Revisiting Macaulays Minutes in a Globalized World Rajnish Mishra Decolonizing ELT in South Asia, especially in the Indian subcontinent,

is an iss ue that has become of central importance in the academic scenario of the erstwhi le colonies of what was the British Empire once. There are two extreme stances i n the spectrum of responses to colonialism through ages. Between them lies a who le array of intermediate positions. The pragmatic position does not go to any ex treme. It calmly asserts: It is a well-established fact that the colonial education policy aimed at produc ing an English-knowing elite while maintaining a majority with local vernacular education so that the elite could act as agents of the imperial power in the col onies. There are a number of documents to support this claim In addition, there is evidence to support the claim that English education was used to establish po litical, economic and cultural domination over the colonized subjects. (Kachru, Yamuna and Cecil L. Nelson 312) The extreme stances are of welcoming or expecting recolonization while condemning all that is native, and the other extreme is of opposing and condemning all that colonization stands for or brings. If we focus on the responses in India only, there are those who are all praise for the Raj era and wax eloquent about how it civilized a nation that got even the concept of nationhood from its colonial ma sters. They rightly point out how the administrative structure and the basic civ ic systems of the subcontinent were laid down by the British. They also point ou t how the enlightened modern way of thinking and education was the gift of the c olonial masters. They glorify the Raj and are anglophiles to the hilt. On the ot her extreme lies the set of persons who blame the Raj unreservedly. They equate evil with the colonizers and ascribe all that is good to those who oppose them. The hypothetically ascribed intentions of the colonizers negate all they had don e in and for the colonies, even when the effect was totally positive. It is this extreme band whose favourite document that exposes the colonial policy is Macau lays Minute of the Educational Policy (the Minutes), 2 February 1835, that Lord B entick had later assented to and that was the cornerstone of the long term devel opment of the education system of the Indian subcontinent. They find its sentenc es and parts, never the whole body of thought contained within or its main inten t, very strongly supporting their side. They quote repeatedly and out of proper context only those limited parts, drawing reductionist, essentializing and simpl istic conclusions from them. They choose specially the following parts: a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia. and, We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between u s and the millions whom we govern, --a class of persons Indian in blood and colo ur, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect. To that clas s we may leave it to refine the vernacular dialects of the country, to enrich th ose dialects with terms of science borrowed from the Western nomenclature, and t o render them by degrees fit vehicles for conveying knowledge to the great mass of the population. It has been done in a Goebbelsian manner: so many times that for people, in gene ral, the moment the Minutes is mentioned these lines, especially their intention flash to the minds eyes. The present paper is not at all an apologia, either for Macaulay, his intention or the wisdom underlying his Minutes; more so, because the Minutes had not a single idea that was invented. Macaulay was just presenting the then prevalent line of thought that had matured through the long struggle be tween the two major and contending views the colonizers held of the colonized of the East: the Orientalist-Anglicist controversy. As Kachru and Nelsons World En glish in Asian Contexts proves, (154). the spread of English in India and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) is traced back to the Christian missionaries and the desire of highly placed Indian elite to use English for acquiring knowledge of modern science and technology. Thus, the diaspora of English into India is at

least as old as that into North America, though of course under very different sociolinguistic conditions. in the nineteenth century there were influential Indians who believed that modern English was the way out of backwardness in terms of science a In 1823 Raja Rammohan Roy (17721833) spoke in strong terms against the British governments plan to [establish] a Sanskrit school under Hindoo Pundits, and called instead for employing European gentlemen of talent and education to instruct the natives of India in mathematics, and other useful sciences (qtd. In Kachru and Nelson 154 ).It was the overall discourse, i.e. large body of texts with a similar intent an d set of protocols, of contrapuntal positions (Paranjape). It had generated all t he ideas and the heat that are strongly promulgated in the Minutes. Neither extr eme of views was race exclusive, as they had both white and brown proponents, de pending on the part of grand narrative they were interpellated with. Yet, they d id constitute parts of a structure and could only function while belonging to it . The Minutes only present a set of ideas, not essentially and exclusively relat ed to either the content or the medium of education. Moreover, to make the point clear, it must be mentioned that Raja Ram Mohan Roy was a great supporter of th e medium of instruction being English, instead of the then prevalent languages o f the schools: Sanskrit and Arabic. His reason to support an alien language was that he believed it would create opportunities of opening the mind of the studen ts to the western ideas, ideals of modernity and modern science. His letter to Lord Amherst that he had written in the year 1823, presents his point persuasive ly. The nineteenth century Indian Renaissance was largely the outcome of the exp osure of the Indian intelligentsia to the Enlightenment ideas, albeit a bit bela ted in comparison to the other colonies viz. the USA. Roy was totally against th e blind adherence to the word of the shastras that the religion of his time strong ly prescribed. He favoured an education system thatHe knew that if he had to bre ak the clutches of a superstitious and enfeebling set of practices called religi on, he would also have to destroy the whole system that sustained it, and Sanskr it based education system was at its root. So he prepared to do away with the ve ry root. He opposed the opening of educational institutions that forwarded the t eaching of classical and conservative Hindu or Muslim languages and education wi th the funds provided by the Government. These educational institutions, subsidi zed as they were, only fattened the evil ignorance of the masses. Macaulays Minut es has thoughts that run exactly parallel to Roys letter and to study the Minutes in its context will provide valuable insight into the working of modern minds. Thus, Roy and Macaulay made their stand against the then very strong orientalist lobby and reasoned to prove the assumptions and methods of their opponents wron g. In the long run they emerged victorious. Their side won and their victory dec ided the direction in which the education system of the Indian subcontinent woul d finally develop. In a way, it also decided bilingual system of education with English as a Second Language eventually. It is very important to focus on the Minutes in detail because it is from this p oint of origin that whole subsequent system is alleged to have come, especially by those who criticize it. Roy wanted a system of education that gave a rational outlook and took one away from the superstitions that were fed to the masses by the then prevalent systems, viz. the madarasas and pathshalas that gave only a very conservative kind of education in Sanskrit or Arabic. Macaulay opposes the same system of education in India, just like his enlightened Indian predecessors , and very much like his enlightened Indian successors. He asserts: a Government pledging itself to teach certain languages and certain sciences, though those la nguages may become useless, though those sciences may be exploded, seems to me q uite unmeaning (Macaulay). His prophetic words were eventually proven right and h is intention was adopted by patriotic Indians in the century that followed. Engl ish is the language of higher education, science and technology, medicine etc. i n the Indian sub-continent, and not Hindi, Urdu, Sanskrit or Arabic. Hypothetica l projections of a past that could have led to an alternate present have been ma

de by the extremists, but they disregard the simple fact that analysis of hypoth etical situations doesnt yield concrete results. Todays reality is, that the books and journals in the field of higher education and research are mostly in Englis h and not in the vernacular or classical languages, just as Macaulay had written that the intellectual improvement of those classes of the people who have the me ans of pursuing higher studies can at present be affected only by means of some language not vernacular amongst them. the decision taken by the history was regar ding the question Macaulay had asked: What then shall that language be? which lan guage is the best worth knowing? Although the first question has been answered de cidedly, the question of value of the language is too subjective to be answered with finality. His infamous assertion regarding the second questions must be men tioned to in relation to the debate. He was asserting the intrinsic superiority of the literature etc. of his nation and asserting what was the most prevalent v iew of his times. He was wrong, as the hindsight decrees, yet, he wasnt exaggerat ing or being unnaturally mean. Yet, whatever he writes about the historiography of Sanskrit texts, although a bit exaggerating, has been proven to be accurate b y the modern historians: But when we pass from works of imagination to works in which facts are recorded and general principles investigated, the superiority of the Europeans becomes ab solutely immeasurable. It is, I believe, no exaggeration to say that all the his torical information which has been collected from all the books written in the S anscrit language is less valuable than what may be found in the most paltry abri dgments used at preparatory schools in England. (Macaulay) The problem he presented was of educating a people who could not be educated in their mother tongues. His confident assertions may be may be proven fallacious, illogical, even ridiculous today, but his prediction turned out to be true. Engl ish is the coveted and the most popular urban medium of education in India, that is a part of the global village called the world. The hegemony of English langu age and literature is directly linked with the forces of globalization and polar ization of powers both military and monetary. As far as India is concerned, Engl ish happens to be the passport for securing gainful employment in the private se ctor. Thus, it acts as Nearly two centuries ago, in that much detested and debat ed about document, Macaulay had very confidently asserted: In India, English is the language spoken by the ruling class. It is spoken by th e higher class of natives at the seats of Government. It is likely to become the language of commerce throughout the seas of the East. It is the language of two great European communities which are rising, the one in the south of Africa, th e other in Australia, --communities which are every year becoming more important and more closely connected with our Indian empire. Whether we look at the intri nsic value of our literature, or at the particular situation of this country, we shall see the strongest reason to think that, of all foreign tongues, the Engli sh tongue is that which would be the most useful to our native subjects. He was right. Even the most recent developments in history bear witness to this fact. English gave Indians advantage over the Chinese in winning considerable em ployment opportunities in the recent times in BPO and KPO sectors. So much so, t hat Obama himself had to exhort his countrymen to compete well with the English speaking Indian population. The large pool of Indians who know English is the ma in reason behind a lot of economic development, especially in the service sector . One very relevant issue touched in the Minutes is relevant even today. The issue was: whether the vernaculars should be promoted, instead of English, especially when good basic textbooks at the level of even secondary education, are not eas ily available. In the past it had been decided in favour of English. As Roy and many of his enlightened contemporaries had demanded, Maculay too, supported teac hing of European science, instead of a jumble of unsystematic and unsystematized , and entirely confused science in the classical languages and vernaculars. The assertion he made is hotly debated even today. Makrand Paranjape, in his Decoloni zing English Studies: Attaining Swaraj, very interestingly presents the case of t he native science and medicine by giving one of the most popularly given example of the small rural furnaces in India that produced, and even now do so, high qu

ality steel. Then he mentions people in the eighteenth century Bengal providing inoculation from small pox moving from one place to another, and Pune barbers pe rforming intricate nose surgeries. He recommends more such recoveries in order t o mend the rupture in the mind of the colonized from his past. Yet, he convenien tly forgets to mention the fact that after the Industrial Revolutions spread all over Europe and then the world, cottage and small scale manufacturing of steel c ould not keep up with market demand, and had to give way to large scale steel pr oduction in huge factories. He des not affirm that the majority of the people in the erstwhile colonies, once they are aware of the modern medical sciences advan cements even if they had never had any formal education, would trust doctors tra ined in western medicinal science and surgery for severe cases. What is cannot be challenged because it could have been something else. Iconoclasm, just for its o wn sake, is not a very advisable practice. Decolonization as a rationalizing and liberating practice, in line of the hitherto incomplete Enlightenment project, is very much a part of the grand narrative of progress that the West (from where nearly all the colonizers came) supports. Just because it is supported by the W est, it doesnt become automatically wrong and opposable. Macaulay compared the op ening up of India to English language, culture, stream of philosophy and literat ure, to the opening up of Europe to Greek and Latin cultures, languages and know ledge during the Renaissance. He very strongly presents his case with help of Ru ssias development as an example. He asserts how an average young Russian was impr oved by teaching him those foreign languages in which the greatest mass of infor mation had been laid up, and thus putting all that information within his reach. The languages of western Europe civilised Russia. I cannot doubt that they will do for the Hindoo what they have done for the Tartar. The question of civilization has been raised and answered variously in various t imes and climes. To bring the issue closer to home, Mahatma Gandhis views can be relevantly cited. What was civilization and its gifts to Macaulay was poison and corruption to the Mahatma. In his Hind Swaraj he writes about the disease called the western civilization. He used the famous dream argument of Descartes, who, ironically, is the central pillar of that very civilizations central strand of ph ilosophy, traditions of rationalism and free thinking. Gandhiji asserts that peo ple couldnt criticize the Western civilization unless they were freed of its infl uence. He went on to criticize that bodily welfare was being made the object of lif e (29). Strangely enough, he even seems to dislike the spread of the power to be printed, read and understood, democratically and without any limitations or impo sitions, because Formerlypeoples minds (29). All that science and technology have ac hieved in their so called march of progress meant nothing in comparison to what it had spoiled. He cites the development of war machines and the exploitation of t he masses by a few super-rich people. He is in favour of religion and asserts th at the Western civilization has lost it. Finally he solemnly pronounced: Accordin g to the teaching of Mahommed this would be considered a Satanic Civilization. H induism calls it the Black Age (29). The strongest reason that Macaulay puts forth to oppose the subsidized education of traditional type in Sanskrit and Arabic and to support modern Western Educat ion in English medium, is the simple matter of the market demand creating its su pply. The classical and vernacular medium and the traditional type of education in India forced on the native populations the mock learning which they nauseate. T o prove it he presented the fact that the Arabic and Sanskrit medium students ne ed to be paid for studying while people pay to get education in the English medi um schools. The same is true for todays India too, where the madarsas and Sanskri t pathshalas are criticized for their supreme unconcern for what is required of their students in real life, and their total neglect of the demands of the exist ence in modern society. More and more people are sending their children to the E nglish medium schools and there is a proportionate decline in the number and pop ularity of schools that teach in classical languages based or vernacular mediums only. Even poor people send their children to English medium schools in hope th et learning English would definitely enhance their employability and will finall y help in moving up from the social stratum they belong to. The same motivation

was working exactly in the same manner in Macaulays time too. The language of pow er was creating market and learners at a very fast pace. Just as it had done in past after the Muslim invasion and expansion in India. Macaulay very incisively opines: Nothing is more certain than that it never can in any part of the world b e necessary to pay men for doing what they think pleasant or profitable. He had a mple support favouring English against the classical languages of learning. He q uotes facts and statistics to support his point and illustrates it with an examp le of the petition that the students of the Sanskrit College had presented to th e committee that had say in policy making. They needed an employment that allowe d bare existence because what they head learnt devoting the best years of their lives was not the markets demand, so they were no gainfully employable. They have wasted the best years of life in learning what procures for them neither bread n or respect. He calls the state of the marketthe detective test of the desirability o r demand of his times. It also happens to be the demand of our times. He very st rongly and clearly puts forth: What we spend on the Arabic and Sanscrit Colleges is not merely a dead loss to the cause of truth. It is bounty-money paid to rai se up champions of error. It goes to form a nest not merely of helpless placehun ters but of bigots prompted alike by passion and by interest to raise a cry agai nst every useful scheme of education. He is the voice of reason and is echoed eve n today in many modern, liberal, even religious Hindus and Mislims. He was total ly against the fostering of superstition and also against the languages that bec ame its medium. He was like his European predecessors, like Diderot and c. in th e 18th century France, and is also like the enlightened Indians like Roy, also l ike many who followed the same line of thought and action later in India. Analysing Macaulays premises, assumptions and claims leads one to a coherent and distinct attitude he had towards life and humanity. He appears to have a firm fa ith in the superiority of the West over the East- aesthetically and intellectual ly, arising implicitly out of its geopolitical superiority. He believes in his a ppeal to reason and not to emotions to bring about the change that he finds to b e positive after a logical analysis of facts in hand. He had a firm and unquesti onable loyalty to his nation and has unshakeable faith in the bright future of t he Empire and its language. He may have been proven wrong about the geopolitical and temporal strength and extent of the Empire, but he was accurate about the p redictions he made regarding the strength and future of the linguistic entity ca lled the Empire of English language. Two hundred years after the Minutes were wr itten, Randolph Quirk expressed a similar confidence in the future and power of his language: ( qtd. In McArthur 2). It is this very empire of English language of which South Asia is a part. As Kachrus 3 circles very clearly indicate, most of the erstwhile British colonie s are found in the . Circle, i.e. English was to stay, even after the Empire was done away with. The legacy of colonialism that undoubtedly benefits those erstwh ile colonies is English language that was once alien to these soils. It has now taken roots that have gone too deep to be uprooted in near future. A whole class of people is confident enough to make English their second language, and proudl y affirm it, without any guilty conscience on having betrayed their mother tongue. Macaulays aim of creating an intermediary class was fulfilled. He did not know i t fully that his prophesy would come true one day, especially when he was mentio ning the future of English language in the world: Neither was he wrong about the impact of the language on the economy and socio-p olitical and intellectual geography of the world. References Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin. Key Concepts in Post-Colonial Studies. Routledge: London, 1998. Print. Kachru, Braj B. Asian Englishes Beyond The Canon.Hong Kong University Press: Hon g Kong, 2005. Print. Kachru, Yamuna and Cecil L. Nelson. World Englishes in Asian Contexts. Hong Kong

