Incidentally October 5th is also my 70th birthday. My thirty years
campaign for English medium education for poor children in the Government
schools has come to a meaningful stage.
William Carey and Raja Ramohan Roy started the first English medium
school in Kolkata (then Calcutta) in 1817. By 2022 where the world stands
relieved with medical science, mainly developed using the English language as
global communicator, has saved the world from devastation. If science and
English were not to co-exist the world would have been a burial ground because
of Corona.
So far in India two State Governments, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana have
made English medium teaching compulsory in all the state Government schools.
This is the beginning of an educational revolution in India. Already Nagaland
has been teaching only in English medium in all the state Government schools
for quite a long time. Most state Governments have started teaching English as a
compulsory subject from class one in the recent past. Kashmir has started such
compulsory English teaching from class one as a subject for a long time. The
Aam Aadmi Party in Delhi upscaled English teaching in all state run schools.
This apart, there are thousands of private English medium schools all
over India.
It is a known fact that the Rastriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) are opposed to English medium education in
Government schools. At the same time they are not opposed to private schools
that teach in English medium with a design to keep the poor out of English
education.
They know that English language education takes people out of poverty,
conservatism and superstition.
After the BJP/RSS came to power in 2014 the private sector has opened
more costly English medium schools, colleges and universities for the rich. But
the central Government has been insisting that the poor–as they mostly are from
Shudra/SC/STs–to study in regional languages. That is a varna dharma language
policy.
MY ENCOUNTER WITH
SOIL AND ENGLISH
In my 70 years of life I consciously interacted with this soil, animals,
crops ever since I was five. In other words for 65 years I lived a conscious
life on this soil, leaving five years of pure childhood. As a child I played in
this land’s dust, mud, among lambs, calves of buffalos and cows. I also ate mud
or dust as many children in Indian villages do.
In my childhood my caste people were speaking to humans and animals in a
language called Kuruma Bhasha, which had its origins in Kannada Kuruba Bhasha.
Very few people understood that language. It had no script. My total community
was illiterate and was speaking a scriptless language within themselves. Other
villagers did not understand that language.
All around my small village there were Lambada tribal hamlets. They were
speaking Gor Boli (Lambadi Bhasha). Within the village there were few Muslim
houses. Their children were speaking Urdu. Many castes which were around
agrarian tasks were speaking Telugu in Telangana dialect with a lot of Urdu
words in it. There was hardly any communication between groups. People’s
communication from language to language was broken one and symbolic.
As I grew up we shifted to Telugu from our caste language. But still we
were broken people in terms of our different languages, leave alone caste.
Shifting from one language to another was a difficult journey.
In the last 65 years of my conscious and communicative life a slow and
silent revolution took place. English has come into all houses, literate,
illiterate, rural or urban, slowly. That began to bring a change.
The name Rice replaced what we called biyyam, Motton replaced, mansamu,
Fish replaced chepalu, Chicken replaced kodi kura, Vegetable replaced koora
kayalu in all communities in the deeper Andhra Pradesh and Telangana villages
and hamlets.
Not only that Water replaced neellu, Milk replaced paalu, Salt replaced
uppu. Oil replaced noone. Shirt replaced angi. Pant replaced laagu. Labour
replaced cooli.Many such English words and names of commodities have become
common. Main functions like pendli in Telugu is Marriage now.
The anti-English pundits are crying about Mammi replacing Amma. Dady
replacing Nanna. They are blissfully ignorant about all markets even in
villages being full of English words and names. Not just in Telugu region but
all over India. The English words have replaced similar names and words of day
to day use for commodities. Slowly but surely Indian life is getting
anglicized.
My childhood memory of linguistic culture that could not communicate
with one another changed now quite drastically. My childhood language Kuruma
Bhasha died irretrievably. In the villages, towns and cities the English words
replaced all their so called mother tongue words among all sections of people.
For Telugu, Urdu or Lambadi language speaking people English words
connected with their daily used food items names and new technologies. The
newly coming English words into their (not language) life repositioned their
future.
As of now few hundred English words are known to every villager, male or
female.
