I had only recently written on the question of Indian languages for this column, but I am constrained to write on a related subject again because of the reported reluctance of the UPSC to amend its Civil Service Aptitude Test II to reduce the weightage of questions relating to a knowledge of English. I have the highest respect for the UPSC, but its alleged bias for English in this respect is something I have great difficulty in supporting.
When I gave the Civil Services exam in 1975, aspirants could write their papers only in English. This gave an unfair advantage to those of a certain social background who had studied continuously in English-medium schools as against those who had not. Not surprisingly, in my batch in the Indian Foreign Service, almost half the batch was from St. Stephen’s College. Since then a great deal of reform has taken place keeping in mind the imperative need to provide a level-playing field to those whose proficiency and talent was perhaps even greater but whose knowledge of English was not.
Those grappling with this question in the hallowed chambers of the UPSC may do well to remember what Mahatma Gandhi, the father of the nation, had to say about this subject as far back as 1921: “It is my considered opinion that English education in the manner it has been given has emasculated the English-educated Indians, it has put a severe strain upon the Indian students’ nervous energy. The process of displacing the vernaculars has been one of the saddest chapters of the British connection… No country can become a nation by producing a race of translators… Of all the superstitions that affect India, none is so great as that a knowledge of the English language is necessary for imbibing ideas of liberty and developing accuracy of thought… The system of education (in which the medium is English) was conceived and born in error, for the English rulers honestly believed the indigenous system to be worse than useless. It has been nurtured in sin, for the tendency has been to dwarf the Indian body, mind, and soul”.
Gandhiji’s views did not change, for, in 1944, just a few years before Independence, he spoke in a similar vein, but this time with a great sense of foreboding about the consequences for the future: “Our love of the English language in preference to our own mother tongue has caused a deep chasm between the educated and the politically minded classes and the masses. We flounder when we make the vain attempt to express abstruse thoughts in the mother tongue... The result has been disastrous… We are too near our own times to correctly measure the disservice caused to India by the neglect of its great languages.”
Significantly, Jawaharlal Nehru, whose first language was English, and who against his own will perhaps became the patron of the English-speaking elite, had equally strong views on this matter: “Some people imagine that English is likely to become the lingua franca of India. That seems to be a fantastic conception except in respect of a handful of upper-class intelligentsia. It has no relation to the problems of mass education and culture… if we have to have a balanced view of the world we must not confine ourselves to English spectacles.”
The truth is that for too long now English has become a language of social exclusion: the upper crust of the Indian middle class presides over this linguistic apartheid; the rest of India consists of victims and aspirants. The ability to speak with the right accent and fluency and pronunciation has become the touchstone for entry into the charmed circle of the ruling elite. For some people, still living in the prism of an anglicised past, those who can speak English fluently are People Like Us. Those who cannot must be especially tested for their ability to claim educational and social competence. That is why Ram Manohar Lohia once said perceptively, that in India to be part of the ruling elite you need three things: upper caste status, wealth and a knowledge of English. That is also why a great leader in Bihar, Karpoori Thakur, gave permission to students, who were otherwise proficient, to be promoted to the next grade even if they had failed in English.
It is important to emphasise that this is not a diatribe against the English language. English has, for historical reasons, become an important medium to interface with a globalising world. Moreover, as a language, it has a beauty and dexterity of its own.
Languages by themselves are not guilty of cultural domination, their usage is. For Indians it is relevant to introspect on what the imposition of English has meant to them, as a people, a society and a nation. Even as more and more Indians queue up to learn English, we are witness to the most unacceptable linguistic shoddiness in a nation with an inestimably rich linguistic heritage. Anyone who sees the quality of English prose in government files will be left with no doubt about this assertion. V.S. Naipaul in An Area of Darkness said much the same thing. Calling English “the greatest incongruity of British rule”, he added that a clerk in India using English language is “immediately stultified”, since he can never fully grasp the nuances of the foreign language, “which limits his response and makes him inflexible”.
The UPSC’s mandate is to test a candidate’s abilities as an Indian administrator. It is not to judge his knowledge of English. There are many states in the Union where work of the administration is carried out almost exclusively in the language of that state. In Bihar, for instance, all work in the administration is done in Hindi.
In any case, those who qualify for the IAS have to learn the language of the state which is allotted to them. The UPSC must provide a level-playing field for all candidates.
Author-diplomat Pavan K. Varma has been recently elected to the Rajya Sabha