University Press: Hong Kong, 2006. Print. (Kachru, Yamuna and Cecil L. Nelson) English as a language with trans-national presences in various configurations o f institutionalization, ranges of functions, and depths of penetration in societies lends obvious advant ages to its users. On the other hand, it is not surprising that such access to a global language comes with costs of various sorts. English is the paradigm mode rn language of political and economic power; as such, it is claimed by some obse rvers to be the factor responsible for disenfranchisement of a vast majority of populations in the third world, and a major cause of the deaths of hundreds of min ority languages. The spread of English for these commentators represents linguist ic imperialism. And they see support for linguistic dominance of English as sanct ioning cultural, economic, and sociopolitical hegemony of Anglo- and Eurocentric views over the rest of the world. On the other hand, some views from the Outer and Expanding Circles from those who have undergone the experience of linguistic imperialism and hegemonic discourse offer a different response to the projectio n of English as a vehicle of exploitation and destruction of other cultures and languages. They see it as a window to the world, a tool that empowers them. (Kac hru, Yamuna and Cecil L. Nelson 305) It is true that this window is not open to everyone in all parts of the world to the same extent and for some, it is still firmly shut; still, the demand for mo re access to English is as widespread as the voices against English by those who see themselves as champions of linguistic human rights. This chapter draws on s everal recent publications to discuss the issues of linguistic imperialism, hege monic discourse and responses to the imperial design and hegemony from the Outer and Expanding Circles. Formulation of linguistic imperialism Phillipson (1992: 17) asserts his thesis: [T]he advance of English, whether in Br itain, North America, South Africa, Australia or New Zealand has invariably been at the expense of other languages. He notes various examples of successful challe nges to this dominance of English, as in Canada, where government policy mandates bilingualism with French (p. 18). He notes the overwh elming importance of educational systems, however, and asserts that the monolingu alism of the Anglo-American establishment blinds its representatives to the real ities of multilingualism in the contemporary world and gives them a false perspe ctive (p. 23). Phillipson divides the English-using world into two collectives: t he core and periphery (p. 17). The core, according to his characterization and l isting, matches the Inner Circle (B. Kachru, 1985), the term used throughout this volume. The periphery is subdivided into two categories: those countries that us e English primarily as an international link language, such as Japan and Korea, and those that use English for various intranational purposes in a wide range of domains, such as India and Singapore, i.e., the former colonial countries. In t hese periphery countries, English is a desirable medium, and access to it is act ively sought by many people; Phillipson supports B. Kachrus (1986a) observation t hat [t]hose in possession of English benefit from an alchemy which transmutes [la nguage] into material and social advantage. Not surprisingly, attitudes to the l anguage tend to be very favourable. However, Phillipson asserts that English replaces and displaces other languages, in both co re and periphery countries. Displacement occurs when English takes over in specif ic domains, such as education or government (p. 27). It is education that plays the dominant role in suppressing local languages and forcing alien languages and cultural values onto people, according to Phillipson . Though university-level educational opportunities might seem to be a good thin g to some people, and may be facilitated by making English the language of instr uction and research in multilingual situations, Phillipsons argument is that this phasing out of vernacular languages cuts away important parts of the fabric of so

cial and cultural life. This is said to be going on in Singapore, Hong Kong, and India (pp. 2830). The media play important roles (Kachru, Yamuna and Cecil L. Ne lson 306) Power, ideology and attitudes 307 in this privileging of English. These expansions of English, Phillipson asserts, o ccupy space that other languages could possibly fill, and make English the only viable choice for international enterprises. Language as a means of unifying has long been recognized, says Phillipson. In modern countries where the national l anguage has been seen as a visible and saleable asset, such as France and German y (not to mention Britain and the US), promotion of the language and the culture it represents have received varying degrees of support, via missionary, nationa listic and political enterprises. Phillipson lists some examples of people and a gencies that have shared an awareness of evidence of linguistic imperialism and dominance, and a desire to combat it: Gandhi in India, who held English responsi ble for distorting education; Ng~ugi wa Thiongo, whose fictional and philosophica l writings show how English serves to uphold the domination of a small elite and of the foreign interests that they are allied with; and even denunciations of c ultural imperialism in a Nazi critique of the British Council, which identified the advance of English with the destruction of Western civilization. Phillipsons earlier observations have been supported by more recent studies such as Phillips on (1998, 1999, 2003), and Skutnaab-Kangas (2000, 2001) that have derived suppor t from United Nations Resolutions on linguistic human rights and preservation of cultural and linguistic diversity. These documents advocate promotion of multilingualism instead of the focus on ELT all over the world. Their concern is that the single-minded promotion of a global lan guage is killing minority languages in all parts of the world at an alarming rate, which is as destructive as the obliteration of planet earths biodiversity. Other scholars, for example, Canagarajah (1999) and Pennycook (1994), have drawn attention to the cultural politics of promotion of English an d its consequences for populations who use other languages. Pennycook (1994) explores the origins and the disciplining of the discourse of E nglish as an International Language (EIL); he defines discourse as a place in wh ich power and knowledge are joined together. It represents a constellation of power /knowledge relationships which organize texts and produce and reflect different subject positions (Pennycook, 1994: 104, citing Foucault). Discourse in Pennycooks terms seems, then, to be about knowledge as power, and about who controls any b ody of knowledge, thus not only accruing power to themselves, but also controlli ng who will be acknowledged as having a share in that power. Pennycooks thesis is that the power and prestige of EIL came about largely because of what he terms a will to description (p. 73). That is, the colonizers were also in part linguisti c codifiers, who were able to act as gatekeepers for (Kachru, Yamuna and Cecil L. Nelson 307) those who wished to share in the economic and other benefits of becoming English users. They assigned to themselves the task of defining what true knowledge was and who could impart it. Underlying this thesis, Pennycooks interpretation of hi storical events involves the ideas of Orientalism and Anglicism in the former Br itish colonies in Asia and Africa: the former, a policy or policies to encourage indigenous languages, and the latter, to substitute Eng lish as the medium of acquiring knowledge at the expense of other languages. Whi le a common view is that Anglicism displaced Orientalism at a given point in col onial history in each continental context, in fact the two philosophies continued as co-existing systems, but both were promulgated and man ipulated by the colonial powers in order to control access to the perceived bene fits of using English, and of being an English user (pp. 734). Pennycook supports his case by recounting in some detail the history of language and education policies in, for example, India, Malaya, and Singapore. H

is interpretation is that the moral imperative to imperialize came to include a m oral imperative to teach English (p. 77). The access to English, however, was to be limited. For instance, Macaulays much commented-on Minute of 1835, in which he strongly advocated English education, also pointed out the impossibility, given the limited resources at the disposal of the British for such projects, of educ ating more than a small (and select) minority of Indians in English (see Chapter 11). Those few would be the interpreters between the colonizers and colonized; f or the rest, education in local languages would have to do. Indeed, the latter s trategy was more suitable to British policies and goals, according to Pennycook. Colonial education policy aimed at producing an English-educated elite and a ver nacular-educated population better able to participate in a colonial economy (p. 82). There was explicit concern about the difficulties that would arise if too m any people learned English: an 1884 report by the Inspector of Schools for Malay a contains this clause: as pupils who acquire a knowledge of English are invariably unwilling to earn th eir livelihood by manual labour, the immediate result of affording an English ed ucation to any large number of Malays would be the creation of a discontented cl ass who might become a source of anxiety to the community. A certain number of M alays educated in English are of course required to fill clerical appointments a nd situations of the kind which do not include manual labour. (pp. 856) Such an attitude, codified in policy, provides evidence for controlling access t o English. There was a good deal of interest in acquiring an English education o n the part of the colonized populations, but such enthusiasm was dealt with caut iously by the British. The language was treated as a commodity, whose value woul d be reduced by making it too widely available (pp. 934). An important aspect of this division of the local peoples into English haves and have-nots was (Kachru, Yamuna and Cecil L. Nelson 308) an exacerbation of any already existing social divisions. The English-educated e lite were, by and large, cut off both culturally and economically from their own backgrounds (p. 94). The emphasis on English as a controlled commodity in the col onies in turn occasioned a massive expansion of studies on English, and thus the birth of the discourse of EIL. A better understanding of English, including the l iterary canon which was produced in it, would, according to Pennycook, become par t of the means of governance over meanings available to the English-learning col onial subjects (p. 98). Unlike the governmental agencies, however, missionary age nts had other ideas about English education. As their goal was to spread light and civilize the savage populations of Asia and Africa, they started missionary schools that developed into sites for proselyti zing the population. Thus, not only was English connected directly with educatio n, and by extension with politics and economics, but also with Christianity: The connection between English and Christianity suggested ultimately that English wa s in itself Christian (p. 100). It came to represent the superior Western civilizat ion and embodiment of the superior religion and culture of the Anglo-/Eurocentric world. Pennycook emphasizes that what is important about the colonial period is that it witnessed not so much the expansion of English as the expansion of the discourse of English as an international language (p. 102). English was regulated by its c olonial owners by using the discipline of linguistics and the discourse of EIL. Th e two major issues are standardization and the extent to which linguistics is a very particular European cultural form as it sanctions des cription and standardization of language (p. 109). Pennycook observes that from the cultural politics of linguistics has emerged a view of language as a homogen eous unity, as objectively describable, as an isolated structural entity; meanin g is taken either to reside in a world/word correspondence that is best articulated in English or within the system itself (and typically in the brain o f the native speaker); monolingualism is taken to be the norm; and speech is alw ays given priority over writing. Standardization became important because of: the belief that language reveals th e mind and that to speak the common or vulgar language demonstrated that one belon

ged to the vulgar classes and thus that one was morally and intellectually inferior. A clear dichotomy was constructed between the refined language, in which noble sentiments and higher in tellectual ideas could be expressed, and the vulgar language, in which only base passions and ex-pression of sensations was possible. (p. 112) Such standardizat ion served to make it easy to tell who was who in social hierarchies. It had gen der-biased elements, as well as those of geography and class: men had virtually sole access to higher education, and so the standard was de facto the English th at men who had been educated in the public schools of the south of England spoke . (Kachru, Yamuna and Cecil L. Nelson 309) Linguistics as a discipline grew out of the emergence of nation states and the myth of the national language (p. 117). One way of holding diverse groups of people in a nation-state together is to develop the notion of a homogeneous speech commun ity that shares a language embodying the possible meanings the population shares. Such a notion of national language has a particularly prescriptive and normative basis: the two dominant conceptions of m eaning, that meaning is dependent on a relationship to an objective world, or th at meaning is dependent on internal structural relationships in language, leave meaning not in the hands of the users, as a poi nt of contestation, as an issue of cultural politics, but in the hands of those in the centre. This result is achieved in the former conceptualization through a n assumed reciprocal connection between language and the best representation of the world, and in the latter through an assumed linguistic system from within wh ich meanings are defined. Linguistics then is free to distance itself from quest ions concerning society, culture and politics the worldliness of language and at the same time to prescribe both a particular view of language that is monoling uistic and phonocentric (primacy of speech) and particular forms of that languag e, i.e., standard vs. non-standard. Relating the developments in linguistics to the spread of English, Pennycook observes that: The view of the spread of English as natural, neutral and beneficial is made pos sible by the dominance of positivism and structuralism in linguistics and applie d linguistics, since these paradigms have allowed for the concentration only on a notion of abstract system at the expense of social, cultural or political und erstandings of language. (p. 141) A number of different assumptions are claimed by Pennycook to reside in the disc ourse of EIL (p. 120), for example, that language is a simple representation of r eality, that the world as described by English is the world as it really is and thus to learn English is essential if anyone wants to understand the modern world. Pennycook also deals with the disciplining of applied linguistics which, he writes , has emerged as a remarkably cohesive and powerful discourse on language educati on (pp. 1268). The years following the Second World War saw the start of [the fields ] progress towards becoming a relatively autonomous discipline. The development of applied linguistics as such owes a grea t deal to the military and political interest in teaching and learning foreign l anguages (p. 133 ff.). (Kachru, Yamuna and Cecil L. Nelson 310) A crucial part of earlier colonial process and later hegemonic imposition was th e discursive domain of cultural definition, i.e., defining who is educated, mode rn, civilized, cultured, sophisticated, etc. And most of these came to be associ ated with English-educated elites in Asia, Africa and other parts of the world. Views from the periphery Berns et al. (1998) and Canagarajah (2000) present arguments from the other side and ask: by looking at the entire spectrum of the spread of the English only from the perspective of the centre and ignoring the current experiential realities of the periphery, are the views expressed in Phil

