English is a bridge, not a barrier

The Prime Minister’s caller remarks connected Macaulay and the “mindset of slavery” person revived an aged discomfort galore of america person carried but seldom articulated. How overmuch harm did Macaulay do? What did helium deprive Indians of? And what mindset changes are needed today?

When Macaulay wrote his celebrated 9,000-word infinitesimal successful 1835, the extremity of the British authorities was not to make an acquisition strategy for the Indian nationalist but to carve retired a tiny English-educated people to assistance the administration, interact with British officials, and enactment arsenic intermediaries. A period later, this experimentation produced what critics called “Macaulay’s children”, though successful truth, these were Indians who utilized English to get things done, not radical who mislaid their Indianness to it.

My parents exemplify this well. A period aft Macaulay’s minute, they returned to enactment successful British India aft higher studies abroad. Even so, they kept a profoundly Indian home, shaped by their ancestral roots and household temple successful Goa. Regardless of which schools we, their children, attended — elite, missionary, oregon authorities — our consciousness of individuality was anchored astatine home. Indigenous pathshalas had continued alongside English-medium schools passim the 19th and aboriginal 20th centuries, leaving taste continuity intact. I excessively started schooling successful a Municipal Marathi School, arsenic my parents valued the parent lingua successful aboriginal education. Later, I moved to 2 missionary-run girls’ schools, known for instilling discipline, gathering confidence, and English fluency. Our existent learnings came from the Indianness of mundane life, household traditions, stories, festivals, location food, the mode 1 behaved successful public. My parents spoke Marathi astatine home.

The schoolhouse curricula successful the 1950s had superior shortcomings. Almost missing were chapters covering the extent of the Mauryan administration, Chanakya’s Arthashastra, oregon the vastness of the Indian state. South Indian past was ignored, leaving america to judge Indian past revolved astir Delhi and the Gangetic plains. The absorption was connected federation gathering and the state struggle, sidelining broader civilisational narratives specified arsenic Partition and the trauma of displacement.

While we studied textbooks to walk examinations, English books opened our minds to worlds beyond our mundane experience. Without question, cognition of English propelled India’s breakthroughs successful atomic energy, abstraction research, and medicine, each driven by first-generation English-educated scientists who were profoundly Indian, but globally competent.

In regular beingness however, it was, and is adjacent today, earthy to talk successful the section language. In North India, we who joined the civilian services spoke successful Hindi to Ministers, secretariat and tract staff, and nationalist visitors. In Maharashtra it was Marathi; successful Tamil Nadu, Tamil; successful West Bengal, Bengali. Not speaking the State’s connection was unacceptable and carried costs. Many Tamil officers posted successful Maharashtra adjacent mastered idiomatic Marathi to flooded the “outsider” bias.

Not inferior

My contemporaries who joined the universities, aesculapian colleges, and technological institutions carried nary consciousness of inferiority. English made america each legible to the world, not alienated from ourselves. Because we spoke English well, we could easy talk for India astatine meetings astir the world, needing nary interpretation. The easiness of transacting nonrecreational dialog with proficiency, acold from making america consciousness “colonised”, made america shine.

But it was the adjacent procreation — similar my children — increasing up successful the 1970s and 1980s, that became consciously anti-colonial successful their speechmaking of history. This displacement was not accidental. The NCERT textbooks successful the 1970s deliberately placed an accent connected Indian societal reformers, constitutionalism, and determination histories, giving children a much rooted and self-aware education. By the 1990s, children learned Sanskrit compulsorily, work Indian past much fully, and grew up bilingual oregon trilingual. They travelled connected nationalist transport, played cricket successful the alleys, and absorbed Indian nine successful each its layers. Macaulay oregon nary Macaulay, Gen Y developed a flexible individuality and the quality to pass with confidence.

Today, English fluency inactive matters but remains indispensable chiefly wrong the firm and nonrecreational circles. In the informal sector, which accounts for 90% of India’s workforce, English is conscionable a applicable tool, not a marker of identity. Even so, everyone recognises that English fluency advances careers, portion the deficiency of it tin hinder progress. Earlier, the deficiency of vulnerability to spoken English was attributed to unequal opportunities astatine location and astatine school. Now, Gemini and Siri fill those gaps, adjacent as Uber drivers successful the Hindi loop similar proceeding way directions successful English.

Yet astir 200 years aft Macaulay, determination is simply a new-found eagerness to conflate English usage with assemblage loyalty. My contemporaries person begun deriding English speech — sometimes adjacent wrong their ain families — for being “un-Indian”. Coming from those whose nonrecreational occurrence rests connected English, this is galling. The Prime Minister did not telephone for the abandonment of English; if his words are misread successful that direction, India volition harm itself.

Two chasms

Ignorance starring to superiority, not inferiority, lives successful 2 chasms which enactment unfilled. Generations of Indians person learnt small astir caste oppression. Jyotirao Phule and B.R. Ambedkar were ne'er taught successful my procreation oregon for decades thereafter — leaving maine and my children (now successful their fifties) blissfully unaware of the cruelty of caste. This spread was not Macaulay’s creation. It was (and is) the effect of middle-class indifference to look uncomfortable truths.

The 2nd chasm was created by Macaulay by urging the British to extremity backing for Sanskrit and Arabic arsenic “bounties to rise up champions of error” — a prejudice that delayed Sanskrit’s revival for 150 years, erased authorities enactment to Arabic, and yet pushed Urdu — an Indian connection calved of a Delhi dialect Khari Boli ( wrongly conflated with Islam) — into undeserved decline. The intent of revisiting Macaulay’s bequest should not beryllium to manufacture caller resentments. English remains a bridge, not a barrier; and without question we indispensable capable the humanities and societal gaps that Macaulay ne'er created but that our mindsets person allowed to persist. Only if the Prime Minister’s words are work arsenic a telephone to deepen our cognition of India and shed unnecessary imitation of overseas lifestyles, the result volition beryllium constructive. That is the lone sensible mode to construe the Prime Minister’s call.

Shailaja Chandra was formerly Secretary, Government of India, and Chief Secretary, Delhi

shailajachandra1@gmail.com