Not English, neglect of rich bhashas is the problem |
“Uttering a word is like striking a note on the keyboard of the imagination.” — Ludwig Wittgenstein
One hundred and ninety years after English was introduced in India as its official language — and 78 years after the British were made to leave India — we, in India, are debating our use of English, and whether it engenders “a colonial mindset”. About 140 million Indians know the English language with varying levels of expertise; some sources peg that figure at 235 million. We could easily defenestrate the colonial mindset without discarding the English language, as many Indians have done and will continue to do. The Indian use of the English language has afforded India global prominence. It is, after all, also an Indian language.
However, this must not happen at the expense of Indian languages and bhasha literature. As an Indian from Odisha who grew up across cities in India and Nepal, I acquired both Odia and English as my first languages. I have a degree of proficiency in Sanskrit and Hindi, and in spoken Tamil and Bengali. I grew up studying in English-medium schools, colleges, and universities; Hindi was a compulsory second language and........