On 2nd February 1835 Lord Thomas Babbington Macaulay presented his Minute on Education to the imperial government, which argued for the introduction of English in India. He wrote, “The question now before us is simply whether, when it is in our power to teach this language [English], we shall teach languages in which…there are no books on any subject which deserve to be compared to our own.” He added, “Who could deny that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia.”

Accepting Macaulay’s recommendations, the Governor-General Lord William Bentinck declared that “the great object of the British government ought to be the promotion of European literature and science among the natives of India…”

Now Prime Minister Narendra Modi has blamed Macaulay for erasing India’s glorious history, and said that by 2035, two hundred years after Macaulay’s Minute, English will be eradicated from India, for it is an elite imperial language that belongs to the classes rather than masses. Earlier, Amit Shah was quoted in The Hindu as saying, “In this country, those who speak English will soon feel ashamed—the creation of such a society is not far away.

To parody Macaulay, the question now before us is simply whether English in India is really an elite language of the dominant.

English may have been an elite language in the years immediately following independence.

It is true that the British used English to divide and rule, just as they used religion, although it is equally true that English gave marginalized identities like Dalits, women and queers a vocabulary of empowerment. English may have been an elite language in the years immediately following independence, in what has come to be known as the Nehruvian era.  Nehru was himself a writer who wrote in English that was praised for its elegance. But gradually, as the decades went by, the tables were turned. A vast majority of Indians, although aspiring to speak English, actually felt alienated from it. Few could carry out a sustained conversation in English without copiously code-mixing it with words, phrases and whole sentences from their native tongues. At best, they could be said to have little beyond a smattering of English. This is humorously brought out by Nissim Ezekiel in his Indian English poems, like the well-known "Goodbye Party for Miss Pushpa T. S." and "The Railway Clerk."

By the 21st century, this process was complete. Those who did not know English far outnumbered those who did, who sometimes began to feel like foreigners in their own country. As Ezekiel said in his poem “Background, Casually”:

The Indian landscape sears my eyes.

I have become a part of it

To be observed by foreigners.

Indians who couldn’t speak an Indian language other than English no longer felt assertive. Instead, they felt handicapped. They resorted to English not out of choice, but necessity - the necessity to communicate, to make themselves understood, which is a universal human need. What Amit Shah says about English speakers feeling ashamed in the future was, in a way, already the reality. If not 'ashamed' they at least felt apologetic.  

What Amit Shah says about English speakers feeling ashamed in the future was, in a way, already the reality.

Monolingual English speakers in India often belong to minority religious faiths. They are Parsis, Christians, Jews and Muslims, some of whom are writers. Indians who write in English are, like those who speak it, a minority as compared to Indians who write in the regional languages. In the 19th century, Sri Aurobindo, Toru Dutt, Sarojini Naidu and many others wrote in English, while Tagore translated some of his own "Gitanjali" poems into English. However, in the 20th century, Independence onwards, a school of literary critics known as Nativists ordained that Indian writers should jettison English, a colonial language, and write in their mother tongues. (But what if they didn't have a mother tongue? Would they then have to resort to self-censorship)? 

Kamala Das reacted sharply to this in her poem “An Introduction.” She wrote:

…Don’t write in English, they said,

English is not your mother tongue. Why not leave

Me alone, critics, friends, visiting cousins,

Every one of you? Why not let me speak in

Any language I like?

Other Indian-English writers too responded to the diktat. At a Sahitya Akademi seminar in the University of Pune in 1991 (it wasn't called Savitribai Phule Pune University then), Adil Jussawalla, speaking in a panel titled 'Why I Write in English' resorted to Parsi Gujarati to say "What can I do, I don't know any other language in which I can write," much to the audience's mirth. And Salman Rushdie once staged a walkout at a conference in London when a Sanskrit verse was recited but not translated into English for the benefit of those who did not know Sanskrit, but who were told instead that every true Indian would know its meaning.  

Nativist critics thus became the literary equivalent of politicians who wished to guillotine English. 

The Prime Minister contrasts India with Japan, China and Korea, where English is of secondary importance. But the comparison is untenable, as India, unlike Japan, China and Korea, has a multiplicity of languages and dialects. Ironically enough, English, in the circumstances, serves as a pan-Indian link language. Hindi, unfortunately, does not, as the deep South rejects it. In this context, it is worthwhile to note that while Japanese, Chinese and Korean are languages, there’s no such language called ‘Indian’. However, each of our regional languages--Marathi, Bengali, Tamil etc.--can be compared to Japanese, Chinese and Korean, and, through translations, serve as a bouquet of link languages, provided we have a decentralized federal structure, like the United Sates.

Nativist critics thus became the literary equivalent of politicians who wished to guillotine English. 

The Oxford English Dictionary defines the word ‘elite’ as “A group in society considered to be superior because of power, talent, privileges etc. of its members.” But today, none would disagree that power and privileges have passed into the hands of those who are able to get by without a word of English. If not, can a simple English sign outside a shop or restaurant, for example, lead to vandalism and destruction of property for being in English and not the vernacular? Can elitism, then, be defined merely in terms of language?

In truth, monolingual English speakers in India are only notionally the elite. They’re really hybrids, a word with not too positive connotations. This, I think, is well brought out in Nissim Ezekiel’s poem, quoted above. Foreigners “observe” the poet precisely because he self-consciously stands out as a dangling man, a man who is neither here nor there.

A writer and professor, R. Raj Rao is the author of over 25 books of fiction, poetry, plays, non-fiction and translation.

He is former head of the English department at Savitribai Phule Pune University.