English in India
K S S Pillai
Speaking English has been a status symbol in our country since long. Even the financially weak want to send their children to expensive English medium schools, shunning free government schools in their neighbourhood.
It is said in a lighter vein that though nobody wants to get treatment at government hospitals or send their children to government schools, they prefer their potential sons-in-law to be government servants. It is the common belief that once you get a government job your life becomes secure with multiple benefits that go with it.
The other day I watched a television interview with a singer in Malayalam films. The heavily made-up lady being interviewed was busy brushing away the strands of hair that fell onto her face every few seconds. She started every sentence in Malayalam and switched onto English halfway.
Her English had a forced foreign accent and often said ‘yeah’ and ‘no?’. She did not want the viewers to be under the wrong impression that she was a home-grown Malayali. She wanted to declare that she belonged to the elite English-educated class, though it was her misfortune she had to earn her daily bread by singing in a regional language.
Even when actors of regional language films are interviewed, they often switch to English, as if speaking an Indian language was below their dignity. If someone refers to the lengthy speeches they delivered in a particular movie, they always claim they had only moved their lips and the lines were spoken by the dubbing artists.
That is also the case with the captains of cricket teams when the game is telecast live. Like a ritual, the commentator seeks the comments of the captains soon after the toss, and they reply in English so fast as if they were rehearsing it before the interview.
Having taught English in an agriculture university for several years, I am aware of the attitude of students to the language. Except for a few in every class, they are not worried about the grammatical accuracy of what they write. The teachers of the other subjects are no better.
Fortunately for them, the examination system has changed, and the student has mostly to select one of the given answers in multiple-choice questions. Even when it is a descriptive question, the examiner does not bother about the accuracy of the language. He is more concerned with what the candidate intended to convey rather than what he did in the answer book.
Many of my friends who worked as English stenographers would tell me their bosses were in no position to draft error-free letters in English, let alone dictate them.
Luckily, modern technology has come to their rescue. Brevity is the essence of text messages, Twitter writings and other tools of communication. No one is bothered about the spelling or the grammar.
When the current pandemic made online classes compulsory, I had the chance to attend some lectures with my grandson. The college was a technical one, and the medium of teaching and examination was English. Most of the sentences were grammatically incorrect, but the teachers went on speaking, using the regional language liberally. Some delivered lectures mostly in the regional language, interspersed with English words.
After the English language came to our country with the East India Company in 1600, many of the ‘natives’ would want to show they were more English than the real ones. English is considered the global language of science and technology. It is also the international language of business. If one wants a career in travel like pilots and cabin crew in the aviation industry, English is the language used. In India, it is the sole official language of the higher judiciary. Being the language of computers, one is needed to learn it as a window to the world of knowledge.
(The author is a retired professor of English. A regular contributor to The Kashmir Vision, his articles and short stories have appeared in several national and international publications)
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