Essays

The British had to leave bag and baggage and for goodfollowing the long drawn struggle for freedom. Now, Indiais a free and sovereign country with Hindi as its nationallanguage. And the importance of English as a second officialand a link language continues. No doubt the British imposedEnglish on India but now it is not a foreign language as areGerman, French. Chinese or Russian. It continues to play animportant role within the country and outside in dealing;-, withforeign countries.

For more than 2 centuries English has been in India andIndian writers and authors have made generous contributionin the development of English language and literature.Indianwriters in English include such well-known signaturesas Sarojini Naidu, Aurobindo Ghosh, Dom Moraes, NissimEzekiel, P. Lal, A.K. Ramanujan, Kamla Das, R. Parathsarthy,Mulk Raj Anand, R.K. N.irayan, Raja Rao, G.V. Desai, BhabaniBhaitacharya, Manohar Malgonkar, Kamla Markendeya, AnitaDesai, Khushwant Singh, Nayantara Sehgal, Salman Rushdie,Sreenivas lyengar, Vikram Seth, Sashie Tharoor, AmitavGhosh, Vikram Chandra etc.

Among great political leaders Mahatma Gandhi, Pt. Nehruetc. have been prolific writers in the language. Though thepercentage of English speaking people in India is very low,yet it is most widely used among the educated urban people.It is also the medium of instruction in the institutions of higherlearning and education. Hindi in Devnagri script is the officiallanguage of the Union and it was stipulated in the stipulate in the India Constitution that English shall continue to be used for all official purposes of the Union till January 25, 1965 but a complete switch over to Hindi was not found praclicable the stipulated date and English in addition to Hindi continues to be used for all official purposes.

Howeverover 44 crore of people speak Hindi and it is their mother tongue followed by Bengali and Tamil. The regional languages are the official languages of the States. There are 18 statutory recognised languages in India. Many people are over-enthusiastic about removing English and replacing are completely with Hindi and regional languages.

They argue that English is a symbol of slavery andcolonialism. But they forget that English is an internationallanguage and Hindi or regional languages just provide trsnslted material in higher learning and training. WithoutEnglish,'t would not be possible to keep pace with the rapid advancements and researches in science and technology. Themother tongues are impartact and so is Hindi and it is desirablethat the students are imported instructions and education inthere mother tongues. But it does not mean that English is nomore important or can be completely replaced by Hindi orother Indian languages.

The time is not ripe yet to see that happen. Total abolitionof English would leave India far behind other countries in the fields of medicine, engineering, communication, business, space technology, agriculture etc. It would be suicidal to remove it completely from the scene. Moreover southern States in particular would never tolerate it and there would be assort of chaos. Discretion is the better part of velour and it is adcisable that English retains its present position and status for some more time to come. English is a link language and a menscommunication between different educated linguistic and regional groups.

It is a language of learning, higher studies, business, scienceand technology and opportunities. Even those who advocate its removal in public send their sons and daughters to English medium English is very rich, powerful, varied andwidely under.luoil l.mgiiage. It is spoken by the majority of the education people all over the world. It can be called awindow upon in theworld business, science and culture. Assuch, more and more Indians are learning English and there is food one shop and institutions teaching Indians how tospeak English English is still an important instrument whichprovides us access to a wealth of knowledge and informationof the world.

It was English which helped Indian renaissance beginning,from the time of Raja Rarnmoh-in Roy and KabindranathTagore. English helped leaders and people come togetherinspired by patriotism and national feelings. It gave our greatleaders like Bapu, Nehru, Aurohindo, Dr. Radhaknshnan andmany others a tongue and voice to protest againstrepression, exploitation and foreign domination. It's this vehicle whichcarried their ideas, dreams and cries to (lie other peoples theworld. Without English it would not be possible to compete;with other nations of the world in international relations,politics business and technological progress and also at homein learning, education and training.

English has come to stay for longer time than many peoplethink. It would be premature and unwise to drive Englishaway at this juncture. Removal of English would cut off India from other countries and international affairs. If we want togrow and develop, we will have to keep ciooe contacts withthe other nations of the world. It would be unwise todiscontinue the use of English because it was imposed by theBritish or we learnt it at the time of the Raj. We cannot losethe expertise, efficiency and advantage of English gained aftermany decades of efforts and exercise because we haveinherited it from the British.