<p>Ever since the English language was introduced in higher education in India as the main language of knowledge, a slow process flagged off by Macaulay’s ‘Minutes’ (1835), there have been undercurrents within Indian languages that have viewed English as a challenge. In the years immediately following Independence, there has been an active anti-English campaign in the northern parts of the country. </p>.<p>As a result of the exponential growth in the number of English-medium schools in the country in recent years, one notices the eruption of ‘bhasha-bachao’ (save our language) movements in several states, particularly in Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka and Punjab. It is easy to understand that the anti-English protests and campaigns shape up as the English language has played several key roles in the history of India since the 19th century, apart from being just a natural language that came here like many other natural languages. </p>.<p>English has been the language of the people who had colonised India. It has been the language through which a lot of what we call ‘modernity’ is supposed to have reached the Indian shores. It has been the language of 20th-century imperialism, which the political sentiment in India did not favour so much. Besides, English is, today, the language of a powerful communication technology, and the language associated with the flow of international capital. Thus, being so many of the above, and more, it continues to elicit anger from a variety of quarters from time to time. </p>.<p>Yet, it is a language which brought to Indian languages a huge range of lexical items, adding to their power of expression. It is the language which has continued to enrich literary and dramatic expression in Indian languages by bringing to them literature from all parts of the world. Besides, it is today, probably the most effective link language for the Indian republic and a language which brings employment and business more easily than other languages do. </p>.<p>Given this extremely complicated and entrenched place of the English language in India, what is in store for us in the near future? More specifically, what will the condition of Indian languages such as Bangla, Telugu, Marathi and Gujarati and so on be? Will English manage to replace all of them completely? Or will English, one day, beat a quiet retreat to the lonely island from where it came? It is but natural that these and such other questions should continue to exercise the minds of Indians. </p>.The nation and its languages.<p>Obviously, there are no easy answers to these questions since human languages are known to have behaved in the most surprising manner in the past. Some very mighty languages are known to have disappeared in the face of some minor challenges; some others have grown taller precisely because they faced threats of extinction.</p>.<p>Yet, if one were to try predicting the fortunes of the English language in India, one would have to look at the history of its fortunes in similar situations elsewhere. It is necessary to recall that the English language travelled with the colonial rulers to several other continents. It managed to almost entirely replace the indigenous languages in North America, Australia and New Zealand. That did not however, happen in African countries like Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa. </p>.<p>In India, just as the fortunes of the English language continued to improve, numerous Indian languages too, witnessed a remarkable literary and linguistic growth in the same period. Based on this comparative perspective, one can perhaps propose that there had been something in the making of the Indian languages prior to the arrival of English which allowed them to face the encounter in a far more mature way than the languages of the Atlantic and Pacific areas had managed to do. What was this peculiar strength? </p>.<p>If one were to step back in history, one notices that the Indic and the Dravidic languages had previously negotiated the encounter with Arabic and Persian with an equal maturity, themselves surviving in the encounter and linguistically gaining in the process. Given such a history, it is reasonable to assume that our innate multilingualism will see us through our encounter with the English language as well. As a result of the intimacy between English and the indigenous languages, they are likely to get suffused with English vocabulary. But so long as the grammars are their own, they need not fear a total annihilation at the hands of English. </p>.<p>The fear of decline should arise from another quarter, namely, the neglect of the minor languages, the dialects and the speech patterns of the indigenous communities, forest dwellers, hill communities, and coastal communities. These ‘other’ languages have been like the roots of the main languages. They have provided the main languages with semantic resources and expressive power.</p>.<p>Those roots have started drying up as the speakers of the ‘other’ languages — the non-recognised, the oral, the economically less privileged — are driven to outward migration in search of livelihood. The situation would be predictably far worse some 30 years from now. So, if the great language diversity of the world has to be preserved, promoted and carried forward to the future generations, it would be necessary to turn attention to the indigenous and minor languages.</p>.<p><em>(G N Devy is chairperson, The People’s Linguistic survey of India)</em></p>