lipson (1992) and Pennycook (1994) leading to another arc in the spiral towards the same imperialistic/hegemonic discourse? Berns et al. (1998) report that the participants in a graduate seminar taught by Berns at Purdue University read and debated the arguments presented in Phillipson (1992) and came to some unexpecte d conclusions. To quote the abstract of Berns and her colleagues: Reading Robert Phillipsons Linguistic Imperialism in a graduate seminar in World Englishes at P urdue University prompted intense discussion and debate not only of the issues o f language dominance and spread that the author raised, but also of the rhetoric al style and strategies that he chose to present a story of linguistic oppressio n. This article documents the reactions of seminar participants to how Phillipson presented his argument and their conclusi on that the rhetorical choices he made seriously affected their ability to find his story convincing. In particular, participants representing English language speakers in Brazil, Greece, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore and the USA identified problems with the authors claims and credibility, style and tone, and terminology and coverage. They also discovered that this book, which they ex pected to be a narrative of hegemony, was instead an illustration of the use of narrative as a hegemonic tool. (Berns et al., 1998: 271) (Kachru, Yamuna and Cec il L. Nelson 311) Are there periphery English countries where an increased use of English has been accompanied by less exploitation, more democratization, and prosperity? (Phillip son, 1992: 314). (1994). Pennycook also links the standardization of language and literary canon to the enterprise of maintaining the dichotomies between the colonizers and the colonized. All these observations, however, are from the perspective of the cen tre, or the colonizer. There is another side to the colonial English education, not represented in Penn ycook that is, the appropriation of the medium by the colonized and their utiliz ation of it for projecting their own messages. Canagarajah (2000) begins with an anecdote from Jaffna, a town in Northern Sri Lanka. The story illustrates the u se of false compliance, parody, pretense, and mimicking as strategies by which the marginalized detach themselves from the ideologies of the powerful, retain a mea sure of critical thinking, and gain some sense of control over their life in an oppressive situation (p. 122). The story is about a young man being baptized into the alien religion, who is able to project his allegiance to Christian beliefs by switching to English and invoking suitable symbols for the colonizers while p rojecting his Hindu identity to his local community by his earlier use of Tamil, with symbols consistent with his Hindu inheritance. Canagarajah draws a parallel between such strategies and what has been termed fronting in the contemporary Afr ican-American community by Kochman (1981). The story of the young man and his us e of English to outwit the authorities, leads Canagarajah to articulate a relations hip between language, discourse, and ideology to explore the subtle ways in whic h periphery communities have negotiated the ideological potentials of English. Th e article points out the strategies that the local colonized people adopted to co nstruct/ express their liberatory ideologies leading to their empowerment (Canaga rajah, 2000: 123). One of the first schools for higher education, the Batticotta Seminary in Jaffna, was the site of constant debate between the missionaries an d administrators, both representatives of the colonial power. While some preferred Christian discourse, others favoured English literature representing H umanist/Enlightenment discourse for its civilizing influence. The author suggest s that the restless experimentation with the curriculum signals the educators doubt s with regard to the ability of the English language to inculcate pro-colonial ideologies by itself and their suspicion that nothing could guarantee that English would achieve the intended results (p. 124). The avoidanc e strategy According to Canagarajah (p. 124), the suspicions of the colonists we re later proved to be justified. Some natives passively adopted these pro-coloni al discourses and their ideologies for their material advancement, which Cangara jah labels the avoidance strategy. (Kachru, Yamuna and Cecil L. Nelson 313)

Others resisted this influence in creative ways. They separated the abstract sig n system from the ideological constructs that came with it. The Hindu revivalist s started Saivaite schools not to suppress the teaching of English, but to teach it in terms of their own Hindu discourse: they taught the English language thro ugh translated texts from Hinduism. They also popularized Hindu philosophy throu gh parables and tracts in English, borrowing strategies used by the missionaries (p. 125). This, according to Canagarajah, is the strategy of discursive appropr iation, which is a precursor to the nativized variants of postcolonial discourse that have reached a highly visible level now, as championed by those like Braj K achru (1986). This is a more creative and constructive strategy compared to the a voidance strategy mentioned above. The strategy of reinterpretation The role that the English-educated bilinguals played in the struggle for indepen dence and the way they utilized the code made available to them to take their ow n message to their fellow colonized people is evident in the words of political leaders like Gandhi and Nehru of India, and Nyerere and Banda of Africa, among o thers. The infusion of their own meaning in the grammar of the English language by the colonized has been termed the strategy of reinterpretation by Canagarajah (p. 125), while B. Kachru discusses these strategies in terms of nativization ( 1982 ff.) and the madhyama and the mantra (the medium and the message, 2002), and Ashcroft et al. (1989) examine the transformation of the English language of the centre into the Englishes of the periphery. The strategy of accommodation Finally, according to Canagarajah, the English language is going through another ideological transformation in the post-colonial world. The Englisheducated elit es of the post-colonial world are projecting the language as a medium of moderni sm, as a medium of scientific and technological knowledge. English thus represents empowerment of people irrespective of caste, religious or regional identities. The very same liberal discourses which represen ted progressive ideologies earlier now acquire conservative interests to prop up the power of the periphery elite (p. 126). Canagarajah terms this manoeuvre a st rategy of accommodation. (Kachru, Yamuna and Cecil L. Nelson 314)

Contrasting ideologies Canagarajah (2000) goes on to discuss the tension between the ideological stance s that support or oppose English on nationalistic grounds in the periphery. He a rgues that the linguistic appropriation or nativization of the code makes it pos sible for the supporters of English to project their position as equally nationalistic. He also introduces a caveat: [I]t is ironic ... that my c haracterization of English as representing multicultural discourse in the ultranationalistic communities contrasts with the ideologies of the English in center communities. English represents monoculturist tendencies as reflected in the En glish Only bills being considered in the United States English can represent con flicting ideologies at the same time in different communities i.e., militant for ms of cultural homogeneity in the center and pluralism in the periphery. (Canagarajah, 2000: 12 9) The article further cautions that it is possible that the positive ideologies represented by English in the local context will be appropriated by the internat ional agencies of English to bring them under the ideological sway of center communities Therefore periphery communities have to use English criticall y, negotiating its use amidst the conflicting ideologies it represents in divers e historical and geographical contexts (p. 129). Ideologies and world Englishes Recently, the concept of world Englishes has come under criticism in several stu dies. For instance, Canagarajah (1999: 180) has reproached the world Englishes p aradigm for following the logic of the prescriptive and elitist tendencies of the center linguists. Pennycook (2003: 517) has criticized it for

operating with a limited and limiting conceptualization of globalization, nationa l standards, culture and identity, focusing only on standardized norms of English in limited domains. He is also unhappy with the location of nationally defined ide ntities within the circles, the inability to deal with numerous contexts, and the privileging of ENL over ESL over EFL (p. 519), and bei ng insistently exclusionary, discounting creoles, so-called basilectal uses of l anguages, and, to a large extent, all those language forms used in the expanding circle, since as uncodified varieties, non-standard forms still hold the status o f errors (p. 521). In addition, Parakrama (1995) has criticized the world English es paradigm for suggesting that in certain domains, the use of English is percei ved to be more neutral than one of the local languages in the Outer and Expandin g Circles. According to him, the pleas for the neutrality of English in the postcolonial contexts are as ubiquitous and as insistent as they are unsubstantiated and unexplained (1995: 22). (Kachru, Yamuna and Cecil L. Nelson 315) 316 World Englishes in Asian Contexts Human societies have used, and still use, standard languages for exercising powe r and control, and grammarians, lexicographers, language teachers, and publisher s, among others, become gatekeepers and define who belongs and who does not belo ng to a standard language-using community. That is, however, a matter of social or ganization. English is used for political bargaining and conflict-resolution to bring people together; it is also a divider of those who have access to it and those who do not, and interferes with traditional languages as links to cultures which are not easily expressed in any other codes. Thus, it is a reasonable starting-point to question to what extent English is a universal or global communication system. It is equally worth investigating how passively the colonized accepted the ELT ideologies and what strategies they used to assert their own constructs of (c) 2011 Hong Kong University Press. All Rights Reserved. Power, ideology and attitudes 317 English and its societal uses. Berns et al., Canagarajah, B. Kachru and other researchers in world Englishes point to the role of the periphery in the spread of English and its present functional range. The issues of power, ideology, and politics associated with Englishes and ELT are vital and need to be discussed not only by scholars, educators and teachers but also by learners and users of Englishes (see also Hasan 2003). Suggested activities 1. Read the following and discuss it in class. What are the stances of the reviewers towards the book under review? What are your reactions to what you read? Symposium on Linguistic Imperialism [by Robert Phillipson (1992)] World Englishes 12.3. Perspective 2 (pp. 3427), Perspective 3 (pp. 347 51) and Perspective 4 (pp. 35161). 2. Tsuda (2002) is opposed to the hegemony of English and advocates communication rights and multilingual communication. He says, in dealing with the hegemony of English, we have to overcome the functionalist view of language and communication and should come up with a more philosophical view of language and communication that transcends practical and functional constraints in communication. Discuss this position in class and see if you can come up with a plan to persuade the nations of the world to agree to practise multilingual communication instead of depending on English for communication across countries, regions, languages and cultures. Do you agree that people

will find it to their benefit to [transcend] practical and functional constraints in [their] communication? (c) 2011 Hong Kong University Press. All Rights Reserved. 1 World Englishes today World is crazier and more of it than we think Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion A tangerine and spit the pips and feel The drunkenness of things being various. Louis MacNiece, Snow, from Selected Poems (1990: 23) Introduction The latter half of the twentieth century saw an amazing phenomenon the emergence and acceptance of a single language as an effective means of communication across the globe. English by now is the most widely taught, learnt and spoken language in the world. It is used by over 300 million people as a first language in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the USA, and by over 700 million people as a second or additional language in the countries of Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America, and of the island nations of the world (Crystal, 1985a; B. Kachru, 1999). The world-wide diffusion of English The spread of English has been viewed in terms of two diasporas (see B. Kachru, 1992d; also see Chapter 2). The first arose as a consequence of the migration of English-speaking people from Great Britain to Australia, North America, and New Zealand. The second resulted primarily from the diffusion of English among speakers of diverse groups of peoples and languages across the world as a result of colonialism and other political and economic factors; only a small number of English speakers carried their language, as colonial officials, missionaries and businessmen. The two diasporas have distinct historical, sociocultural, ideological, linguistic, and pedagogical contexts. (9 ) These (c) 2011 Hong Kong University Press. All Rights Reserved. 10 World Englishes in Asian Contexts English has more centres than just America and Britain by now, and as linguists and language learners and teachers, it is important that we study the nature of this various language. One useful way of conceptualizing this pluricentricity is to look at the English-using world in terms of three concentr ic circles, as B. Kachru (1985: 123) suggests. The Inner Circle comprises the mother country England and the British Isles and the areas where the speakers from Britain took the language with them as they migrated Australia, New Zealand and North America. The Outer Circle comprises the countries where the language was transplanted by a few colonial administrators, businessmen, educators, and missionaries, and is now nurtured by the vast majority of indigenous multilingual users. They use English as an additional language for their own purposes, which include many national and international domains. The Expanding Circle represents the countries (e.g., Peoples Republic of China, Japan, Korea, Thailand, countries of Europe, the Middle East, and Latin America) where the language is still spreading, mainly for serving the need for an international medium in business and commerce, diplomacy, finance, and other such spheres (see Chapter 2). English in this circle, however, is also finding increased use in internal domains of academia, media and professions such as medicine, engineering, etc. (see Chapters 4 and 12). (c) 2011 Hong Kong University Press. All Rights Reserved.

12 World Englishes in Asian Contexts The varieties of English that are commonly accepted and are considered legitimate for educational purposes all over the world are American and British English. The other varieties, Australian, Canadian and New Zealand English, are still trying to achieve legitimacy (Bell and Kuiper, 1999; Collins and Blair, 1989; Turner, 1997; Hundt, 1998). The national varieties used in countries of Asia and Africa where English has official and societal status rais e even more debate and disagreement. The global spread of English and its unprecedented success as a language used in many domains all over the world have created both elation and consternation among language experts. For some there is a great deal of satisfaction that people, at last, have a viable medium for international communication in place of the tower of Babel. There is, however, an equal measure of concern at the perceived variation among Englishes and the apprehension that ultimately this will lead to the decay and disintegration of the English language. Of course, what is at stake here is not English per se, but Standard English, however we may choose to define it. The last statement is valid in view of the fact that there already is a great deal of variation in what is known as English, as has already been pointed out; there are regional variations in, e.g., American and British Englishes, and there are variations related to age, gender, etc. (c) 2011 Hong Kong University Press. All Rights Reserved. World Englishes today 17 Ideological perspectives There is another side to the spread of English, which is not purely linguistic or sociolinguistic, and which brings in troubling questions of power and ideology. Both Inner- and other-Circle scholars and researchers have been grappling with the impact of English on other languages and cultures. As a language with transnational presences in various configurations of institutionalization, ranges of functions, and depths of penetration in societie s, English lends obvious advantages to its users. On the other hand, it is not surprising that such access to a global language comes with costs of various sorts. English is the paradigm modern language of political and economic power. As such, some observers assert that the power of English is the factor responsible for disenfranchisement of a vast majority of populations in the third world, and a major cause of the deaths of hundreds of minority languages. Phillipson (1992: 17 ff.) asserts that [t]he advance of English, whether in Britain, North America, South Africa, Australia or New Zealand has invariably been at the expense of other languages, and claims that the monolingualism of the Anglo-American establishment blinds its representatives to the realities of multilingualism in the contemporary world and gives them a false perspective. He divides the communities of the English-using world into two collectives: the core and periphery. The core, according to his characterization and listing of countries, matches the Inner Circle of B. Kachru (1985). The periphery is subdivided into two categories: those countries that require English as an international link language, such as Japan and Korea, and those that use English for a range of intranational purposes, such as India and Singapore. The latter sub-category comprises former colonial countries where English is a desirable medium, and access to it is actively sought by many people. Citing B. Kachru (1986a), Phillipson observes: those in possession of English benefit from an alchemy which transmutes [language] into material and social advantage. Not surprisingly, attitudes to the language tend to be very favourable.

