
In a country as diverse as India would anyone imagine that many Indians feel comfortable writing in English rather than writing in their native language/ mother tongue. How did the language English spread its influence in this heavily populated country? To know the answer to this we need to start from the 1600s when the British East India Company entered the subcontinent via Surat (located in the west of India) as spice traders.[1] The company were awarded permission from the Mughal rulers in the north and the Vijayanagara Gadariya rulers in the south to establish factories. Slowly, but steadily, the company realized the fortunes the subcontinent held and used the cracks among the Indian princes by the 1750s to evolve from a trading company into a ruling company. The East India Company grew tremendously powerful, but due to the Sepoy’s mutiny (1857-1858), the company finally dissolved, and the British Crown took complete control over the subcontinent.[2]
The British Raj gave India “gifts” such as liberalism, the rule of law, cricket, incipient democracy, and a well-knit railway system. Moreover, the welding together of 17 provinces and 562 princely states (except partition)[3] enabled India to become the vast united country that it is today. Also, let us not forget about the architectural traces left behind by the Raj, such as the marvellous high courts, government buildings, libraries, universities, and the many splendours of New Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai, and Madras.[4]
The above indeed represent the country’s colonial legacy, yet the most deliberate gift given to India by the British Raj (which most people undermine), is the English language. Who we should give credit to is Mr. Thomas Babington or Lord Macaulay, the man who brought the English language and British education to India in the 1830s.[5] He wrote in the Minute that “We must do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indians in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals and intellect.”[6]
Thanks to him, the East India Company and the British government invested in the provision of English language education and the promotion of ‘European learning’ in the region.[7] Nevertheless, the primary purpose behind teaching the language to a handful of middlemen (their local assistants/workers) was that conveying the orders of the British Raj to their colonial subjects would be made easier with the presence of these intermediaries. Without a doubt, it can be said that the British had no plans to provide language education to the enormous population of India, nor was the Raj willing to spend its money on ‘the Indians or the dogs.’[8] It is the Indians who seized the opportunity to learn the English language and turned it into an apparatus for their own independence, that is, by using it to express nationalist sentiments against the Raj.
Within a few years after Independence, 15th August 1947, the Constitution of India came into effect on 26th January 1950. The Constitution of India represents the longest handwritten constitution ever, with 25 parts containing 448 articles and 12 schedules, and was originally written down both in English and Hindi.[9] The Indian Constituent Assembly’s usage of English for writing the constitution can be seen as a mark of the growing importance of this language in the subcontinent.
With around seven decades of independence, India claims to be the world’s second-largest English-speaking country.[10] In a globalized economy, this represents an advantage and helps in social mobility. However, every coin has two sides; parents are under tremendous pressure to earn enough money to send their children to an ‘English medium labelled school’ instead of the state-sponsored or the central government schools, as the teaching in these schools is not done in English (considered as a waste of government resources). Moreover, children are pressurised by parents to enter these ‘English medium schools’ and must go through stressful interviews and exams. Whilst it can be considered problematic that children are taught English before their native language or mother tongue, it is understandable that parents want their children to get a decent job. In a globalized world, English is a must. This leads to English being regarded as the language of status and achievement in India (to the extent where middle-class and higher-class families see English as a basic requirement for the bride and the groom, in a society where around 90 per cent of the marriages are arranged).[11] This perpetuates another layer of societal hierarchy, internalized oppression, and control that the country can do without. Similarly, the Indian government is unable to abolish the caste system as it is deeply embedded in the grassroots of Indian society.
India has 22 scheduled languages recognized by its Constitution (one of which is Hindi – a language spoken by the majority of the Indian population) and thousands of other languages with rich cultural heritage. However, with the rising dominance of English, an imminent conflict over which language should be considered the national language of India can be expected sometime in the future. The British colonization did not end when the British flag went down, and the Indian flag went up, as the effects of colonization linger in the psychological realm, where self and identity (mother tongues) become subject to a second form of colonization,[12] all thanks to Lord Macaulay.
[1] When and why did the British first choose to invade India? August 26, 2019.
[2] The National Archives, CASE STUDY 4: BACKGROUND LIVING IN THE BRITISH EMPIRE: INDIA.
[3] Hemant Sigh, History and date of formation of Indian states since 1947, 6 August 2019.
[4] DAVID GILMOUR, HOW MODERN INDIA WAS BUILT ON THE LEGACY OF BRITISH INSTITUTIONS, JANUARY 30, 2019.
[5] A minute to acknowledge the day when India was ‘educated’ by Macaulay, September 17, 2019.
[6] Shashi Tharoor, ‘But what about the railways …?’ The myth of Britain’s gifts to India, March 8, 2017.
[7] A minute to acknowledge the day when India was ‘educated’ by Macaulay, September 17, 2019.
[8] Gajendra Singh, No dogs, no Indians: 70 years after partition, the legacy of British colonialism endures, August 15, 2017.
[9] Hemant Sigh, Constitution of India: Parts, Schedules & Articles- All In A Glance, 25 November 2021.
[10] Zareer Masani, English or Hinglish – which will India choose?, 27 November 2012.
[11] What the data tells us about love and marriage in India, 8 December 2021.
[12] Sunil Bhatia, HOW ENGLISH CREATES A NEW CASTE SYSTEM IN INDIA, JUN 14, 2017.