The Hindu Business Line : <I>Muddled thinking about language </I>

The Karnataka Government has just announced that it has shot itself in the foot. In one fell swoop, it has withdrawn recognition to 1,400 English medium schools in the state. The professed reason is to preserve the culture of the region, allegedly threatened by the widespread influence of a so-called foreign language being used as a vehicle for learning. Given the incontrovertible fact that English is the accepted world language for scientific, technical and commercial discourse and for obtaining knowledge about the world and the various sciences, such narrow and negative attitudes against an international language that is our most vital link and a special advantage, in this era of an increasingly interdependent world trade and industry, are incomprehensible.

Blinkered policy-making

The history of mixing language with politics in India is 50 years old. The retrograde decision of the Jawaharlal Nehru government to reorganise states on the grounds of language spoken by the majority has driven a deep wedge between adjacent states, as seen in the disputes over sharing river waters. This reversion to a tribal consciousness of common origins has, in hindsight, proven to be a disastrous mistake in the process of developing a modern State — almost as damaging as the colossal mistake of partition of the country itself on the grounds of religion of the majority. One hoped this kind of inward-looking political thought had died down years ago, when the dust settled on the Hindi agitations in the non-Hindi states, and the fundamentalist attitudes towards the exclusive use of Hindi were partly appeased by concessions such as allowing candidates to take the highest civil service examinations in Hindi. Alas, our capacity for foolhardy and blinkered policy making is seemingly endless.

Back in demand

What is more galling is that this development has happened in the one state that is synonymous with the development of an international business culture and technological and knowledge infrastructure in the country. Bangalore city and its environs have already become international symbols and raised the profile of the Brand India in the world. Spoken and written English language skills, which were derided in States such as Tamil Nadu earlier, during the compulsory Tamil medium instruction of the 1950s and 1960s, are back in demand in the recent years, thanks to the potential of the various forms of back-office work and software industries.

Linguistic abilities

Talk to anyone in the advanced economies who has dealings with India and their respect and awe of Indian linguistic and mathematical abilities would be obvious. As back-office staff or consultants or software specialists, the average Indian derives quite a significant advantage from a good quality school education with a strong grounding in English besides other languages and the subjects that have most internationally cited literature available in the English language.

Against this backdrop, the recent step of the Karnataka government is difficult to understand. Why anyone would willingly throw away a well-earned edge, by making the education at school level so vulnerable is hard to decipher.

University level education is too late a point to build the capacity to hold an intelligent discourse and the superstructure of university education will only become weaker as a result. The sooner the decision is rescinded the better. Otherwise, we shall soon be overtaken by the Chinese in one more area!

S. Ramachander

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