However, English replaces and displaces other languages in both core and periphery countries. Displacement occurs when English takes over in specific domains, such as education or government (Phillipson, 1992: 27). This evaluative view of the nature of the spread of English is further examined in Chapter 22. Pennycook (1994: 73) explores the sources of what he refers to as discourse of English as an International Langugage (EIL), and also the nature of Linguistics and Applied Linguistics as disciplines. Discourse in his use (see his f.n. 1 on p. 104) seems to be about knowledge as power, and about who controls any body of knowledge, thus not only accruing power to themselves, (c) 2011 Hong Kong University Press. All Rights Reserved. 18 World Englishes in Asian Contexts but also controlling who will be admitted to the club or acknowledged as having a share in power. Pennycooks thesis is that the power and prestige of EIL came about largely because of what he terms a will to description (1994: 73). That is, the English speaking colonizers were also in part linguistic codifiers, and gatekeep ers with respect to people who wished to share in the economic and other benefit s of becoming English users. With reference to how English was regulated by its colonial owners, Pennycook makes the following observations about the extent to whi ch linguistics is a very particular European cultural form: From the cultural politics of linguistics has emerged a view of language as a homogeneous unity, as objectively describable, as an isolated structural entity; meaning is taken either to reside in a world/word correspondence that is best articulated in English or within the system itself (and typically in the brain o f the native speaker); monolingualism is taken to be the norm; and speech is always given priority over writing. (Pennycook, 1994: 109) The second arm of regulating language was the importance attached to language standardization, because of the belief that language reveals the mind and that to speak the common or vulgar language demonstrated that one belonged to the vulgar classes and thus that one was morally and intellectually inferior (p. 112). Standardization in the colonial period thus served to make it easy to tell who was who in social hierarchies. Pennycook further comments that: [t]he view of the spread of English as natural, neutral and beneficial is made possible by the dominance of positivism and structuralism in linguistics and applied linguistics, since these paradigms have allowed for the concentration only on a notion of abstract system at the expense of social, cultural or political understandings of language. (Pennycook, 1994: 141) Phillipson and Pennycook represent views of English and of English teaching and learning which have raised important questions that contribute to the entire debate on the benefits and drawbacks of the spread of English. Literatures in world Englishes The ideological stance on a legitimate standard extends from forms of language to canonicity of literatures. Approaches to literatures in English have for a long time recognized at least American and British streams of productivity. This, of course, was not always the case, but it is certainly true today. In the same way, English literatures produced in Africa and Asia have both a national identity and a linguistic distinctiveness (B. Kachru, 1986b: (c) 2011 Hong Kong University Press. All Rights Reserved. World Englishes today 19 161). In a sense the language is remade, where necessary, by adjusting the interior la ndscape of words in order to explore and meditate (sic) the permutations of anot her culture and environment. (Thumboo, 1976: ix) Monolingual authors make the same sorts of choices, of course, e.g., in

considering the usage of characters dialogue on the basis of geography or education; but the decisions of the multilingual author are more complex, as they involve more potential variables, including those of multiple literary traditions. For example, Southeast Asia has cultural and literary traditions inherited from Sanskrit, Malay, Chinese, Javanese, Portuguese, Dutch, Spanish, to name just a few, which manifest themselves in English literary creations of the region. As Thumboo points out (1976: xvi), it is not possible to erase the traces of these traditions: cultures, especially those with a long history, have a hard core, conservative and self-protecting and not likely to yield. This is especially true of the local languages, Chinese and Sanskrit in the context of, say, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore. 20 World Englishes in Asian Contexts Issues in English language education Challenges to English language teaching (ELT) from a world Englishes perspective are many. As soon as one recognizes the pluralistic nature of English across the world today, the possibilities become numerous. The concerns turn on nativization and standardization, concepts explored in this chapter and throughout this work from various perspectives. South Asian English ... I am an Indian, very brown, born in Malabar, I speak three languages, write in Two dream in one. Dont write in English, they said, English is not your mother-tongue. Why not leave Me alone, critics, friends, visiting cousins, Everyone of you? Why not let me speak in Any language I like? The language I speak Becomes mine, its distortions, its queernesses, All mine, mine alone It is as human as I am human, dont you see? It voices my joys, my longings, my Hopes, and it is as useful to me as cawing is to crows or roaring to lions, ... Kamala Das (de Souza, 1997:10) Introduction South Asia is a linguistic area with one of the longest histories of contact, influence, use, and teaching and learning of English-in-diaspora in the world. As B. Kachru (1986a: 36) clarifies, [the] use of the term South Asian English is not to be understood as indicative of linguistic homogeneity in this variety nor of a uniform linguistic competence. It refers to several broad regional varieties such as Indian English, Lankan English and Pakistani English. Historical background Setting aside a visitor from England to the tomb of St Thomas in South India in 882, as reported in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (McArthur, 1992: 504), the end of the year 1600 saw the beginnings of officially sanctioned expansion out of (c) 2011 Hong Kong University Press. All Rights Reserved. 154 World English in Asian Contexts Britain to India. By the end of the seventeenth century, British trading factories controlled virtually all international trade with India (i.e., the entire subcontinent). In 1689, with the establishment of the three presidencies or administrative districts in Bengal, Bombay (now Mumbai) and Madras (now Chennai), British rule was established in the subcontinent by the East India Company. In 1773, the British government established a Governor Generalship in India and by the India Act of 1784, a department to manage Indian Affairs was created. Following the so-called Mutiny of 1857, the Act for the Better Government of India in 1858 resulted in British

government assuming the responsibility of governing India. In addition to the administrative agencies, the spread of English in India and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) is traced back to the Christian missionaries and the desire of highly placed Indian elite to use English for acquiring knowledge of modern science and technology. Christian proselytizing played its part by establishing missionary schools, beginning in 1715 in Chennai, where English was the medium of instruction and was encouraged for general interaction within certain domains. Thus, the diaspora of English into India is at least as old as that into North America, though of course under very different sociolinguistic conditions. Just as there continue to be widely divergent interpretations and appreciations of the presence and use of English in South Asia today, in the nineteenth century there were influential Indians who believed that modern English was the way out of backwardness in terms of science and technology. An official action by Foreign Secretary William Wilberforce in 1814 gave impetus to English in Indias missionary schools. Sri Lanka shares a similar history and state of affairs, where there were more than two hundred such schools by 1831. The push came from internal sources, too. In 1823 Raja Rammohan Roy (17721833) spoke in strong terms against the British governments plan to [establish] a Sanskrit school under Hindoo Pundits, and called instead for employing European gentlemen of talent and education to instruct the natives of India in mathematics, and other useful sciences (B. Kachru, 1994a: 505). This perception of the superiority of English and the broad culture it represented was naturally the pre-eminent view among policy-makers within the British Raj. There had been a long-standing debate, often termed the Oriental-Occidental (or Anglicist-Orientalist) controversy. The culminating document of this debate is the well-known Minute of Lord T. B. Macaulay (d. 1859) written in 1835. Macaulay believed that the learning of the East was a little hocus-pocus about the use of cusa-grass and the modes of absorption into the Deity (B. Kachru, 1994a: 506). The Minute, addressed to the Supreme Council of India, asserted that: English is better worth knowing than Sanscrit [Sanskrit] or Arabic; that the natives are desirous to be taught English we must do our best to (c) 2011 Hong Kong University Press. All Rights Reserved. South Asian English 155 form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect. It is perhaps not so often noted that Macaulays next line presaged an aspect of the sociolinguistic reality of later South Asia: To that class we may leave it to refine the vernacular dialects of the country, to enrich [them] with terms of science from the Western nomenclature, and to render them by degrees fit vehicles for conveying knowledge to the great mass of the population. (B. Kachru and McArthur, 1992: 505) Consequent to Macaulays recommendation, official action gave absolute primacy to teaching English and teaching in English. Three English-medium universities were established in Chennai, Calcutta (now Kolkata) and Mumbai, and two more by the end of the nineteenth century in Allahabad and Lahore in West Punjab, now a part of Pakistan (McArthur, 1992: 505). Less than fifty years after Macaulays Minute, by the early 1800s a majority of Indian primary schools were English-medium (B. Kachru, 1994a: 507). India at that point included what are now Pakistan and Bangladesh. The foundation of the presence of English in South Asia was firmly in place. Status of South Asian English English remained a foreign language in India for the next several decades. As its use grew more pervasive, especially in the social and political climate following the official achievement of independence in 1947 and subsequent growth in literacy, it became a member of the South Asian repertoire of

languages. B. Kachru defines modern South Asian English (SAE) as the educated variety of South Asian English, with, of course, varieties within this variety (1994a: 508; see McArthur [1992] for brief notes on varieties of South Asian Englishes). This definition is identical to that of any major variety of English: British English means the educated variety codified in grammars and dictionaries rather than the many geographical or social dialects. Similarly, American English as a label refers to the educated or standard variety rather than African-American or Chicano English. The passage of the Official Languages Act in 1967 made English co-equal with Hindi for all official purposes of the union, for Parliament, and for communications between the union and the states (Ferguson, 1996a: 31). Through various ups and downs of policy and public sentiment, English has retained and strengthened its place in the South Asian linguistic landscape. Of the seven major uses of superposed languages in South Asia, English is a significant participant in six, namely, as a lingua franca, in government, (c) 2011 Hong Kong University Press. All Rights Reserved. 156 World English in Asian Contexts education, literature, influence, and development (Ferguson 1996a: 32).1 The first four uses are transparent; by influence is meant its impact on the local languages in literary genres and linguistic structure and as the source for new vocabulary, and by development is meant its uses in areas such as management, technical access, governmental services, and so on. The only use in which it is not a participant is religion, a function performed only by Sanskrit among the four imperialist languages (Ferguson, 1996: 345).2 Sanskrit is the language of religion for Hinduism and Arabic for Islam in South Asia, though other regional languages play a role, too. Ferguson notes (p. 37) that this relative lack of religious identification for South Asian English is clearly a regional advantage, given the significant religious differences and tensions across the subcontinent. Though English originally had and still retains some identification with Christianity, it is mo re neutral in its affective associations than any other possible choice. Thus, one important aspect of the value of English in South Asia is its capacity to provid e neutralization. Choosing a given code in a multilingual context asserts one or more identities, for example, of religion, caste, and educational attainment, in addition to signalling the message. Since English is outside the traditional indigenous array of codes, it is released from these responsibilities. The same consideration makes pan-regional news and commentary in English as workable and appealing as it apparently is, thereby explaining its wide use in the Indian media. Similar to India, in modern Pakistan English continues to have a central position in the national life. The several evolutions of Pakistans constitution have indicated the desirability of getting rid of English in favour of Urdu, but proponents of this cause have yet to bring it to a successful conclusion (Rahman, 1990: 12). The position of English in science and technology, media, international communication and creative writing remains unquestionable in multilingual Pakistan as it is in India and Sri Lanka. (See Rahman [1996] for discussion related to Bangladesh and Verma [1996] for Nepal.) The subvarieties of SAE depend on the basic criteria of geography, proficiency, and ethnicity. B. Kachru observes (1994a: 5123): The recognition of varieties within [SAE] is a clear indicator of [its] institutionalisation, it s range in terms of functional allocation, and its depth in terms of societal penetratio n [The varieties] shared comprehensibility and interpretability are markers of the acculturation in South Asia.

Nativization: Characteristics of South Asian English The acculturation of English in the subcontinent, broadly interpreted, constitutes its South Asianness. As an additional language in the multilingual (c) 2011 Hong Kong University Press. All Rights Reserved. 160 World English in Asian Contexts English literature (B. Kachru, 1994a: 523). The salient features of SAE literatures, then, involve contextual nativisation, new organisation[s] of textual structure, and devices for nativising rhetorical strategies (B. Kachru, 1994a: 5223). As the Indian creative writer Anita Desai asserts: Those purists who speak of the desirability of one language, one tradition, one culture must come from a more secluded, more elevated part of the world than I do. In my experience, Indian life has always been an amalgam of so many languages, cultures, and civilizations that they formed one very compactly woven whole, a fabric of different textures and colors, so inextricably woven together that to pull them apart would be to tear the fabric, to turn a perfectly serviceable garment into a pile of unusable rags and shreds. (Desai, 1996: 2212). South Asian writers, those from India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, such as Ahmad Ali, Anita Desai, Alamgir Hashmi, R. K. Narayan, R. Parthasarathy, Raja Rao, Arundhati Roy, Bapsi Sidhwa, Khushwant Singh, Yasmin Gooneratne, and others too numerous to name here have established the canonicity of South Asian English literatures as distinct from the Anglo-American canons (B. Kachru, 2002, 2005; see also Dissanayake, 1985; Thumboo, 1985, 1992, 2001a). The other side of linguistic convergence concerns the Englishisation of South Asian languages (B. Kachru, 1994a: 5346), as English has been added to the preceding empire languages, Sanskrit and Persian. Persian, a foreign language, left lasting marks on South Asian languages and cultures, but has not continued in anything resembling the multidimensional currency of English. Not only has English influenced the languages of South Asia as a source of lexical borrowings and novel constructions, but it has also made models available for the development of [new] literary genres and extended the thematic range of literatures. Perhaps most importantly, it has become a resource for the transmission of literary controversies, innovations and trends from across the world. This has had the general effect of releasing the South Asian languages from the rigorous constraints of the classical literar y traditions. South Asian English 161 The awareness of English as a force in South Asia is clearly emphasized by the attention paid to it by the constitutions and subsequent government policy approaches in the years of turmoil following independence in this region. Indeed, a tendency to leave language questions alone has been a prominent attitude: the controversies are so deeply rooted and complex that almost any approach seems to stir emotionally charged reactions and upsets. One thing remains clear: the functional domains of English in South Asia have actually expanded rather than shrunk. For example, the constitution of India specified 26 January 1965 as the date on which English would no longer be used as an official language of the new state. Since then, in spite of attempts to phase (c) 2011 Hong Kong University Press. All Rights Reserved. 162 World English in Asian Contexts out English, practical difficulties in implementing the original constitutional

mandate have convinced the successive governments to leave the status quo undist urbed. The same is true of Pakistan; although the position of Urdu was officiall y strengthened subsequent to the 1959 constitution and later amendments, the dom ain of English has not by any means been overrun by Urdu. Sri Lanka paid a heavy price, and continues to do so, when it replaced English, first with the threela nguage policy (English, Sinhalese and Tamil) and later amended it to give Sinhal ese a more prominent national and official role. The policy has been recently modified with the reinstatement of English (Fernand o, 1996). In spite of the dominant status of English, however, B. Kachru notes t hat Macaulays vision of a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but Engli sh in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect did not come true. Instead, English became a vehicle for national unity, and pan-Indian cultural and political awakening (B. Kachru, 1994a: 545). With the explosion of multinational media and the wave of globalization, English in its indigenized variety is gaini ng both depth and range in South Asia. Speculations about the future of English continue, as in Graddol (1997). With changing realities of population and econom ic growth, it is projected that Hindi-Urdu may become a regional medium in South Asia, displacing English. Some commentators present the sorts of doubts summari zed by Bailey (1996: 51): Is English a proper South Asian language? Is it mainly an important a dditional language for the region? Or is it inimical to the aspirations of the p eople? Attitudinally, South Asians are as divided about English as about indigeno us languages. The attitudes of South Asians towards English amount to what Kachr u (1994a: 54950) terms a linguistic schizophrenia. Three categories of opinion cont inue to make themselves apparent: the Westernization/technological progress view , the absolute rejection view, and a somewhat neutral position, in which English w ould be retained as one of the foreign languages, but not in competition with loc al languages. There are a number of schools of thought regarding how English shou ld be situated within the multiplicity of South Asian languages (B. Kachru, 1996 : 158). A persistent trend has been for some people to be aware of, and even focu s on, the formal differences between South Asian, British and American (c) 2011 Hong Kong University Press. All Rights Reserved. === Kachru, Braj B. Asian Englishes Beyond The Canon.Hong Kong University Press: Hon g Kong, 2005. Print, 10 Asian Englishes: Beyond the canon of the dimensions of English that I have emphasized over the past four decades, i.e. the acculturation and nativization of the language, and the resultant Englishization of other Asian languages and literatures. There is no paucity of metaphors that define the constructs of English in Asia and elsewhere. The metaphors the world language, the language on which the sun never sets, and a universal language are particularly loaded. These are metaphors of indivisiveness and partnership. But the reality is different. Then there are metaphors of distance, Otherness, and conflict that refer to the deception perceived in English as a medium and its messages, for example, a Trojan horse, the other tongue, stepdaughter, and stepmother tongue. And on the other extreme is the characterization of the English language as the most racist of all human languages (Ng~ugi, 1981). In this jungle of metaphors English is Hydra-like with many heads, including one that, in Indias metaphysical writer Raja Raos view elevates us all (1978a). Rao has no hesitation in equating English in India with the Brahmanic sacred language Sanskrit, as discussed in Chapter 7. The metaphors the flowering tree or the speaking tree point to yet other dimensions of English, that of its multiculturalism, its pluralism and its immense hybridity. The discussion

