My Views on the Use of India's Regional Languages

The issue of India’s Regional Languages

Mohan R. Limaye
Professor Emeritus
Boise State University

AM I THE ONLY ONE WHO WORRIES?

What worries me now is the upper class urban Indians’ disregard and total unawareness of the danger in cultivating English proficiency at the cost of India’s regional languages. 

It seems as if these Indians are raising the next generation not to live in India but either to live abroad or to be the loyal troopers of the English-speaking world.  I have concerns about the loss of intellectual independence or sovereignty and also of an Indian worldview, not to mention, the resultant mono-cultural Anglo worldview among upper class Indians. That is why the growing neglect/under-use of India’s regional languages is extremely worrisome to me.  Hence, I think, the next round of slavery will not involve territorial swaps, may not even have an economic aspect to it.  I believe it will be cultural, and the imperial onslaught in this battle will come from the English language and the United States.  What is sad about this grim prospect is that it will be slavery voluntarily accepted, nay, rejoiced in. 

Since modernization and globalization have been mainly coming to India, at least recently, from the U.S., the danger of only the American worldview spreading in India without any alternate points of view is very real.  This is U.S. soft power at play.  As it is, India has so many divides – religious, economic, ethnic, and caste-based.  Added to these, there will be a growing chasm between those who know (only) English and those who don’t.

As far as I know, the English language has been a compulsory subject in Indian schools for over 150 years.  But I don’t think (and correct me if I’m wrong) that until the 1980s/1990s it was taught at the expense of, at the cost of, the regional languages.  What I mean is that public figures in those days-- in business, politics, or any other field – even though using English for interstate/international discourse were fluent in their respective mother tongues, the regional languages of India.

      I think that the "cultural/linguistic" disconnect in a period of three generations (at           least among the upper classes of Maharashtra) may be unprecedented in the                   history of any really INDEPENDENT nation, INDEPENDENT in spirit and not just in       letter.