On International Mother Language Day
By Dr Satish C Aikant
In March 1948, just months after the birth of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah taking over the reins of the government declared that the state language of Pakistan would be Urdu. All official communication from then on was to be in Urdu and the language was made compulsory in schools. Meanwhile, Bangla, which was widely used in East Pakistan, was removed from the school curriculum as also from stamps and currency.
On 21 February 1952, students of Dhaka University began their protest against the ‘Urdu only’ policy of their government. The police began indiscriminate firing on the students, killing many of them. The agitation forced the Pakistani leadership to make Bangla one of the official languages of Pakistan in 1954. The language movement not only gave rise to the Bengali national identity in East Pakistan but also became the stepping stone for the Bengali nationalist movement, that culminated in the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War, with strong support from India, and led to the birth of the independent nation of Bangladesh. This is perhaps the only movement in history that started with protecting linguistic and cultural rights and ultimately led to the birth of an independent nation.
In deference to the Bengali sentiments and to honour those in Bangladesh who sacrificed their lives to protect their linguistic rights, UNESCO took the initiative in 1999 to observe International Mother Language Day on 21 February, subsequently endorsed by the UN General Assembly. The day is now celebrated every year to promote linguistic diversity and support the right of children to learn in their mother tongue.
The British left India in 1947 but the colonial legacy, far from being over, has become more entrenched thanks to the attitudes adopted by the new masters. With political decolonisation the rulers changed hands but not the underlying prejudices and structures of power. What was envisioned by Macaulay in 1835 continues to hold sway. We may recall what he had emphasised in his (in)famous Minute on Education: ‘We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect.’ We fulfilled the intended role by bartering our self-image and indigenous system for being the labour and consumer market for the Western world. What had worked for the British, in free India the ruling class quickly realised, could also work for them.
India which has been home to plurality of cultures and languages is facing an onslaught from the homogenising effects of globalisation and the global English language. The decline of regional languages in India became faster in independent India. The growth of cosmopolitan, westward looking India has worsened the situation. Indian languages are disappearing in the face of the global pressure to conform to something called universality or global identity which moves from outward preferences in food, clothes, cosmetics, tech-possessions, to inward thinking and choice of language to communicate in. The dominant elites and socio-economically affluent classes have strengthened the hold of English through the educational system, the market economy, and the Western model of development, in order to retain their power and control. If the present trend continues, this will lead to further marginalisation of Indian languages. The admirers of English must understand that successful nation states cultivate their own languages. The spirit and genius of a society cannot be developed in languages the masses do not comprehend. Our bhashas have the unique capacity to reproduce the cultural nuances of Indian life, something that English is incapable of doing with the same force. The idioms of the native language disappear from our everyday language, making way for a language interpolated by English.
English is not like any other Indian language, having roots in the daily speech of millions of Indians, the source of India’s other languages. If a language cannot have its feeding source in the vernacular cultural life it loses its vitality and richness. A new attitude needs to emerge that neither totally resists nor blindly succumbs to English so that English may function as a complementary resource rather than a cannibalising force.
In our everyday speech activity, we find that many of us use at least three languages: one at home, another on the streets, and yet another at our workplace. Common people in North India speak the local language or their own dialect, some Hindi, and some smattering of English. But it is ironically observed that the more literate a person is, the fewer languages he or she knows, so much so that for the upper echelons of society the sole medium of communication has become English. Members of the upper class will consider it below their dignity to converse in an Indian language.
The foreign medium which has prevented the growth of Indian languages has made our children practically foreigners in their own land. It is a serious pitfall of the existing system. The idea that English speakers are smarter also feeds into a trend among aspiring classes not only to make sure their children speak English but also to see to it that they are not heard speaking ‘dialects’ spoken at home and in their communities.
Abandoning one’s native language reflects a deep-seated inferiority complex in people. The new generation refuses to converse in their own language and children are kept entirely out of its orbit. English medium schools, for whatever their worth, are the learning grounds for them and only the utterly poor parents now send their children to vernacular medium government schools. What is overlooked is the fact that the knowledge of native language in no way impedes the acquisition of other languages. Why then this conscious suppression of one’s mother-tongue? What gets forgotten is that the loss of one’s language makes one rootless and oblivious of several cultural associations the language carries. Parents should use their mother-tongue in communication with their children and inculcate in them a sense of pride in the mother-tongue – not a narrow and insular one that promotes dislike for other languages.
Despite the mandatory three-language formula, access to knowledge in regional languages remains limited, and contributes to the stubborn divide between learners from urban and rural schools, and learners from regional-language and English-medium schools. The parents are proud of their inferiority complex, graduating from ‘my child can speak English’ to ‘my child can’t even speak our native language’. In elite homes it is English which dominates family conversation. Hindi or the regional language is used only to converse with servants. In fact, the more elite employ governesses who are fluent in English to keep the children off the ‘native’ tongue.
English, of course, is important. It is the global language of communication, of business, science and technology and rational analytical modes of thinking. But it does not have to dominate our conceptual horizon. It is foolish to possess it snobbishly and obsessively.
The relation of writers with English, globally, has been problematic. The well-known Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiogn’o, after writing in English for a number of years, realised that he was not being authentic in conveying his African experience. So, for his creative writing he switched over to his native language Gikuyu. His books of course have been translated into English to reach the wider audience. Ngugi believes, as do so many others, that speaking and writing in native languages is important for saving traditions and cultures.
The reason why certain languages are fast disappearing is that native speakers are not using them and are thus lost to succeeding generations. The fault lies primarily with the parents who do not use their languages with their children and in social intercourse. The sense of collective belonging is different in different communities. A Punjabi, whether he lives in Bhatinda or in Vancouver, will jealously retain a good deal of his linguistic and cultural identity. I wish I could say the same about a Garhwali. When two ‘educated’ Garhwalis meet you will find them conversing either in Hindi or in English but not in their native Garhwali. Being a Garhwali I can take a self-critical stance sharing the collective guilt of my community. In the present era of globalisation, several minority languages face a major threat of extinction and linguistic diversity is increasingly threatened. It is this diversity which defines our socio-cultural identity, connects us with our heritage, and is the foundational pillar of civilisations. According to the United Nations, at least 43% of the estimated 6,000 languages spoken in the world are endangered. Both Garhwali and Kumauni are listed in the UNESCO’s ‘Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger’.
The challenge for educational agenda today is to combine cultural rootedness with cosmopolitanism while embracing modernity.
(The author is former Professor and Head of the Department of English, HNBGarhwal University and former Fellow of the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla)