that follows combines some aspect of all these metaphors, since most of them also represent our Asian perceptions of the language. That is not surprising, since Asia comprises a linguistic, literary, cultural, ideological and, of cours e, political, world of its own a vast world of hybridities. In this Asian world of Englishes, the prolonged presence of the English language has raised a string of challenging questions that have been discussed in literature, not only in English, but also in other major languages of this vast region (e.g. Bengali, Chinese, Hindi, Japanese, Malay, Singhala, Tamil, and Urdu). In Asia, for example, there has been an articulate and provocative debate in Japan, in the Philippines, and in Singapore. We see now that Hong Kong, Thailand, and Malaysia are gradually becoming active participants in this most controversial and virulent linguistic debate of our times. And the reason is that English in one way or another has a presence in the most vital aspects of Asian lives including our cultures, our languages, our interactional patterns, our discourses, our economies, and, of course, our politics. But above all, English has had a major role in altering our identities as individuals, societies, and the identities of Asian languages. These transformations are evident in a variety of contact languages and literatures in Asia and other part s of the world. What is now a vibrant, and somewhat contentious, linguistic debate across cultures has indeed been present in colonial Asia for most of its history. And now, during the post-1960s, this debate has acquired a new vitality, added concerns, and a variety of daunting dimensions. The presence of this debate is indeed a good sign. It is, therefore, not uncommon to be asked: Whose ~ (c) 2011 Hong Kong University Press. All Rights Reserved. Asian Englishes 11 language is English, anyway? The question is a mix of part assertion and part intellectual probe. First, what conditions must a transplanted colonial language in diaspora fulfil to be accepted as part of the colonizees linguistic repertoire? In other words, w hy not consider the reincarnated English in the Philippines, Singapore and India just to offer three examples as a part of our local pluralistic linguistic heritage? After all, English has been with us in various parts of Asi a for almost 200 years. That presence in relation to time compares very well ind eed with the transplanting of English in North America, in Australia, and in New Zealand. The second question brings us close to an ongoing pan-Asian debate abo ut the English language. Why not consider the diaspora varieties of English, for example, in the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia and India as functionally viab le parts of our linguistic and cultural heritages? A heritage that has left inde lible sweet-and-sour traces on our cultural and linguistic histories. These conc erns must be confronted to further strengthen our ongoing process of pluralistic foundations cultural, social and linguistic. We need to r edefine and reconstruct concepts such as NATIVENESS and NON-NATIVENESS of langua ges we use within the dynamic sociolinguistic contexts of Asia. We need to focus on their Asianness and Asian identities. These questions are like double-edged swords. However, these epistemological concerns cannot and should not be separated from our current emotional debate about languages and th e place of English in designing and redesigning our language policies. I express ed these concerns in the 1980s with reference to English in Indias multilingual c ontext. In India, as it is well known, there is a continued agonizing and schizophrenic debate about the status of English and its role in t he region (B. Kachru, 1994a). The story of this debate actually goes back to the 1830s, when Thomas Macaulays Minute introduced a language policy for the subcont inent with English as its major component, as discussed in Chapter 3.

These multilingual societies, which have passed through a host of post(c) 2011 Hong Kong University Press. All Rights Reserved. 12 Asian Englishes: Beyond the canon colonial contexts, must confront these two concerns for pragmatic, political, and economic reasons but more so for strengthening the pluralistic foundations of our societies. Asian sociocultural and sociolinguistic reasons of convergence and cultural interaction have made it vital that we redefine the concepts of the nativeness and the distance-marking otherness of the languages we use. Language and nativeness The questions concerning nativeness of a language have acquired most provocative connotations in language policies and language conflicts. In the present context, this debate is generally addressed with reference to English. In an earlier studies (see Chapter 2), I proposed that in the contextualization of world Englishes we make a distinction between GENETIC NATIVENESS and FUNCTIONAL NATIVENESS of the language in our multilingual repertoires. GENETIC NATIVENESS: The historical relationship between, for example, Hindi, Kashmiri, and Bengali belonging to Indias Indo-Aryan group of languages is genetic. This relationship is thus different from, for example, tha t of the Dravidian languages, such as Tamil, Telugu, and Malayalam with Sanskrit. The interface between the Dravidian group of languages and Sanskrit is the result of extended contact, convergence, and the underlying cultural traditions. It is through such contact that languages belonging to distinct language families have developed a variety of shared formal features. It is agai n on this basis that South Asia has been characterized as a linguistic, sociolinguistic, and a literary area.1 Such typologies of shared identities, i.e . linguistic, literary, and cultural, have been proposed for other regions of Asia like Southeast Asia and the Pacific region. FUNCTIONAL NATIVENESS: Functional nativeness is not necessarily related to the genetic mapping of a language. Functional parameters are determined by the RANGE and DEPTH of a language in a society. Range refers to the domains of function, and depth refers to the degree of social penetration of the language. These two variables provide good indicators of comparative functions of languages in a society and of acquired identities and types of acculturation represented by a transplanted language. In determining functional nativeness one must consider, for example: 1. the sociolinguistic status of a variety in its transplanted context; 2. the functional domains in which the language is used; 3. the creative processes used at various levels to articulate local identities; 4. the linguistic exponents of acculturation and nativization; 5. the types of cultural cross-over contributing to a new canon; and 6. the attitude-specifying labels used for the variety2 (c) 2011 Hong Kong University Press. All Rights Reserved.

14 Asian Englishes: Beyond the canon The Inner Circle is represented in greater Asia by Australia and New Zealand, where English functions primarily as a first language in majority of cases, though that profile is very dynamic. The Outer Circle is represented by, for example, India, Singapore and the Philippines. In these countries, English is used as an institutionalized additional language. The term institutionalized has several implications as discussed in my original proposal of this classification in 1985. And the Expanding Circle is represented by, for example, China, Thailand, Taiwan and Korea, where English continues to be used

primarily as a foreign language. However, dynamics of English in the Expanding Circle is fast changing. The users of English in Asias two numerical giants, China and India, add up to approximately 533 million. This speech community, then, is larger than the total of the USA, the UK and Canada. In China the estimated figure of students enrolled in programmes in English as a foreign language is about 200 million (see Zhao and Campbell, 1995). A survey conducted in India (India Today, 18 August 1997) shows that my earlier estimated figure of 60 million was both conservative and dated. The latest figures tell us that: Contrary to the [Indian] census myth that English is the language of a microscopic minority, the poll indicates that almost one in every three Indians claims to understand English although less than 20 percent are confident of speaking it. (India Today, 18 August 1997) THE EXPANDING CIRCLE e.g. China, Indonesia, Thailand THE OUTER CIRCLE e.g., India, Singapore, Philippines THE INNER CIRCLE e.g., Austrialia and New Zealand Figure 2.1 Three Concentric Circles of Asian Englishes (c) 2011 Hong Kong University Press. All Rights Reserved. Asian Englishes 15 The estimated population of India is now over one billion. The survey figures, then, add up to 333 million Indians who possess varying degrees of bilingual competence in Indian English and almost 200 million in China. These are large figures. At one level these figures provide mute statistics describing the linguistic profile of one segment of Asias English-knowing bilingual population. But these figures relate to a vast human population and have immense linguistic, ideological, cultural and indeed ethical implications. All three Circles of English in Asia have certain shared characteristics. First, that all the varieties of English used in Asia are TRANSPLANTED varieties; and that these varieties comprise formal and functional distinctiveness of the diaspora varieties of English in various degrees. The second fact about English as an Asian language is that its demographic profile is overwhelming in the following senses: 1. that the total English-using population of Asia is more than that of the Inner Circles, including Australia and New Zealand; 2. that India, in the Outer Circle, is a major English-using country along with the US and the UK; 3. that English is the main medium in demand for acquisition of bilingualism/multilingualism in the whole Asian region; and 4. that in parts of Asia (e.g. in Singapore) English is gradually acquiring the status of the dominant language or the first language, whatever we mean by that term. The third fact concerns the extensive creativity in the language in a broad variety of literary genres. The innovations in the medium and the acculturation of the messages that the medium conveys has resulted in an unprecedented cross-over of the language. The fourth fact relates to the types of penetration and functions the English language has acquired among various levels of society in the region, for example, in the print, spoken (radio) and visual (television) media as a major resource of information in addition to multiple regional languages. We see this in the profile of English in India, discussed above. It i s further evident in, for example, in Indias press and print media. In 2000, reports India 2002: A Reference Manual (275), there were 49,145 periodicals and newspapers published in India, in as many as 101 languages and dialects. Out of this total, Hindi was leading with 19,685, English with 7,175 was second,

and Urdu was third with 2,848. The total claimed circulation of newspapers during that year was 126,963,763 copies. In terms of their circulation, the English newspapers have a national pan-Indian circulation and some international distribution. That claim is supported by the number of Indian cities in which each English newspaper is printed. The Hindustan Times, printed in seven cities, was the largest circulated single edition newspaper with 847,306 copies; The Hindu, (c) 2011 Hong Kong University Press. All Rights Reserved. 16 Asian Englishes: Beyond the canon printed in nine cities, with 779,851 copies; Ananda Bazar Patrika, a Bengali dai ly (Kolkata) was third with 754,348 copies; and The Times of India was the largest circulated multi-edition daily with 1,687,099 copies, and with several editions from seven cities. All these vehicles of information are primarily managed by Indians and most written in various varieties of educated South Asian English. Furthermore, the initiatives in planning, administration, and funding for the acquisition and spread of English are largely in the hands of Asians for whom English is an additional language. And, finally, there is the inevitable formation of ideology in and through the English language. In this region there is a most articulate continuous debate about three major ideological issues related to English: its colonial constructs, its ideological impact, and its hegemonic implications for the cultures.3 These questions indeed bring forth a string of issues related to Westernization, to the creation of conflicting identities, and, above all, to th e types of resultant issues related to power and politics.4 20 Roger Bowers, one of the senior officers of the British Council in the 1990s, m akes it clear that the promotion of the English language is absolutely central as one of the Charter obligations of the British Council (1995: 88). And he continues that: [...] we want to maintain the position of the English language as a world language so that it can serve on the widest possible stage as the vehicle for our national values and heritage [...] I must confess that, Bowers also adds, along with those of other English s peaking nations (1995: 88; emphasis added). We must give Bowers credit for being equally candid about the implementation of these goals in ELT: even more outspoken than that. He immediately agrees that we have then a vested interest in maintaining the roles of English as a language, and of British ELT as a trade and a profession (1995: 88; emphasis added). What does Bowers declaration sound like? And, here I quote in his own words: (c) 2011 Hong Kong University Press. All Rights Reserved. Asian Englishes 21 Now this begins to sound dangerously like linguistic imperialism, and if Braj B. Kachru were here, he would strongly object (as he has in the past) to putting national before supranational interests and to placing commerce before philosophy. (Bowers, 1995: 88) The English language, then, according to Bowers statement, is an asset and instrument of the British as a vehicle of British values and culture, and as a resource for trade and profession. This is a national agenda and the British perspective on English. And this perspective has been put more directly, if less diplomatically, by the director of a dynamic worldwide chain of English language schools who told Phillipson, the author of Linguistic Imperialism that once we used to send gunboats and diplomats abroad; now we are sending English teachers (Phillipson, 1992: 8). Decolonizing text and context The conceptualization of world Englishes has introduced other dimensions

for the types of crossover in contexts and texts in Englishes. We find the use of terms such as decolonization (see Dissanayake, 1985; Thumboo, 1985), dehegemonization (e.g. Kandiah, 1995; Parakrama, 1995), and liberation linguistics (see Quirk, 1988, 1989; cf. Chapter 7). The positions of the above groups are obviously not in tune with one another. Indeed, the ranks are becoming more and more clearly defined (e.g. see what has been termed the Quirk/B. Kachru controversy in Tickoo, 1991). The major points of the above controversies are that: the internationalization of English has come at a price; there is nothing like international English, but there are international functions of English; pluralism and diversity are an integral part of the internationalization of the language; the earlier paradigms linguistic, literary and pedagogical are flawed on several counts and these do not address current overwhelming crosscultural and cross-linguistic roles and identities of the language.5 In a broader conceptualization of world Englishes these issues then take us to larger concerns, regarding canonicity, pluralism and diversity (for a detailed discussion and references, see B. Kachru, 1997b). First, they are used (c) 2011 Hong Kong University Press. All Rights Reserved. 22 Asian Englishes: Beyond the canon with reference to the contextualization of English in functions which are distinct from, and oftentimes contrary to, the original colonial agenda for the language and its presuppositions. Second, they are used with reference to assertions about the stylistic identities of the English medium (madhyama), as opposed to the messages (mantras) that the medium conveys, as illustrated with reference to the writings of Raja Rao in Chapter 7. Third, they are used with reference to placing the varieties of English within the larger contexts of shar ed formal and functional identities. This conceptualization has contributed to the use of regional identity-marking terms such as the Africanization or South Asianization of English (see Bokamba, 1982 [1992]; B. Kachru, 1981a). The Asianization (or Asian Englishes) is yet another dimension of that contextualization. Fourth, they are used with reference to the dehegemonization of English, primarily with reference to methodological and pedagogical concerns. 24 Asian Englishes: Beyond the canon The concept English Conversation Ideology (Eikaiwa) is not unique to Japan. I will discuss this topic in Chapter 4. The major points of English Conversation Ideology (Eikaiwa), as Tsuda (1992: 32) summarizes, includes an emotional attachment to Western, primarily American culture; elevation of the native speaker and the Caucasian race in general to a status of cultural superiority, thus damaging the images of Japanese self and society. We see this in the types of norms of linguistic control that Anglophone has accepted, and the assumptions and hypotheses Asians use in English textbooks to create a world of English for young Asians In each place there is a tendency to assign Asian users of the language to a pre determined place, locale and role. These myths have led to the constructs of thr ee types: that of HIERARCHY in terms of interlocutors and interactional contexts ; CANONICITY in equating the medium with essentially Judeo-Christian contexts; a nd ICONICITY in terms of canons of creativity. There are ardent believers and pr omoters of these myths in practically all Anglophone countries, and Asia is no e xception to that. The evidence of this mythology is also present in the construc ts of negativism that make us overlook the sociolinguistic realities about the f unctions of world Englishes. One such basic reality is that of PLURICENTRICITY. What this implies is that like many other languages of wider communication e.g.,