<p>Ever since the English language was introduced in higher education in India as the main language of knowledge, a slow process flagged off by Macaulay’s ‘Minutes’ (1835), there have been undercurrents within Indian languages that have viewed English as a challenge. In the years immediately following Independence, there has been an active anti-English campaign in the northern parts of the country. </p>.<p>As a result of the exponential growth in the number of English-medium schools in the country in recent years, one notices the eruption of ‘bhasha-bachao’ (save our language) movements in several states, particularly in Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka and Punjab. It is easy to understand that the anti-English protests and campaigns shape up as the English language has played several key roles in the history of India since the 19th century, apart from being just a natural language that came here like many other natural languages. </p>.<p>English has been the language of the people who had colonised India. It has been the language through which a lot of what we call ‘modernity’ is supposed to have reached the Indian shores. It has been the language of 20th-century imperialism, which the political sentiment in India did not favour so much. Besides, English is, today, the language of a powerful communication technology, and the language associated with the flow of international capital. Thus, being so many of the above, and more, it continues to elicit anger from a variety of quarters from time to time. </p>.<p>Yet, it is a language which brought to Indian languages a huge range of lexical items, adding to their power of expression. It is the language which has continued to enrich literary and dramatic expression in Indian languages by bringing to them literature from all parts of the world. Besides, it is today, probably the most effective link language for the Indian republic and a language which brings employment and business more easily than other languages do. </p>.<p>Given this extremely complicated and entrenched place of the English language in India, what is in store for us in the near future? More specifically, what will the condition of Indian languages such as Bangla, Telugu, Marathi and Gujarati and so on be? Will English manage to replace all of them completely? Or will English, one day, beat a quiet retreat to the lonely island from where it came? It is but natural that these and such other questions should continue to exercise the minds of Indians. </p>.The nation and its languages.<p>Obviously, there are no easy answers to these questions since human languages are known to have behaved in the most surprising manner in the past. Some very mighty languages are known to have disappeared in the face of some minor challenges; some others have grown taller precisely because they faced threats of extinction.</p>.<p>Yet, if one were to try predicting the fortunes of the English language in India, one would have to look at the history of its fortunes in similar situations elsewhere. It is necessary to recall that the English language travelled with the colonial rulers to several other continents. It managed to almost entirely replace the indigenous languages in North America, Australia and New Zealand. That did not however, happen in African countries like Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa. </p>.<p>In India, just as the fortunes of the English language continued to improve, numerous Indian languages too, witnessed a remarkable literary and linguistic growth in the same period. Based on this comparative perspective, one can perhaps propose that there had been something in the making of the Indian languages prior to the arrival of English which allowed them to face the encounter in a far more mature way than the languages of the Atlantic and Pacific areas had managed to do. What was this peculiar strength? </p>.<p>If one were to step back in history, one notices that the Indic and the Dravidic languages had previously negotiated the encounter with Arabic and Persian with an equal maturity, themselves surviving in the encounter and linguistically gaining in the process. Given such a history, it is reasonable to assume that our innate multilingualism will see us through our encounter with the English language as well. As a result of the intimacy between English and the indigenous languages, they are likely to get suffused with English vocabulary. But so long as the grammars are their own, they need not fear a total annihilation at the hands of English. </p>.<p>The fear of decline should arise from another quarter, namely, the neglect of the minor languages, the dialects and the speech patterns of the indigenous communities, forest dwellers, hill communities, and coastal communities. These ‘other’ languages have been like the roots of the main languages. They have provided the main languages with semantic resources and expressive power.</p>.<p>Those roots have started drying up as the speakers of the ‘other’ languages — the non-recognised, the oral, the economically less privileged — are driven to outward migration in search of livelihood. The situation would be predictably far worse some 30 years from now. So, if the great language diversity of the world has to be preserved, promoted and carried forward to the future generations, it would be necessary to turn attention to the indigenous and minor languages.</p>.<p><em>(G N Devy is chairperson, The People’s Linguistic survey of India)</em></p>
