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Take pride in native languages

The world has lost many languages because the native speakers didn’t take pride in them.

Prof Rakesh Goswami

When I was growing up, I had a massive fear for English, having gone to a school where the medium of instruction was English, from a school where English was just a subject. In the school where I studied up to Class 6, English alphabets were introduced in Class 6. So, my knowledge of English was limited to knowledge of the alphabets. For Class 7, I had been admitted to a school where all subjects were in English. So, my formative years in school were spent in the dread of this language. In the school, afterwards, it appeared that people who didn’t know this language were as bad as illiterates. Indians attach a great amount of importance to English as they considered it to be the language of the rulers. Call it the impact of the long spell of British imperialism. People who can’t converse in English also nurture a sense of inferiority.

In school, I spent sleepless nights learning the language. In college, it became my preferred language of instruction and when I chose journalism as my profession, English was the obvious choice. But I still feel that I can best express myself in my native language, which is Hindi.

It is for this reason that the new National Education Policy has suggested that the medium of instruction in primary schools (up to Class 5) should be the native language of the students. The reasoning is that every student learns best in his or her native language.

After Narendra Modi became the Prime Minister in 2014, he made it a point to take pride in Hindi even when he spoke on foreign lands. There was no sense of inferiority or an attempt to speak in a foreign language. In the seven years of his government at the Centre, the bureaucracy, the steel frame of governance in India, has also started to draft note sheets in Hindi, which is such a welcome change.

If we look around the world, we find that the most developed nations of the world educate, learn, write and speak in their native languages – and with pride. It’s only in India (and some other former British colonies) that people make an extra effort to speak in a foreign language that is English. Some Indians make a mockery of themselves when they speak a language which is neither English nor Hindi. It’s a repulsive mix of the two languages. We can either hear parents telling their children to speak in a language which is lavishly sprinkled with English words. “Idhar aa kar sit karo nahi to foot mein lag jayegi,” is one such sentence I once overheard in a clinic. English words “sit” and “foot” seem so out of place in this but this is how the young mother who spoke the sentence thought she could introduce her son to English.

Hindi is a beautiful language – and so are other languages including English. There’s nothing wrong in learning new languages but one must first learn one’s native language. Most of the people crazy for English cannot write two sentences in Hindi without making mistakes. Pity is, many of them are equally bad in English.

Languages grow when they incorporate words from other languages. All languages adopt words from each other. We use so many words in English which are Latin, French or even German. Similarly, the English dictionaries have adopted so many words from Hindi. It’s a two-way process between languages. But why can’t Hindi adopt words from Marathi, Bengali, Tamil or any other Indian language and adopt only words from non-Indian languages? New words should be adopted if there’s no such word in the native language. For example, pizza will be pizza even in Hindi because it’s an Italian dish so there will be an Italian word for it. Or, chutney will remain chutney even in English because it’s an Indian preparation so there will be an Indian word for it. Problem is, when we adopt words from foreign languages when the native language already has a word for it. New words should never be adopted if they will replace a native word and gradually edge it out from our collective memory.

People who defend the use of English say all new knowledge is being created in English and if we don’t learn English, we cannot learn the new knowledge. This argument is absolutely false. The French, the Japanese, the Israelis do all education, including technical and medical, in their native languages. When tech giants Microsoft or Facebook go to Israel to hire people, they conduct the interviews in Hebrew. When they go to France, the interviews are done in French. Why, then, should they be allowed to conduct interviews in India in English? Why shouldn’t a Tamil be allowed to speak Tamil during such recruitment interviews? Barring the USA and the UK, all top countries in the world conduct their businesses in their native languages. A Chinese student of medicine can study even the latest medical updates in Mandarin. Why cannot an Indian student then not do the same in Hindi or any other regional language?

The world has lost many languages because the native speakers didn’t take pride in them. This is truer for the dialects. How many Marwadi households in Rajasthan want their kids to speak Marwadi? Or how many Gujarati families converse in Gujarati at home? No matter which part of India they are, in most affluent families, English is the first language. Most conversations happen in this language. In some more years, their future generations would be clueless about their native languages.

Let’s follow the European Union model where a person is free to communicate in any of the 24 official languages of the group of countries. We need to create our resources in at least the 22 languages mentioned in the Ninth Schedule of the Constitution. If I am a student from Karnataka, I should be allowed to read, write and communicate in Kannada, no matter what course I am enrolled for. For this to happen, we would need a lot of books in regional languages. Not just books but also parochial examples. For example, if there is a book for journalism students, it should explain communication theories with Indian examples and not give me American and British examples.

This is the best time for this to happen. As more and more Indians are beginning to take pride in their native languages, it is the best chance for us to shun the undue love for English and educate our children in the native languages. Because like I said earlier, the best learning happens in one’s own language.

(The writer is a Professor at the Jammu regional centre of Indian Institute of Mass Communication.)

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