Arabic, Chinese, Hindi world Englishes have identity-articulating multi-centres , in Asia, in Africa and other regions. These centres, ideally, should provide l inguistic security to the users of a variety of world Englishes. In reality, thi s is not happening. The result of this discourse of destabilization is that a variety of sociolinguistic facts about world Englishes are ignored. Asian Englishes 25 The use of the term Asian as a modifier with English or Asianness, to characterize the processes used in articulating the Asian identities, is not an attempt to suppress the cultural and linguistic diversity of English in Asia, or the differences in status of English in various educational and political system s in the region. We cannot overlook the fact that Asia or, if I may use the term greater Asia in which one could include Australia and New Zealand represents all the Three Circles of English, thus bringing to this region a mobility and flux, the underlying concept of the Three Circles. The implication of that mobility and flux is, as McArthur says, that a new history is in the making (199 3: 334). However we cut the Asian slice of Englishes within the greater Asian bo undaries, we must recognize certain vital facts about this vast region of land, cultures and histories just as we must when we talk, for example, about African Englishes. The major sociolinguistic characteristics of the Asian region are tha t: 1. all varieties of English are transplanted and are not indigenous to the area; 2. all varieties manifest distinct diaspora features at various linguistic level s in varying degree and depth; and 3. all Asian countries share the mythologies about English that has been cultiva ted over a period of time. It is, however, to be emphasized that the roles of English in Asia have already acquired FUNCTIONAL NATIVENESS, as discussed earlier, and that ASIAS ENGLISH must be viewed in terms of that nativeness, that includes uses of English: 1. as a vehicle of communication across distinct linguistic and cultural groups at one level of interaction; 2. as a nativized medium for articulating local identities within and across Asia; 3. as one of the pan-Asian languages of creativity; 4. as a language that has developed its own subvarieties indicating penetration at various social, functional and educational levels; and 5. as a language that continues to elicit a unique love-hate relationship yet that has not seriously impeded its spread, functions and prestige status. The implications of focusing on the Asianness of English and its Asian identities demand that we consider the message that the myths about English convey to us (see earlier discussion). One important exponent of English on Asian terms is the use of English as Calibans linguistic weapon, as discussed in Chapters 4 and 7, the integrative and liberating function of the language at one level of colonized societies. We can, of course, make a case for the disintegrative (should I say colonial?) roles of English as the medium of Western culture and values and so on. That is (c) 2011 Hong Kong University Press. All Rights Reserved. 26 Asian Englishes: Beyond the canon In culturally, linguistically, and ideologically pluralistic societies there are multiple levels of acculturation and hybridity. One has to answer a string of questions about such hybridity: Which language, ethnicity, and, yes, religion is colonial, less colonial, and not colonial at all That does not, however, mean that the medium does not

articulate identities; indeed it does. That is a sociolinguistic reality. Once a language establishes its autonomy, it is actually liberated, and its liberated uses and functions have to be separated from its non-liberated uses. We see this position well articulated, for example, by Raja Rao in South Asia, Wole Soyinka in West Africa and James Kelman in Scotland. There surely are colonial Englishes, and Eurocentric and racist Englishes. But these constructs refer to particular uses of the medium. Such flawed constructs are not intrinsic to the language. Racism or centricism can surely be illustrated in English, but it can with abundant examples be illustrated in other languages too; for example, Persian, Japanese, Chinese, Sanskrit, and Swahili, etc. There is indeed a considerable body of literature making a case for discourse and narrative of racism, sexism, Brahmanism, and Cas teism in Sanskrit. In fact, the prejudice went so far that the Indian Pandits re fused to teach Sanskrit to Europeans, as they were considered mleccha impure, and not fit to acquire the devava-ni, Gods language, Sanskrit. Institutionalization of Asian Englishes The contextualization of English as an Asian language entails an Asian perspecti ve in theoretical, methodological and pedagogical terms. limitations of our current imported materials and colonial constructs, their li mitations in terms of our multilingual and multicultural societies, and their ec onomic ends. I am (c) 2011 Hong Kong University Press. All Rights Reserved. Asian Englishes 27 particularly thinking of the methods of English language teaching, the crosscultural and cross-linguistic claims for success of the expanding pedagogical practices of English for Specific Purposes (ESP), and the use and pedagogical validity of packaged recipes for various genres. Where do we go now with Asian Englishes? The indications are clear that beyond the year 2050 various incarnations of the English language will still be with us. English has unique functions, unparalleled domains and overwhelming diversity. It changes its face on each continent, in each region, and in each English-using nation. The colonial dimension of the language is just one dimension. And to these constructs of identities with this medium across cultures we add yet another dimension, a reincarnated dimension. We see this dimension in the creations of a new culture that Soyinka sees in the use of English (1993: 88) as a new medium of communication. What Soyinka says about Africa is indeed already true in the world of English in Asia . What Soyinka means when he says that black people are carving new concepts by the use of the medium and what Quirk means by liberation linguistics constitute one of the major strengths of the English language in Asia. We cannot overlook the significance of such a conceptualization for Asian uses of English. These arguments have more significant theoretical, methodological and sociological relevance than the mere mantras of the colonial constructs of the English language. We now have two fast-developing literary genres concerning the roles of English in the colonial world. One expresses the guilt of the colonizee users of language, the GENRE OF GUILT. And the other attempts to search and seek out the colonizer within oneself, which may be called the GENRE OF ATONEMENT. The approach of linguistic guilt and atonement somehow bewilders the minds of the once-colonized like me. I am a product of both the pre- and postcolonial eras of the Indian subcontinent, and not one of what Rushdie calls midnights children. A majority of us Asians have experienced layer after layer of colonizers (and conquerors) onslaughts and most such onslaughts have left their cultural and linguistic imprints. A large part of such imprints have been assimilated by us and have become a part of our multicultural and

multilingual legacies. We soberly transmit these legacies to our children to our future generations. And I would like to believe that transmission, conscious or unconscious, takes place without any guilt. In my case and in my part of India in Kashmir, these linguistic and cultural (c) 2011 Hong Kong University Press. All Rights Reserved.

28 Asian Englishes: Beyond the canon layers, some of the results of unwelcome onslaughts, include Afghan, Persian, Sikh, Dogra, British, and so on. Where does it leave me, whether linguistically, culturally, in literary creativity or regarding types of sociocultural changes? I ask: Confused? Multicultural? Linguistically converged? Enriched? Or just colonized with a variety of layers? We cannot express guilt about only one layer that of English. What happens to the other layers? We cannot use strategies that will destabilize us in terms of our tradition of a ssimilative multilingual and multicultural identities. That, to me, is both disr uptive and self-defeating. I believe that linguistic and cultural hybridity is o ur identity and destiny. Our major strategy, then, is that of Wole Soyinka, of R aja Rao, and of Edwin Thumboo, which is to acculturate the language in our conte xts of use, on our terms, the Asian terms. The Australian Robert Hughes, now in the USA, is right when he says that [in] society, as in farming, monoculture work s poorly, it exhausts the soil (cited in Gates, Jr. 1993: 15). In this case, he i s talking of the USA. And now, let us take this vision beyond the USA, for examp le, to South and East Asia, to the Pacific, to Australia, to the Eastern Hemisph ere. That abstract vision of a majority of the human population, with its lingui stic diversity, cultural interfaces, social hierarchies, and conflicts, is repre sented in various strands of Asian Englishes in Asian terms. We see it, for exam ple, in Singapore, in Malaysia, in the Philippines, in India, and in Australia. The architects of each tradition, each strand, have moulded, reshaped, accultura ted, redesigned, and by doing so, they enriched what was a Western medium. The r esult is a liberated English which contains vitality, innovation, linguistic mix , and cultural identities. And, it is not the creativity of the monolingual and the monocultural: this creativity has rejuvenated the medium fro m exhaustion and has reinvigorated it in multiple ways. (c) 2011 Hong Kong University Press. All Rights Reserved. South Asian schizophrenia 33 tomb of St Thomas. The next recorded attempts at contact started around the sixteenth century, and by the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the political domination by the British was almost complete. As the British politica l power increased, so did the currency of the English language in various important functional domains. However, for understandable reasons, the earlier uses of English were restricted to a very small group of people: those who had to deal with the affairs of the British East India Company, and later those of the Raj. In retrospect we see that the introduction of English into the language policies of the region has primarily gone through four stages. First, exploratio n; second, implementation; third, diffusion; and finally, institutionalization. The se four stages broadly capture the slow but goal-orientated efforts to bring to culmination the underlying policy of providing a secure place for English in South Asian education. The foundation for the eventual introduction of English in the subcontinent was laid on 31 December 1600, when Queen Elizabeth granted a charter to a few mercha nts of the city of London, giving them the monopoly of trade with the east, prim arily with the Dutch East Indies.

During the period of Charles II the Company became politically ambitious and con solidated its power as a state within the state. It did not become a political pow er in the subcontinent until two favourable events took place: the victory of Lo rd Clive (17251774) in the Battle of Plassey in 1757 and the land grant (diwa-ni ) of three regions, Bengal, Bihar and Orissa by Empe ror Shah Alam to the company in 1765. And, finally, when William Pitts (17591806) India Act was passed in 1784, the Company gained joint responsibility for Indian affairs with the British Crown. However, the earlier attempts for the introduction of English cannot be attributed to one single grou p or agency, for the situation was much more complex than that. There were sever al groups working towards this goal, often with distinctly different motivations and interests. During the phase of exploration, the role of the missionaries ha d been quite vital. At the beginning, the educational efforts of the Europeans h ad an ulterior purpose, viz. the propagation of the Gospel. Moreover, they were directed purely to religious education the objects being the instillation of Chr istian doctrines into the minds of the people through their native language whic h the Europeans tried to master, as also the spread of Western education among t he Indians in order to enable them to appreciate better the Christian doctrines (Law, 1915: 67). 34 Asian Englishes: Beyond the canon Not all such schools used the native language for imparting education. There were several schools where English was used, for example, St Marys Charity School, Madras (1715), the Charity Schools established at Bombay (1719) and Calcutta (17201731), Lady Campbells Female Orphan Asylum (1787) and the Male Asylum in Madras (1787), and the English Charity Schools in the South of India, Tanjore (1772), Ramnad (1785) and Sivaganga (1785). The period of exploration is well documented in several studies (for India, Sherring, 1884; Richter, 1908; Law, 1915; for Sri Lanka, Ruberu, 1962). The initial efforts of the missionaries started in 1614 and became more prominent after 1659. This was the time when the missionaries were permitted to use the ships of the East India Company. The missionary clause was added to the charter of the East India Company at the time of the renewal in 1698 (see Sharp, 1920: 3). This clause lasted for about sixty-seven years; in 1765, the policy changed, when support and encouragement of the missionary activities was abandoned. The missionaries reaction to this new policy was rather violent; the Clapham sect initiated agitation for continuation of missionary activities in th e subcontinent. The efforts of Charles Grant (17461823) are particularly noteworthy in this context. Grants concern was specifically about the morals of the people, and the means of improving them (Morris, 1904). In Grants view, the missionary activities were desirable for the moral uplift of the peopl e, since it was the moral decay which was the main cause for the upheaval in the subcontinent. In his view: The true curse of darkness is the introduction of light. The Hindoos err, because they are ignorant and their errors have never fairly been laid before them. The communication of our light and knowledge to them, would prove the best remedy for their disorders. (Grant, 18312: 601) By 1813, the efforts of Charles Grant and his supporters, for example, William Wilberforce, the Foreign Secretary, and Lord Castlereagh, bore fruit, and the House of Commons, in its thirteenth Resolution, resolved that: it is the opinion of this Committee that it is the duty of this Country to promote the interests and happiness of the native inhabitants of the British dominations in India, and that measures ought to be introduced as may tend to the introduction among them of useful knowledge, and of religious and moral improvement. That in furtherance of the above objects sufficient facilities shall be afforded by law to persons desirous of going to, or remainin

g in, India. (Parliament Debate, 26: 5623 [1813]) It was also in 1813 that William Wilberforce told Parliament to exchange its [Indias] dark and bloody superstition for the genial influence of Christian light and truth. The official sanction not only revitalized the missionary (c) 2011 Hong Kong University Press. All Rights Reserved. South Asian schizophrenia 35 activities, but also gave a stimulus to the teaching of English, since initially English was one of the major languages used in the missionary schools (for references, see Kanungo, 1962: 114). The story of Ceylon, renamed Sri Lanka on 22 May 1972, is not much different: the island was declared a Crown Colony in 1802. However, before this declaration, in 1799, the Reverend James Cordiner went as a chaplain to the garrison in Colombo. He took over as principal of all schools in the settlement. The initial efforts to introduce English in Sri Lanka were again made by the missionaries; the government did not start imparting English education until 1831. By this time, Sri Lanka already had 235 Protestant mission schools, and only ninety of them were under the direct control of the government. By the time the government in Sri Lanka involved itself in imparting English education, the Christian Institution was already there; its foundation was laid in 1827 by Sir Edward Barnes. The aim of the Institution was: to give a superior education to a number of young persons who from their ability, piety and good conduct were likely to prove fit persons in communicating a knowledge of Christianity to their countrymen. (Barnes, 1932: 43; see also Ruberu, 1962) The Report of the Special Committee of Education (1943) in Sri Lanka makes it clear that in that country, until 1886, a large number of schools were Christian. The first British Governor, Frederick North, initiated far-reaching educational schemes and the Colebrooke Cameron reforms of 1832 made explicit the position of English in Ceylon (T. Fernando, 1972: 73). It was in 1832 that English schools were established in five cities, Colombo, Galle, Kandy , Chilaw and Jaffna. Only sixteen years later, in 1848, the number of such schools had increased to sixty with 2,714 students (Mendis, 1952: 76). While the controversy concerning the role of English in Indias education was going on, there was a small but influential group of Indians who were impressed by Western thought and culture and its scientific and technological superiority. The English language was, therefore, preferable in their view to Sanskrit, Persian and Arabic, as it was a valuable linguistic tool for access to such knowledge. The most articulate spokesman of this group was Rammohan Roy (17721833). His letter, dated 11 December 1823, is often quoted as evidence for such local demand for English. The following excerpts from Roys important letter are worth noting: Humbly reluctant as the natives of India are to obtrude upon the notice of Government the sentiments they entertain on any public measure, there are circumstances when silence would be carrying this respectful feeling to culpable excess. The present Rulers of India, coming from a distance of many thousand miles to govern a people whose language, literature, manners, (c) 2011 Hong Kong University Press. All Rights Reserved. 36 Asian Englishes: Beyond the canon customs and ideas are almost entirely new and strange to them, cannot easily become so intimately acquainted with their real circumstances as the natives of the country are themselves. We should therefore be guilty of ourselves, and afford our Rulers just ground of complaint at our apathy, did we omit on occasions of importance like the present to supply them with such accurate information as might enable them to devise and adopt measures calculated

