One of the few and perhaps most valuable upsides of almost 200 years of British rule in the Indian subcontinent during which the GDP growth rate was less than 1 percent per annum, is that it introduced the English language to the people of India. Modernisation ideals and the ideas of national freedom and democracy which inspired the first and succeeding generations of freedom fighters, were learned from English language textbooks containing the revolutionary beliefs of philosophers including Plato, Thomas Carlyle, Thomas Paine, Voltaire and Karl Marx. Indeed Mahatma Gandhi, Nehru, Subhash Chandra Bose, Tagore and Maulana Azad, among other leaders of the freedom movement, prided themselves on their study and knowledge of English which enabled them to give our colonial masters as good as they got, and rouse global opinion against British imperial rule.

Unfortunately, after independence was wrested from foreign rule in 1947, a new class of political leaders driven by narrow ambitions and self-righteous nationalism made repeated attempts to squander this valuable legacy by insisting on replacing English with Hindi as the national language of government, business and commerce. Even after the southern anti-Hindi agitation of the 1960s scotched this linguistic hegemony plan of the educationally backward northern states, the anti-English rhetoric of patriarchal regressive classes of the BIMARU states hasn’t abated. On July 19, BJP president Rajnath Singh attributed the nation’s backwardness to English learning. A few days later, Mohan Bhagwat, chairman of the Hindu right-wing organisation RSS, endorsed this analysis.

In sharp contrast, the ruling Communist Party and lay population of the neighbouring People’s Republic of China have — even if somewhat belatedly — embraced English learning with great enthusiasm. Comments Anne Johnson in a detailed paper, The Rise of English: The Language of Globalization in China and the European Union. (digitalcommons.macalester.edu), which she wrote in 2009 after the successful Beijing Olympics: “It seems to be taken for granted in China that English, more than any other language, is the mode of communication for the world, the ultimate solution for global integration. While a multitude of other languages are studied throughout the country, none have caught on with the enthusiasm afforded to English, seen as a channel for much of what China and its citizens want from the outside world: transnational networking, economic success, and cosmopolitan culture.”

Explaining English fever sweeping across China — an estimated 300 million children and youth are currently studying and over 60,000 foreigners are teaching the Queen’s English in the communist republic — Johnson cites Chinese scholars Pang, Zhou and Fu, authors of a paper English for Inter-national Trade: China Enters WTO (2002), as writing that it’s official policy to encourage English language learning “not for the prestige of knowing a foreign language or appreciating the cultural heritage of Anglo-American societies, but for patriotic and utilitarian reasons, and for national modernisation as well as personal advancement and material gain”.

On the other hand, India’s political class which has been handed English proficiency in large segments of the population — an estimated 125 million people in India are fairly conversant with English — on a platter, is trying its level best to rubbish India’s link language which eases communication between the country’s 28 states and seven Union territories, and has emerged as the language of international industry and business. It’s an agenda which endangers national integration and ensures international relegation.