanism. To recruit its babus that rule over the aam admi, it requires the only language they must know is English. No knowledge of any Indian language is expected or wanted. A candidate can be selected to Indian government service not knowing a single word of any Indian language.
It affirms that the “Indian Administrative Service” is about a colonial-type “administration” (shaasan), not about a bharatiya-type “service” (seva), and that to be “Indian” starts with needing to learn English!
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For the Minute on Indian Education – and macaulayanism – see http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00generallinks/macaulay/txt_minute_education_1835.html
My point is not that we need not know English, but why is English the only compulsory one? If our powers-that-be are determined that knowing English is a pre-requisite for ruling over us, then why not a qualifying mark both in English and in any of the Eighth Schedule languages?
@acorn picks up a theme that has been on my mind for over a decade (actually, not mine but Madhu Kishwar-ji’s mind!): English is an Indian language.
Brief excepts below:
…English continues to make a difference to how much people earn. For jobs within India, the difference can be somewhere between a conservative 40% to a massive 300% depending on the demographic and other qualifications. English also makes a difference to job mobility.
…
So it is important that we view English as a vocational skill that opens up opportunities for our citizens. One way to address the demographic challenges of our highly populated, lower-income states is for their governments to support English language skills—as opposed to English ‘medium’—in public schools. Thus, it is painful to see political leaders in the states that will most benefit from English take the most dogmatic attitudes against it.