Mecaulay’s Children, Orphans, and Bastards

Lord Mecaulay, of the infamous Minute on Indian Education, according a good friend: anticipates that the ‘native interpreters’ – the English-speaking elite – will go on to enrich their native languages and enhance the literature and scientific knowledge of India thereby. He didn’t suggest that English could suffice for India by any means, or replace its native regional languages.

I believe that Mecaulay fantasized is more like it; it never happened. Enriching Indian language through an understanding of English was the mandate given to the CIEFL (now called the EFLU). A decade later, they set up the CIIL. And this miserable joint comes up with a pathetic publication called muse india (go google for it), after three decades of existence...

All the English elite I know personally are out of this country. And some of them don’t even teach their children Telugu or Hindi, or whatever is their mother (native) tongue.

But, I think, it doesn't matter: English is what gives us an edge over China. Otherwise, we would be as badly off as Bangladesh or Ethiopia.

English rules. So be it. That is not the point: if someone wants to revive the regional languages (native languages), I am all for them. Like if shivsena in Mumbai, and the Kannada Rakshana Vedika in Bengaluru want to make sure that the shop signs include a word of Marathi or Kannada, along with a big English display, I think they have a right to do so. I lost friends pushing this point across and I am willing to make enemies too…

My friend, Daniel, made an excellent observation, that Mecaulay was not against native or regional languages, but against Sanskrit and Persian - which were as irrelevant as Greek and Latin. And right he was (I mean Mecaulay); and of course my friend, Dan.

A friend of mine visited me in Singapore; she was a Teow Chew (a brand of Chinese; I should be calling it a dialect, but I am not a linguist really) from Bangkok. We went to a restaurant and the guy was a Tamil. I spoke to him in English and he took the order. Then she said: Why didn't you talk to him in Indian? I said there is no Indian other than In-glish.

We got talking more; she said, wistfully: you were lucky to have the Brits run your country for so long (Thailand, and strangely enough, Finland) are the only countried which were not really 'occupied' during the second world war. I said why? Oh, your English is so good.

I did not tell her that it was not the Brits really who should get the credit, as far as my eloquence in English was concerned, but a certain affable Madrasi. If I were to be rude, I would perhaps call you a Bangalorean... Well, the affable madrasi, and to be rude, Bangalorean is none other than Daniel, who pretty much taught me to speak ‘the language’ (I say this because Sharon Prabhakar once famously said that pop music is not popular in India because people don’t know ‘the language’). For the uninitiated, Sharon is the wife of the son of a bachelor Alyque and mother of some broad who is in the flicks – Shazahn.

Mecaulay was absolutely to the point when he said that if Sanskrit and Persian were such cracked up languages, why are people asking for scholarships to study them. Of course, it hurts when he says that all of Indian literature would be accommodated in two shelves and blah. But as one gets older, one gets to be a bit forgiving. He did not have time to go through the welth of literary and scientific texts - nor did I - available in Sanskrit.

Over to someone who knows better.
http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00generallinks/macaulay/txt_minute_education_1835.html
Here is ‘the language’ again, in Manu Joseph’s diatribe against Indian languages and lovers of mother tongue:

well-paying job in the country that does not require a good understanding of the language. Higher education here is conducted entirely in English.

And Manu is happy about this:
“A villager has more respect for a brand that is written in English,” said Dhruman Sanghvi, a company director.

"English is the de facto national language of India. It is a bitter truth." says Manu.

For Manu, this is the sweet truth; he should be at least honest about his opinions, if he gets the facts f*** wrong.