English Medium Education: How much does it Matter?

 This is like the question called a Hobson's choice where the answer Yes or No would both be equally correct. Language is a means to an end and since everything is increasingly transactional most of us think that English medium education is of paramount importance. As all higher education in India, UK , USA and older colonized nations is in English, so if one were to have material progress one had to get an English education. A generation ago rural India had a paucity of schools and in this English medium schools were often non existent. In the olden days the literature  available in local languages was far less than English and the accident of India being colonized by Great Britain led to English dominance. Currying favour with the ruling class made knowledge of English a necessity rather than a matter of choice. 

India is in this respect is a very unique country with a diversity in terms of nature and culture far greater than most other nations of the world. Each of these regions have their own geographical and cultural differences which make them unrecognisable from the rest of India. Yet they are bound as a nation at least in terms of a constitution which protects the rights of the individual citizens. The federal system even though heavily centralised is giving some autonomy to the states. The decision to allow states to be identified on linguistic grounds was done by the politicians to find a way out of communal disputes which threatened to destroy the unity of India.While most of us of the present post independence generation saw India as a liberal society through the lens of the united face of the freedom struggle and the decision of India to become a secular democracy we neglected the fact that India as a single national entity never really existed. Even at the peak of british colonization only 60% of the territory of India was directly under British rule and the rest were ruled by Rajah's and Nawabs who ruled but with the protection and at the pleasure of the British. Before I come to the evolution of the English vs Vernacular debate in the next paragraph I want to allude to the theoretical evolution of language in India.

For this I am quoting an interesting book which I have not been able to read completely. It is written by Peggy Mohan titled Wanderers, Kings, Merchants: The story of India through its Languages. 

While it is often the conventional belief system that Dravidian original languages was that of the natives and Sanskrit was the Indo Aryan language which came later, this probably is not the entire truth. Peggy Mohan gives a theory that language evolves from that of the conquerors who marry the local women and then the words from the conquerors gets mixed with he ones of the local mothers and children get mixed languages. One feature of India and its languages is the presence of retroflex sounds which have got carried into the Sanskrit language from the Dravidian Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada and Telugu languages. Intermingling of languages scripts and creation of mixtures like creole languages and scripts prove that all Indians are well and truly mixed and no race which migrated to India and became conquerors or conquered ever retained their purity as true Indians. For that matter my own mother tongue Gujarati spoken through a Parsi lens makes the possibility of mixed language and lack of purity of race a distinct possibility. This can make my fellow community members cringe and maybe give me choice Parsi abuse to suggest that we are not pure Tokham Kyani (maybe blue blooded). I am not sure the translation of tokham kyani is correct. 

Language is a means to communicate and as social animals man creates value in life by what he communicates to others. The transactional value of knowing English gave advantage to any native who knew it. This was similar for native Indians who mastered Persian during Mughal rule. The evolution of Hindustani a mix of hindi, sanskrit, persian and Urdu is now replaced by Hinglish a mix of Hindi and English. This traffic of language imposed by the oppressors on the oppressed was mostly one way but a two way interaction occurred in the form of words from Hindi which became part of English like bungalow, bandobust, loot. pajama, shampoo, thug, verandah. So as India was colonised by Great Britain it was natural that the Indians who wanted to get favours from the ruling class tried to learn English. One difference between past conquerors and the British was that unlike the other rulers who ruled India and got assimilated into Indian culture and created mixed languages the British considered themselves superior and wanted the Indians to learn English. T. B. Macaulay promulgated the English Language Act in 1835 and this act had something which became an infamous quotation which stated the British position of cultural and moral superiority based on language. I quote this verbatim as follows: 

He argued that Western learning was superior, and currently could only be taught through the medium of English. There was therefore a need to produce—by English-language higher education—"a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals and in intellect" who could in their turn develop the tools to transmit western learning in the vernacular languages of India. Among Macaulay's recommendations were the immediate stopping of the printing by the East India Company of Arabic and Sanskrit books and that the company should not continue to support traditional education beyond "the Sanskrit College at Benares and the Mahometan College at Delhi" (which he considered adequate to maintain traditional learning). The act itself, however, took a less negative attitude to traditional education and was soon succeeded by further measures based upon the provision of adequate funding for both approaches. Vernacular language education, however, continued to receive little funding, although it had not been much supported before 1835 in any case.

Coming to my personal choices, my father was educated in Gujarati school but realised the value of English education which my mother had received. In 1960 a year before I was born and 3 years after my sister was born, our parents sacrificed a reasonably comfortable life of a District Judge in Gujarat to migrate to Mumbai. They worked hard and had to get used to small houses. My mother had to work too and by becoming a school teacher and later venturing into business they gave the family the financial stability to give us children an opportunity to get an English education. The result is that both my sister and myself became professionals and achievers as a Chartered Accountant and Orthopaedic Surgeon respectively. One abiding memory for me was the ability of my father to read English books and understand them. While we children from Convent schools poked fun at his Gujju pronunciations, we marvelled at his mastery of English Grammar and how he knew Wren & Martin better than us. I confess that we got carried away and looked down on friends who did not receive English medium education as inferior. Medical College and my association with students from vernacular schools made me realise my mistake and made come around to the view that my lack of knowledge of native languages was in fact a handicap. The study of ancient scriptures, epics and the Gita as translations in particular made me feel that lack of knowledge of Sanskrit gave me a clear disadvantage over others in understanding the true meaning of the great Indian scriptures. I realised the damage which Macaulay had done but also blessed him for the wealth of knowledge and advantage of knowing English through which I express myself and write this blog. Even we as parents in the 1990's chose to come back from Vadodra in Gujarat when we realised that there were no special English medium schools for my differently abled daughter born with Down's Syndrome.  As these things became clear I decided that I should overcome my snobbishness and learn to improve my conversational skills in Marathi, Gujarati and Hindi. I did not hesitate to learn from support staff, clerical staff and colleagues and today my conversational vernacular language has improved to the extent that I can communicate reasonably complex thoughts and make short public speeches in native language with moderate fluency. 

In conclusion, I am awestruck and envious of people and some friends who are comfortable in multiple languages. I don’t know of many such persons and even then I am not sure there are many who despite knowing multiple languages do not think in one language as their native language. I have heard that our former prime minister Narasimha Rao knew seventeen languages. I hope that I can master Sanskrit besides Hindi,Gujarati and Marathi and open my life to partake the treasures of books and literature of those languages. Today I will laud my parents for making the choice of English education for us at the cost of their own life and comforts, but at the same time I have a lurking suspicion that even without this I may not have been worse off. 

Vispi Jokhi

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