In defence of Indian English

The grammar could wait as the 'present continuous tense' ruled the roost

The Indian Air Force inherited everything lock, stock, and barrel from the colonial-era Royal Indian Air Force when the British left Indian shores; that includes English, the lingua franca in the camps. In the 1980s (when English-medium schools were rare in our countryside), it was a tough ask for the training centres to coach new recruits to communicate in English.

We, the southern boys, equipped with “small English and less Hindi”, babbled hard to survive in the camp. We managed with a few common English words, conjoining them into some form of sentence. Customised textbooks and situational English lessons developed in-house came in handy for ab initio trainees. Of course, there were additional classroom sessions, all part of a crash course to get the boys ready as quickly as possible.

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The grammar could wait, and the “present continuous tense” ruled the roost in conversations. Hindi words like mochi, katchada, roti, and subji were interspersed without much ado. The product churned out of all these efforts was something genuinely Indian, not the English left behind by the Royal Indian Air Force.

These days, whenever I attempt to converse without using any English words, I invariably fail. Strangely, English pops up when one is overwhelmed with emotions like anger or love. English terms would trespass when they were least expected, even in Malayalam literati meetings. Yet we label English as foreign!

Why should one think the Indian accent is subservient to RP (received pronunciation)? If Americans are proud of their “Yankee” accent, we too can have our English spiced up with regional flavours of intonation. Indian languages are rich with excellent proverbs and idioms. Why not adapt them to the repository of Indian English and conjure up their new English versions?

“A tumbler of tea” could be foreign, but “a glass of chai” is certainly Indian. What is wrong if we make the gender of our cousin known by calling him “cousin brother”? After all, we Indians consider our cousins as our own brothers and sisters. Let the Indian English absorb frequently interposed expressions like achcha, ji, and yar. Is not the vernacular amma now a universally accepted substitute for mother? Indian courts must stop the habit of summoning the Oxford Dictionary at the drop of a hat; call for a Dictionary of Indian English (DoIE) authenticated by reputed Indian universities instead.

If we can celebrate cricket as our own, the connection of English with England should not disturb us. Promote IE as India’s soft power. Let it connect South Asia, and let our diaspora spread it far and wide. Let us take pride in “Made in India English,” developed within our borders, with all its embellishments of rhotic accent, un-aspirated plosives, and repeating “Alsos” and “Onlys.” Why should we doubt ourselves when the West doesn’t think twice before claiming the patent for Basmati rice?