<div dir="ltr"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote"> Forwarded From: <b class="gmail_sendername">Fierman, William</b> <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:wfierman@indiana.edu">wfierman@indiana.edu</a>></span><br>Date: Thu, Aug 7, 2014 at 1:50 PM<br>
<br> NYT: The Reality of English's Role in India<br><br><br><br><br>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:24.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">The Reality of English's Role in India<u></u><u></u></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">By MANU JOSEPHAUG. 6, 2014
<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">NEW DELHI — Please mark the answer that best represents the truth (as this is not to ascertain your ideology,
but your aptitude for a job with great perks).<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">English is a foreign language.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">A) True. It came from outside
<a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/india/index.html?inline=nyt-geo" title="More news and information about India." target="_blank">
<span style="color:blue">India</span></a>.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">B) False. The former prime minister Manmohan Singh and the former deputy prime minister L.K. Advani also came
from elsewhere, but they are Indian now. A language belongs where it lives.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">C) True. English is foreign because it is not the mother tongue of the vast majority of Indians.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">D) False. English is in fact India’s only national language, far more influential than even Hindi.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">E) All of the above.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif""><u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">This question has yet to appear in any objective-type exam, but it has long bothered Indian society and is at
the heart of a protest by hundreds of young Indians who are objecting to, among other things, the intrusion of English in one of India’s most prestigious tests — the civil services examination. To be precise, they are protesting one of the two screening tests
that hundreds of thousands take every year to qualify for the “main” exams. Only a few hundred survive, to be inducted into a system that may eventually take them to the top levels of bureaucracy.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal">
<br><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif""><u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Candidates have the option of taking the screening tests in English or Hindi, but even the Hindi version has
passages in English to test their comprehension of that language. Hundreds of candidates who have taken the tests and failed, or aspire to take the tests, have hit the streets of the capital protesting the English passages, which they say put those who are
not proficient in English at a disadvantage. They have thrown stones and burned buses. They have also, oddly, held up protest signs in English.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Any battle against English in India is at once a battle of the poor against the rich, the village against the
city, tradition against modernity and the regional elite against a more cosmopolitan elite. On Monday, the government tried to placate the mobs by announcing that the English passages would be scrapped, but as the protesters have other demands, they have not
ended their agitation.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif""><u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">The general opinion among bureaucrats is that the protesters are a disgrace. Srivatsa Krishna, a civil servant,
wrote in The Times of India that the government should study the video footage of the protesters, “identify the specific culprits and ban them for life” from taking the exams. He found it ridiculous that the exam’s candidates would protest a requirement to
possess “English skills of 10th-class levels.”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif""><u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">In almost every state in India, the guardians of culture have tried to restrain the growth of English, but its
power has only grown because of its promise of material and social benefits. Most of the cultural guardians themselves send their children to English-language schools. The medium of instruction for higher education in India is almost entirely English.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><br><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif""><u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">A politician, Yogendra Yadav, lamented in The Indian Express that “the entire system of higher education that
controls white-collar jobs” is loaded against students who did not attend English-language schools. But then, that is the reality of the nation. The dominance of English dims the prospects of students who are too poor to attend an English-language school.
But the government, for various reasons, including cultural prejudice, has not done enough to take English to its poorest. Most of its free or cheap schools do not have English as the medium of instruction.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">In South India, there have been no protests against the English passages. Historically, that region has protested
against the supremacy of Hindi. When Prime Minister Narendra Modi gave his first public speech in the south after assuming office, he spoke in English.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif""><u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">English is indisputably Indian now, and the most useful language in India. But it is not the most beloved, nor
the medium of abuse during road rage. That special place Indians will always grant only to their mother tongues.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">So the correct answer is “E.”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif""><u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Follow Manu Joseph, the author of the novel “The Illicit Happiness of Other People,” on Facebook.
</span></i><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif""><u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p>
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</div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+<br><br> Harold F. Schiffman<br><br>Professor Emeritus of <br> Dravidian Linguistics and Culture <br>Dept. of South Asia Studies <br>
University of Pennsylvania<br>Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305<br><br>Phone: (215) 898-7475<br>Fax: (215) 573-2138 <br><br>Email: <a href="mailto:haroldfs@gmail.com">haroldfs@gmail.com</a><br>
<a href="http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/">http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/</a> <br><br>-------------------------------------------------
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