Today the same people are using machines that speak English with English
names called Cell Phone. There are no words for Cell and Phone in their
so-called mother tongue. Regional TV channels use 30 to 40 percent English
words and sentences. Morning news, Evening news, Burning topic, Gun shot, Big
fight, Big Debate, News Express and so on are very common on so called Telugu
TV screens. It could be true of other language TV channels. Those channels that
use only regional languages have no viewers.
THE HISTORY OF
LANGUAGE CHANGE
The process of English names and words entering into our families,
villages and cities did not start recently. It started a long time back.
in my childhood in the 1950s they found new English words like Bus and
Train in the villages, as they just occasionally started travelling in them.
Along with those names machines they also learnt the words like Ticket and
Conductor. Several English words, names of instruments, machines have come into
their life year after year. This happened in every state, in every
region–tribal or non-tribal.
I am not at all sad that my early childhood kuruma bhasha died. I was
happy when I started speaking Telugu, with many Urdu words, as my village was
located in the former Nizam state, which could be understood by more people in
the village or in the nearby town.
Now slowly but surely Telugu is being replaced by English words in most
communications. As that was happening I was becoming happier. Because with a
word or name usage without speaking in a grammared language more people were
communicating with each other. The village production language was never
grammar centred. It was/is communication centred. The English words expanded
their communication range and circle.
In my very lifetime my villagers started engaging with machines that
have only English names; their parts were also named in English. For example in
the early 1960s a cycle with the name Cycle came into their life; chain was
only Chain; handles were only Handles. Current came to their village with the
name Current only. Oil engine came only with the name Oil Engine. All, mostly
illiterate, people understood their role and functions with those names only.
Along with oil engines came pipes, tubes and so on. By the late 1960s
Current Motors came along with several interconnected instruments only with
English names into villages. All these English words and names of machines,
instruments were used by farmers totally disconnected with one another working
under the sky all day. Neither Sanskrit nor their local language connected them
with day to day life changing new vocabulary. Neither RSS nor other mother
tongue pandits could stop spreading English in their fields, homes. For
example, along with the current bulb, wire, swich kind of names and words in
English entered their own homes to light their dark houses, they too loved that
language to live a better life.
This revolutionary replacement of English words of all language speakers
happened among all ideological families. Whether the RSS/BJP or Congress or
Communist or regional parties supported or not the language revolution did not
stop. This replacement happened among Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs,
Buddhists, Parsese and so on. This revolution could not be avoided by religious
practices or conservatism or communalism. Market with English words became a
master of change.
I could see that. Neighbours who could not understand each other’s
language in villages began to understand better after the English words
connected them to the market.
The village people with English words became Indians. English made them
nationalist. Earlier they were disconnected locals. Across India people
understood those words and names. Suddenly communities living in small language
clusters without any communication with each other, became Indian in
understanding the names and functions of the technologies in English, grammar
or no grammar. No other language of regions–including Hindi–would have done
that.
Unless a language has a close link to the technologies at the time of
their discovery the relationship between that technology and the language that
tells about that technology would not get communicated to the user. English and
modern science are twins. Hence India cannot become a scientifically advanced
nation without all the productive masses knowing English better than what they
do now.
However, English has come to them over the last sixty five years as part
of their market relations, not with systematic education. All this happened in
the post-colonial period. But the Dwija elite acquired English during the
colonial period because of private English medium education.
My realization that English would liberate the caste-class oppressed
masses did not come from my exposure to Oxford, Cambridge or Harvard education
or intellectuals who got imported from there. As I have shown above, my
realization came from changes that the English words and names of the new
technologies brought in the Indian village life right from my childhood.
Now the whole world is shifting to English language communication.
Former colonies of French and Portuguese are now shifting their education
system to English. China that was opposed to English is investing hugely on
English education of their children and youth.
The the private English educated rich in India want to deceive the
masses even in this age wherein very advanced technology and communication are
deeply linked with English. English education gives hope to poor mothers when
their daughters and sons get that. In this present situation of darkness all
around, English education in Government school that comes free of cost, is
certainly a ray of hope.
Courtesy: https://www.kanchailaiah.com/2022/09/28/english-india-in-the-making-countercurrents/
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