“Don’t you think that you are
holding back some one when you stress on his or her retaining the cultural
identity by upholding his linguistic identity?” asks a family friend over a
dinner conversation. I say “No” and nothing more. “Don’t you agree that English
education is the need of our times and a gateway to a whole new world of
opportunities that we would deny if we stress on education in a vernacular
medium school?” “Yes” I say, “But then
who’s denying that? All that’s been stressed is retaining our cultural identity
while we embark on the journey to keep ourselves abreast of the modern
sentiments”.
I wonder how does retaining ones
cultural identity and importantly speaking ones mother tongue interfere with mission modernisation -
properly speaking you ability to communicate(converse to be precise) in English?
And how does one buy the theory that fluency in English, especially spoken, is a
gateway to success? English came to be spoken in parts of world other than the
United Kingdom during the colonial era. The purest or phonetically correct form
of English is the Queens English spoken in United Kingdom. In terms of numbers
it follows two major slangs – the American Slang and the Australian Slang. So
the question is if the merit of a person is to be decided or preference is to
be decided why would a British, an American or an Australian show interest in
their linguistic colonial cousins? In
the East Indian community which gets it name for its members having been
employed with the then East India Company, it is not surprising to find people
who can fluently converse in English but lack the ability to read and write! For generations these
community members have been employed
with the East India Company as stewards, attendants, guards and porters and
have picked up the language due to professional requirements but the question
is ‘ Has their ability to converse
fluently in English induced what one may term as progress?’ - I guess we all
know what the answer is! On the other hand we may consider the example of South
Indians who aggressively guarded their cultural identity, retained their
linguistic identity despite being largely employed with the British during the colonial
era. We find them more successful or progressive. Internationally, China has made great
progress despite its inability and hesitancy to communicate in English. It won’t
be fanatic to say here that China’s success can be primarily attributed to its
retaining its cultural identity. And it won’t be an exaggeration to say that it’s
this orthodoxy that helped china survive the recession not only survive but
even to bail out some other nations as well!
Language will just decide how you
communicate but culture will decide what you communicate! How true – had it not
been so The British Parliament would have never invited Anna Hazare a non
matriculate dhoti clad simpleton Gandhian who lacks the ability to speak in
English to address the British Parliament!
- Bhushan Sarmalkar (JAI)
No comments:
Post a Comment