to be beneficial to the country, and thus second by our local knowledge and experience, their declared benevolent intentions for its improvement [...]. When this Seminary of learning [a Sanskrit school in Calcutta] was proposed, we unde rstand that the Government of England had ordered a considerable sum of money to be annually devoted to the instruction of its Indian subjects. We were filled w ith sanguine hopes that this sum would be laid out in employing European gentlem en of talents and education to instruct the natives of India in mathematics, nat ural philosophy, chemistry, anatomy, and other useful sciences, which the native s of Europe have carried to a degree of perfection that has raised them above the inhabitants of other parts of the w orld [...]. We now find that the Government are establishing a Sanskrit school u nder Hindu Pundits to impart such knowledge as is clearly current in India []. And, then, Roy adds arguments against spending government money on Sanskrit stu dies: If it had been intended to keep the English nation in ignorance of real knowledg e the Baconian philosophy would not have been allowed to displace the system of the schoolmen, which was the best calculated to keep the country in darkness, if such had been the policy of the British legislature (see Roy, 1823: 99101; see a lso Wadia, 1954: 113) It is on the basis of pleas such as Roys that Chaudhuri (1976: 89) ridicules the idea that English was imposed on a subject people by a set of foreign rulers for the sake of carrying on their alien government. However, Chaudhuri is only pa rtially right. The phase of implementation of English had to wait until the educ ational Minute of 1835 was passed. That Minute made English a constituent part o f the language policy of South Asia. The passing of this epoch-making Minute was not without extensive debate, which resulted in what has been labelled the Orie ntal and Occidental (Anglicist) controversy. The argument was about the indigeno us system of education (the Oriental) as opposed to the Western system of educat ion (the Occidental), their merits and demerits, their relevance for the British interests and the interests and needs of the subcontinent. The debate began soon after 1765, when the East India Company was finally able to stabilize its authority in the subcontinent. The main concern was to determine an official policy about the role and appropri ateness of English in Indian education. The Orientalists proposed the (c) 2011 Hong Kong University Press. All Rights Reserved. South Asian schizophrenia 37 nativist theory and the Occidentalists the transplant theory. Proponents for eac h side included administrators of the Empire, both in India and in Britain. The Orientalists included H. T. Prinsep (17921878), who acted as the spokesman of the group and who presented a dissenting view in a note dated 15 February 1835. Prinsep was supported by, among others, Houghton Hodgson, who worked for the Company, and John Wilson, a missionary scholar. The Occidentalists included Charles Grant (17461823), Lord Moira (17541826) and T. B. Macaulay (18001859). The Minute had the support of the powerful government lobby and was a classic example of using language as a vehicle for destabilizing a subjugate c ulture with the aim of creating a subculture. As Macaulay says, this subculture in India would consist of: a class who may be interpreters between us and the mi llions whom we govern, a class of persons Indian in blood and colour, but Englis h in taste, in opinion, in morals and in intellect. (Sharp, 1920: 116) These words have frequently been quoted with various interpretations by researchers on Indian education and language policies. In Macaulays view, this subculture could not be created using poor and rude Indian vernaculars. In fact, he believed that the learning of the East was a little hocus-pocus about the use of cusa-grass and the modes of absorption into the Deity (Bryant, 1932: 567). The answer to the debate, therefore, was to teach English. On 2 February 1835, he presented to the Supreme Council of India a Minute embodying his views and announcing his intention of resigning if they were

not accepted (Bryant, 1932: 56). The Minute finally received a Seal of Approval from Lord William Bentick (17741839) on 7 March 1835, and an official declaration endorsing Macaulays resolution was passed soon thereafter. This vital resolution for the introduction and diffusion of English in the subcontinent reads as follows: First. His Lordship in Council is of opinion that the great object of the Britis h Government ought to be the promotion of European literature and science among the natives of India; and that all the funds appropriated for the purpose of education would be best employed on English education alone. Second. But it is not the intention of His Lordship to abolish any College or School of native learning; while the native population shall appear to be inclined to avail themselves of the advantages which it affords, and His Lordship in Council directs that all the existing professors and students at all the institutions under the superintendence of the Committee shall continue to receive their stipends. But His Lordship in Council decidedly objects to the practice which has hitherto prevailed of supporting the students during the period of education. He conceives that the only effect of such a system can be to give artificial encouragement to branches of learning which, (c) 2011 Hong Kong University Press. All Rights Reserved. 38 Asian Englishes: Beyond the canon in the natural course of things, would be superseded by more useful studies; and he directs that no stipend shall be given to any student that may hereafter enter at any of these institutions; and that when any Professor of Oriental learning shall vacate his situation, the Committee shall report to the Government the number and state of the class in order that the Government may be able to decide upon the expediency of appointing a successor. Third. It has come to the knowledge of the Governor-General-in-Council that a large sum has been expended by the Committee on the printing of Oriental works; His Lordship in Council directs that no portion of the funds shall hereafter be employed. Fourth. His Lordship in Council directs that all the funds which these reforms will leave at the disposal of the Committee be henceforth employed in imparting to the native population a knowledge of English literature and science through the medium of the English language; and His Lordship in Council requests the Committee to submit to Government, with all expedition, a plan for the accomplishment of this purpose. (Sharp, 1920: 1301) With this declaration and approval of the Minute, yet another external language was added to the multilingual repertoire of South Asia. The implication of this imposition was that by 1882 over 60 percent of primary schools were imparting education through the English medium. Macaulays dream had, at last, been realized. In 1857, three metropolitan universities were founded by the government in Bombay, Calcutta and Madras, which significantly contributed to imparting English education to enterprising Indians. There are, however, scholars who in retrospect feel that in the very conditions of their establishment and organization the seeds of the decline [of English] were present (e.g. Nagarajan, 1981: 663). Was this the correct decision? The debate on this question, both among South Asian and Western scholars, has continued since the Minutes final approval. Post-independence South Asian countries continue to argue about this issue from various perspectives (e.g. see Ram, 1983). The British linguist J. R. Firth (18901960) holds superficial Lord Macaulay responsible for the superficiality characteristic of Indian education (1930: 2101). However, not all agree with the views represented by Firth. There are many, like Rammohun Roy, who were grateful to Macaulay and the British Empire for leaving the legacy of English to India. Macaulay stated twenty years later that he believed that the Minute made a great revolution (Clive, 1973: 426). There is no doubt that one has to grant him that (for detailed discussion see Banerjee, 1878; Chatterjee, 1976; Chaudhuri, 1976;

Sinha, 1978; Cohn, 1985; Dharwadkar, 2003). The original role of English in South Asia was essentially that of a foreign language. However, with the diffusion of bilingualism in English, and its institutionalization, English developed various South Asian varieties, discussed in the following section. (c) 2011 Hong Kong University Press. All Rights Reserved. 5 Englishization: Asia and beyond Introduction The focus of this chapter is on one of the two Janus-like faces of language contact situations involving English and other languages termed ENGLISHIZATION. This is an aspect that has received considerable attention in recent years (e.g. see Viereck and Bald, 1986, for references). The other face is that of nativization earlier discussed in Chapters 2 and 3. In focusing on Englishization I shall argue that the paradigms of CONTACT LINGUISTICS must include SOCIOLINGUISTIC VARIABLES as integral to conceptualization and methodology. And, as asides, I shall make observations on some selected issues concerning language policies. Why focus on Englishization as a manifestation of contact linguistics? There are several reasons for doing so. The first reason, of course, relates to the unique and multidimensional character of the diffusion of English. For the first time in linguistic history a language has established contact with practically every language family in all the continents, both formally and functionally. And this contact is not primarily restricted to one function, say religion, as is the case, for example, with Arabic and Sanskrit. In this sense, then, English provides a cross-cultural and cross-linguistic indicator of change , acculturation, and convergence. The second reason relates to the sociolinguistics of English: the unprecedented functional range of the language, and its cross-cultural domains of use. In other words, its range and depth mentioned earlier: what is generally not recognized is that the British and American identities form only a part of a larger group of identities of English around the world. The third reason is attitudinal that results in linguistic schizophrenia about the language. But that schizophrenia one of acceptance and rejection of the language has not impeded the accelerating and ongoing contact of English with other languages across cultures. The fourth reason takes me to the consequences of the above profile of English in terms of its contact with (c) 2011 Hong Kong University Press. All Rights Reserved. 100 Asian Englishes: Beyond the canon other languages, the effect of the contact and its implications. There is a need to access what kind of shift there should be in the traditional paradigms of contact linguistics, its methodology and its data. We have already seen the limitations of the ERROR and TRANSFER paradigm, or the INTERLANGUAGE paradigm. A significant body of research done to support or attack these paradigms has again involved English (e.g. see Lowenberg and S. N. Sridhar, 1986). The fifth reason relates to the development of the large body of bilinguals creativity characterized as CONTACT LITERATURES in English, discussed in Chapter 3 (e.g. in South Asia, Southeast Asia, West Africa, East Africa). This aspect has also issues resulting from contact linguistics. The reason for this i s the traditional dichotomy between language and literature. It has been shown in literature that contact linguistics will gain greater insights about linguist ic creativity by considering such texts as data for making language-related generalizations (e.g. see Smith, 1987). The last reason relates to applied contact linguistics. In language planning English continues to play a vital role as a competing language in most of the developing countries. It is an

interesting linguistic fact that even the most anti-Western nations are not reluctant to use English for national development internal and external reasons conspire in favour of assigning English an important role. These dimensions of cross-cultural sociolinguistic profile of English are indeed of greater impact than the impact of earlier Western prestige languages, Greek and Latin (Kahane and Kahane, 1979 and 1986). We have seen a spate of publications, specifically during the post-colonial period, on the hegemony of English across cultures. Most of this research discusses the power and influence of English in the domains of education, administration, literary creativity, and in international and intranational interactions, as well, for it presents new perspectives and attitudes about English: English opening the doors to religious and cultural enlightenment, English as a tool of colonial exploitation and political consolidation, and English symbolizing the killer language for various regional languages and cultures (for earlier references, see B. Kachru and Smith, 1986; Phillipson and Skutnabb-Kangas, 1986; Phillipson, 1992). The BBC series, The Story of English, successfully took the positive sides of this unprecedented story of language spread to millions of homes around the world, as did the companion volume with the same title (McCrum et al., 1986). Again, there is no dearth of studies of the sociological and political implications of the spread of English.1 A stri ng of epithets and metaphors mentioned in Chapter 2 of this book are indicative of such perceptions of the language. This all-pervasive impact of English has resulted in a vital linguistic resource. In a majority of cases the impact of this resource has been direct, and has become a part of corpus planning and status planning (e.g. Singapore, Nigeria, India, the Philippines). But there is another aspect of this resource, (c) 2011 Hong Kong University Press. All Rights Reserved. Englishization: Asia and beyond 101 which is indirect and has received less attention in language planning due to the rather rigorous boundaries between disciplines. Consider, for example, the following: 1. impact on literatures and process of literary creativity; 2. introduction of new or modified literary genres; 3. expansion of thematic range in various varieties of English; 4. patterning of discoursal and stylistic strategies; and, 5. initiation of ideological changes. In the countries where English may have no direct impact, its indirect impact has been difficult to arrest, for it comes through the channels which bypass the generally recognized channels by the language planners, and are unplanned (Annamalai, 1988) or invisible (Pakir, 1988). And equally important are the factors of attitude. In other words, the direct and indirect impact of English is simply overwhelming, and the tools of planners are not up to the task. In studies of contact linguistics, the multidimensions of the contact of English have yet to be viewed in their entirety. This, then, raises questions about the conceptualization of this field, its methodology and its goals. As Dell Hyme s (1988) reminds us:2 we have methods highly elaborated for addressing the processes of genetic relationships, but very little for addressing the processes of diffusion, contac t, etc. Quite parallel, in the two types of classification having to do with nonhistorical resemblances, typological and functional, it is the one that least involves the use of language, the typological, that is most developed, and the one that involves the use most, and indeed, definitionally, the functional, that is least developed.3

