Like the many Hindus who respectfully visit churches, gurudwaras and mosques saying, “When we have a thousand gods why not one or two more places of worship?” Indians should be able to say, “When we have 22 major languages, some of them very old and highly developed, why not one or two more languages, particularly if they provide a voice to those who have not been heard?”
Isn’t Vak devi sacred? Isn’t the word god?
Yet, somehow, the grip of English as a metaphysical empire long after India ceased to be Britain’s colony is a source of disturbance to some of us who have developed a neurotic antipathy for not just English as a language, but also for the different world cultures that came with and through it. We fantasise about a golden era when we were untouched by European influences.
Exchange to enrich
But why? Our best writers pre- and post-1947 are bilingual, at ease both in their mother tongues and in English. Manoj Das, Girish Karnad, Nabaneeta Dev Sen, Mridula Garg, Paul Zacharia, Kiran Nagarkar, U.R. Ananthamurthy and K. Satchidanandan.
Let’s pause before proceeding! Did the Vikings cling to their outdated agricultural implements when they saw more efficient ones upon invading England? No. How long did Anglo-Saxons resist Norman culture which reached them in the 11th century and integrated itself into the land they conquered? The Norman conquerors brought England into an enriched new millennium with their poetry, architecture and masonry, laws and sophisticated weaponry.
In the years between 1880 and 1914, when Britain was at the height of her imperial power, large sections of her population were in a shocking state of decline: sickly, undernourished and illiterate. Alfred Marshall denounced the educational poverty of the English working class mind as the world’s biggest wasted product, and Samuel Smith warned that “unless we teach these classes the same virtues which have elevated other classes,” the proletariat would strangle the whole country. Many reports were prepared in Britain, and finally the formidable English Association stated that the teaching of the English language and literature was the only way the country’s disparate populations could be unified. An almost evangelical mission was undertaken to spread a standard form of English in the British Isles. Ironically, at a time when English was about to become a universal language, its native speakers were hardly acquainted with its riches.
No word of all this reached the larger public in India. At that time we were in a state of cultural retreat: our languages starved for funds, our religions and arts ridiculed. A century later, despite our incalculable linguistic wealth and 72 years of independence, India is at a point where even our college-educated populations are in a dangerous state of language illiteracy. Two generations of Indians have been deprived of sustained language immersion and merely grilled to pass exams. Barring rare exceptions, the joys of reciting poetry or reading a play aloud or staging one are unknown to the schoolchild today. Hardly any school curriculum seriously introduces mind-expanding poetry and fiction from either a regional language or in English translation.
The neglect of literature and languages at all levels has gradually diminished us without our being aware of it. This is nothing short of a tragedy because secularism, our various literatures, and the English language are the hinges of India’s unity. The potential for appreciating and gaining from bilingualism is truly vast and a huge storehouse of material is readily at hand. For instance, an exchange of literatures between languages could be a memorable and emotional way to teach history and politics. The Tamil Nadu Textbook and Educational Services Corporation has taken the lead and introduced a brilliant Tamil translation of W.H. Auden’s famous poem ‘Partition’ on the Radcliffe Line. The translation, by T.S. Saravanan, is part of the Class XII History textbook.
Unbiased at least he was when he
arrived on his mission,
Having never set eyes on the land he
was called to partition
Between two peoples fanatically at
odds,
With their different diets and
incompatible gods.
“Time,” they had briefed him in
London, “is short. It’s too late
For mutual reconciliation or
rational debate:
The only solution now lies in
separation.
S. Ramakrishnan has prepared a transliterated excerpt for this column.
viTutalait tiTTattaic ceyalpaTutta
vantapootu avar naTunilaitaan
naaTTunilai aRiyaamal
parinturaitta pirivinai peru
vilaitaan
veRikoNTa iru inattiRkumiTaiyee
vilakiyatu oRRumai
ivarkaLin iraiyilum, iRaiyilum
evvaLavoo veeRRumai
viTutalai vazhanga ilaNTan
vitittirunta neeramoo konjcam
camaraca muyaRcikkum, vivaata
payiRccikkum atil neeram engee
enjcum
pirivinaitaan oree tiirvenRu
vaisraay varaintaar kaTitam
As Raja Rao said in an essay called ‘The Caste of English’: “Truth can use any language.”
The writer edits translations for Oxford University Press.
