[lg policy] India: 'Mixed societies should be multilingual'

[Harold Schiffman]

  'Mixed societies should be multilingual' Dipanjan Roy Chaudhury New
Delhi, December
16, 2009

Cosmopolitan societies need to be multilingual as an exclusive national
language shuts the door to the outside world, according to noted
intellectual and author Benedict Anderson. This cosmopolitanism can be
rooted without the global movement of its elites, Anderson said, while
delivering a lecture titled 'Rooted Cosmopolitanism and its Political
Pre-conditions'at the Capital's India Habitat Centre (IHC) on Tuesday
evening.

"Nationalism does not mean an exclusive national language because many
nations have adopted two languages. There should be an open-ended lingua
franca in a cosmopolitan society. The necessity of multilingualism is
cosmopolitanism," he added. Best known for his book Imagined Communities ,
Anderson described the rooted cosmopolitan person as one who thinks the
world is coming to him.

"Such a person can reflect any incoming person regarding who and what they
are… rooted cosmopolitanism exists where and when they can be found," he
said, advocating the need for "thinking globally but staying put". Anderson
argued that the main causes of nationalism and the creation of an imagined
community are the reduction of privileged access to particular script
languages (for example Latin), the movement to abolish the ideas of divine
rule and monarchy as well as the emergence of the printing press under a
system of capitalism.

Anderson is currently the professor emeritus of international studies at
Cornell University and head of its Indonesian program. Widely regarded as an
authority on twentieth century Indonesian history and politics, Anderson
quoted the example of Quay, a Chinese journalist and author from the Dutch
colonial period, to drive home his point on rooted cosmopolitanism.

"Quay never left the country and did not go on holidays. There was a weird
language policy in colonial Indonesia because the Dutch did not favour their
language to spread. Yet Quay could speak Dutch and also German, Japanese,
English and Chinese and became a polyglot.

He found himself in jail for inciting hatred, but was a cosmopolitan
patriot." Anderson was banned in Indonesia during the Suharto era. He later
studied Thai and worked in Thailand and Manila.


http://indiatoday.intoday.in/site/Story/75160/India/'Mixed+societies+should+be+multilingual'.html
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