What I propose to do is to briefly discuss Englishization in a broader context within the framework of contact linguistics, and to investigate the contours of the dimensions discussed above. The spheres of Englishization The impact of Englishization is evident in three major spheres of influence associated with the spread of English and institutionalization of world Englishes. These three spheres are: 1. Traditional regions of contact: This includes the inner periphery of traditional linguistic and cultural contact (e.g. the languages of Western and Eastern Europe). A majority of these languages are cognate languages of English. (c) 2011 Hong Kong University Press. All Rights Reserved. 102 Asian Englishes: Beyond the canon 2. The Outer Circle: A majority of the languages of this Circle (and of the Expanding Circle, see below) are non-contiguous with English in a geographical sense, and, unrelated or not closely related in a genetic sense (e.g. South Asia, Southeast Asia, West Africa). 3. The Expanding Circle: This includes language of parts of West Asia, Japan, China, Latin America, and the remaining areas of the world. Within each sphere English has acquired the role of a source language for linguistic innovations and creativity. In all the three spheres the local languages have generally been receiving language in terms of the process of Englishization. However, I must hasten to add that this contact has left its traces of Asianization and Africanization on English, too, but I will not discuss that here. The term Englishization is used here in a broad sense. It does not refer only to phonology, grammar and lexis, but goes beyond these levels into discourse, registers and styles and development of literary genre. Thus, this extended use of the term takes us into various genres of literatures written in what Western scholars have generally referred to as vernaculars a term loaded with attitudinal and functional connotations. There have been mainly two types of studies on the Englishization of other languages. A large body of such research is devoted to studies of lexical borrowings from English into other language (e.g. see Viereck and Bald, 1986; for a theoretical discussion of related issues, see Thomason and Kaufman, 1988). A fewer number of such studies describe the influence of English phonology on another language (e.g. in the case of South Asia, see Bhatia, 1967 and later). Other aspects of this phenomenon have received very little attention. There seem to be two primary reasons for the earlier concentration on these two levels: the first reason goes back to the dominance of the Structurali st model of language teaching and learning until the 1960s, and its overemphasis on phonetics and phonology in language transfer. The second reason may be considered a more practical one and is closely associated with the expansion of the Raj, and the interaction of its administrative and other networks with the former colonies. And, here we again go back to the sociological, cultural and political motivations for Englishization. The evidence of transfusion of English lexical items is found in the lexical lists compiled for the administrators of the Raj both the expatriates and the natives.4 Deficit versus dominance hypothesis The motivations for Englishization must be viewed within the contexts of the historical and political background, and the duration of the colonial period. In some cases it goes back 100 to 200 years. There are essentially two (c) 2011 Hong Kong University Press. All Rights Reserved. Englishization: Asia and beyond 103

hypotheses about the motivations for the Englishization of Asian and African languages: the DEFICIT HYPOTHESIS and the DOMINANCE HYPOTHESIS. The deficit hypothesis presupposes that borrowing necessarily entails linguistic gaps in the language, the prime motivation for borrowing being to remedy such linguistic deficit, especially in the lexical resources of a language. On the other hand, the dominance hypothesis is evaluative in terms of the importance of the two cultures which come into contact. In Higas view (1979: 278), when two cultures come into contact if one is more dominant or advanced than the other, the directionality of culture learning and subsequent word-borrowing is not mutual, but from the dominant to the subordinate. In this case, then, the determining factor is functional power of English. The first view attributes the need to the formal limitations of the receiving language, and the second view to the cultural dominance of the giver language. These two views, of course, are not mutually exclusive, and such dichotomies do not necessarily hold in the real world. There are other motivations which function as a serious pull for lexical, phonetic, grammatical, and stylistic Englishization of the languages in the Outer Circle, for example, establishing distance in a linguistic interaction, maintaining neutrality in terms of class, caste, region, by using English and no t using a local language, and for maintaining an identity. The terms neutrality and identity are somewhat tricky here. What is neutrality at one level may be a strategy for solidarity and immense power at another level. That certainly is the case of English in, for example, the Outer Circle. These are related to exponents of Englishization, which need to be discussed first. Exponents of Englishization One is better able to capture the range and impact of the exponents of Englishization by crossing over the traditional boundaries that divide language and literature. Furthermore, one must realize that the earlier paradigms of investigation of transfer and influence are not very insightful in capturing the full understanding of the impact of English.5 One must ask: What has been the impact of English in developing new registers, styles, codes, and literary genres in languages with which English ha s come in contact? In answering such questions, the impact of lexis, syntax, and phonology, for example, is seen in a broader functional and textual context. But more of that later. First, it might be useful to recapitulate the obvious. There is already clear evidence that within the traditional levels of lexis, grammar, phonology, and orthography, particularly the system of punctuation, Englishization has left hardly any major language (or for that matter, any minor language) untouched. The difference is one of degrees. Parallels of this contact in terms of number of languages affected, and extent of influence is hard to (c) 2011 Hong Kong University Press. All Rights Reserved. 112 Asian Englishes: Beyond the canon Thematic range and literary experimentation Englishization contributed to the expansion of the thematic range of literatures associated with the Great Traditions in several ways. And, it also provided a stimulus and a model for development of a literary tradition in those languages which had essentially oral traditions. The following aspects are illustrative: first, Englishization led to an expansion of an already established genre; it introduced social realism and secularization. Second, it introduced new literary movements, controversies, innovations and trends not restricted to the literary traditions initiated in the Inner Circle of English. In turn, the classical stylistic traditions changed , and linguistic innovations were initiated. English contributed to conceptualization of literature and literary theory within new sociological, literary and linguistic paradigms. It made models available for the development of literary genres traditionally not associated with South Asian literatures, fo

r example, Walter Scotts (17711832) historical novels inspired prose writers to look at the past with a sense of historical curiosity, particularly in fictio n. In Assamese, for example, Rajanikanta Bardoloi (18671939) was the first to attempt historical novels such as Mirijiyari (1894), Monomoti (1900), Nirmal Bhakar (1926) and Radhai Ligiri (1930). In Gujarati, to take another literature from central India, Scotts influence is found in Nandshankars (18351905) treatment of the historical theme in Karan Ghelo (1866). The same is true of Hindi, Sinhala and Nepali. These are not isolated examples; they are indicative of a major trend of the period (see relevant section in Das [1991]). In South Asia, it was primarily through English that the young writers were introduced to what is known as the Progressive Writers Movement in the 1930s. This movement provided two credos the linguistic and the literary. It was a call to break away from the canon of the established Great Traditions. The norms of Sanskritization and Persianization were seriously questioned (for further discussion and case studies, see Coppola, 1988). The credos unleashed, as it were, immense linguistic experimentation not always consistent with the earlier norms of Sanskritization and Persianization. What George says of Malayalam (1972: 244) is applicable to most of the literatures of Asia; he says, apart from Sanskrit, no other language has touched Malayalam as deeply and as effectively as English [his emphasis]. Chatterji, the noted linguist with encyclopedic knowledge of South Asias languages and literatures (1963: 135), sees this impact in a larger context; he says, contact with the European spirit through English literature brought in a real Indian renaissance, and gave a new course to literature in modern Indian languages. The politician and visionary Nehru concurred with this view when he wrote, through the impact of English and of ideas through English our regional languages developed new forms of ex-pression (1963: 5). (c) 2011 Hong Kong University Press. All Rights Reserved. Englishization: Asia and beyond 113 Third, literary experimentation, in turn, often resulted in stylistic experimentation. In this connection one can refer, for example, to the Romantic movement and its implications on stylistic shift, new metaphor and its manifestation as in rahasyava-d (mysticism) in Hindi. A number of postRomantic movements had their influence too, as had T. S. Eliot (18881965) and others. The credo of Wordsworth, particularly about language, was adopted by young writers across cultures. In India, it resulted in cha- ya-va- d (romanticism) and rahasyava-d (mysticism). These were innovative in many ways and introduced modernism into the literatures of the Outer Circle. There is general agreement that English has functioned as the main agent for releasing the South Asian languages from the rigorous constraints of the classical literary traditions. With the influence of English literature came new experimentation, and resultant controversies. The issues were seen in new theoretical and methodological frameworks. Some of the major languages, particularly those used in the metropolitan cities like Calcutta (Kolkota) and Bombay (Mumbai) became the vehicles for channelling the impact of English into other languages. What is called the Bengal Renaissance did not influence only the neighbouring languages, Assamese and Oriya, but the gains and challenges of the renaissance were transmitted to Hindi and Urdu, among other languages. In turn, these literatures transmitted the literary and linguistic impact of Englishization to Punjabi, Dogri, Kashmiri and other languages. It is in this way that Englishization became a pan-South Asian phenomenon and a literary movement. We see that practically all literary languages recognize this impact on modernization and thematic expansion; for example, Assamese (Barua, 1964: Ch. IX); Bengali (Sen, 1932); Dogri (Shivanath, 1976: 181); Gujarati (Jhaveri, 1978: 67); Kannada (Mugali, 1975: Ch. IX); Kashmiri (B. Kachru, 1981b: 100

1; Raina, 2002). Mugalis (1975: 97) observation rightly applies to all the literatures of South Asia, as in other Indian languages, modern literature in Kannada arose as a result of the powerful impact of English education and the new mode of thinking. This impact is clearly visible in the theme, content, form, and style of the literature which has come up during the last 4050 years. Englishization and code development The influence of Englishization has particularly been in developing two types of codes: those which are the result of mixing with English, and those which are attitudinally low on the lectal scale but have important functional domains attached to them. (c) 2011 Hong Kong University Press. All Rights Reserved. Englishization: Asia and beyond 119 The past, therefore, has a lesson for language planners: it is now evident that linguistic ecology is minimally determined by local conditions. It is the wider political, ethnic and religious considerations that seriously influence language choice and language hierarchy. In Anglophone Asia as in Africa, we cannot deny the fact that English is a valuable resource in our linguistic repertoire. And the resource must be used to an advantage. So far, the functional value of English has been seen in terms of what English can do for us internationally as a resource for science and technology and communication. And intranationally English continues to be used as a code for pan-regional link language. This linguistic and literary resource, in an acculturated and nativized form, has become part of our linguistic ecologies. We must ask ourselves how this resource of English can be used in our multilingual and multicultural contexts. We must explore the possibilities in the area of applied contact linguistics. The following three possible areas of such applied research come to mind. Two of the areas discussed below have resulted in an on-going debate on questions such as: What linguistic resources should be used for corpus planning, specifically in developing terminology? What role should be assigned to English in a multilingual education system? The third question is related to the attitude towards a particular type of contact literature. It is in response to the first two daunting questions that there are two proposals. One from Bh. Krishnamurti who has struggled with the issue of corpus planning in India for almost ten decades. In his view, what we need is a linguistic laissez-faire approach rather than a normative approach to this vital issue (Krishnamurti, 1978a: 54). Krishnamurtis approach would encourage a bilingual style with uninhibited code-mixing and code-switching. He is, of course, right in claiming that the process of language development seems to have been slowed down by the avid normative policies of governments, academics, and text-book bodies. I am not sure that Krishnamurti wanted English as a partner in such mixing and switching. But in relating language to development, any linguistic partnership should be acceptable and welcome, particularly, since English has played a vital part in our linguistic ecology at least since 1835 when Macaulays much debated Minute was passed. The second proposal is perhaps somewhat unorthodox certainly for some language teachers. This proposal comes from Robbins Burling (Burling, 1982: 4966). Burlings concern is essentially pedagogical: he suggests that we offer students texts that are intimate mixtures of their new languages (50). In this method, one starts with texts with only modest deviations from the students native language [...] as the pages and chapters pass by, shift progressively in the direction of the target language (50). Burling is conscious of the fact that this method will surely strike a good many language teachers as bordering on the bizarre (50). But, he assures us that he has used this (c) 2011 Hong Kong University Press. All Rights Reserved. 120 Asian Englishes: Beyond the canon method for teaching French, Halmuth H. Schaefer (1963) used this method for teaching German, and in the Asian multilingual context R.K. Tongue (n.d.)

used it for teaching Indonesian. The underlying principle in this method is not much different from using interlinear translations and glosses for teaching, for example, Sanskrit, Arabic and other languages. The third question relates to the status and use of contact literatures which have attitudinally been given a low position, e.g. Nigerian Pidgin,10 basilect, and varieties of Bazaar Englis h, as discussed in Chapter 3. The area of applied contact linguistics with specific reference to English is as yet unexplored. But the potential is immense. One also notices several trends which should interest language planners: first that the domains of the spread of English are not necessarily planned. The invisible and unplanned channels are contributing more to the diffusion and functional range of English than are the planned strategies. The invisible conquest of English is more frustrating to language planners who are interested in restricting the uses of English. Second, that the models of literary creativity and unconscious processes of translation are initiating language change (see Krishnamurti and Mukherjee, 1984). Third, that in the Outer Circle of English, the nativized H varieties have also developed localized L varieties. Fourth, that the pluricentricity of English, both literature and language, has created a complexity which was not faced earlier. The language has acquired a presence in our cultures, and its linguistic centre has shifted (Steiner, 1975), and Anglophone Asia is one of such major centers. Conclusion This chapter attempts to show that contact linguistics must cross over the disciplinary barriers: it must view and investigate language contact in societal interactional contexts, and in the contexts of ideological changes. The insights thus gained should be valuable in several ways for our better understanding of multilingual societies, their linguistic behaviour, and their linguistic creativity. We might also gain some insights into what has until now been an elusive area of research, the bilinguals grammar. The cross-cultural acculturation of English, its manifestations in various varieties, and its two faces, those of Englishization and nativization, provide a gold mine of data for the study of contact, change, and attitudes. In theoretica l and applied contact linguistics this asset of world Englishes has yet to be full y explored, particularly within the framework of functional linguistics. (c) 2011 Hong Kong University Press. All Rights Reserved. 7 Medium and mantra Introduction This chapter contextualizes Raja Raos Kanthapura, published in 1938, within what is now the canon of Indian English creativity. In fact, Raos Kanthapura provided a liberating mantra in the formative years of the creativity in Asias Indian English. In this chapter, I will place that mantra in a broader historica l context and study its impact on Asian and African creativity in English. In 1937 [published in 1938], Rao said, about writing in English, that the telling has not been easy since one has to convey in a language that is not ones own the spirit that is ones own (p. vii).1 This dilemma is between madhyama, the medium, and mantra, the message the channel and what it conveys. The medium represents an alien language and yet, Rao adds, it is not really an alien language. This explanation, and its elaboration, is articulated in just 461 words in the Authors Foreword (pp. viiviii), which I would like to discuss and contextualize here. In retrospect, sixty-five years later, one can argue that th is foreword as a mantra envisions an emerging canon, and circles the possible

boundaries of its canonicity linguistic and contextual. The foreword outlines an agenda and became Raos own credo of creativity: it indeed proved the trail-blazer of what turned out to be a liberating tradition in world Englishes. It was, as Parthasarathy tells us (1987: 157), revolutionary in its declaration of independence from English literature. A number of sentences from this foreword have repeatedly been quoted, analysed and paraphrased, both in Raos India and in other parts of the world, where creativity in English has gradually become an integral part of the national literatures. And, as time passed, with various modifications and interpretations, the credo acquired almost the status of a manifesto in founding what in the 1980s has been called liberation linguistics discussed in Chapter 3.2 Rao, of course, did not use the term liberation; he did not need to. Instead, he just carved a different path consistent with his native (c) 2011 Hong Kong University Press. All Rights Reserved. 138 Asian Englishes: Beyond the canon tradition that of convergence, cohesion, and assimilation. What he did by this mantra, and later, was to put around the English language the sacred thread. It is in this subtle and suggestive way that Rao performed the samska- ra (initiation rite) and brought the English language within the mainstream of Indias linguistic and cultural tradition, parampara. In this sense, then, Raos credo was a reinvention of the language, and a reconstruction of how it could be defined. In his reconstruction, Rao recognized the implications of features of the induction of English in Indias pluralistic context: the implications of the bilinguals creativity, the formal and functional hybridity of the language, and the recontextualization of a colonial linguistic weapon within the age-old assimilative linguistic history of India. The caste of English In 1937 Rao talked of an Indian identity of English he was presenting a vision and expressing a kamana an intense desire. This visionary insight was, however, elaborated further over twenty years later, in 1978. In a short paper appropriately titled The Caste of English, Rao attributes a varna, a caste, to the language. He actually blends his metaphysical and pragmatic visions concerning English and places the language on the same elevated pedestal of Truth as the one on which Sanskrit (The Perfected Language) has traditionally been placed by the Brahmins as devava-ni (divine or heavenly language). And Rao adds a pragmatic aspect to the language by saying, so long as the English language is universal, it will always remain Indian. This point is further elaborated by Rao: Truth, said a great Indian sage, is not the monopoly of the Sanskrit language. Truth can use any language, and the more universal, the better it is. If metaphysics is Indias primary contribution to world civilization, as we believe it is, then must she use the most universal language for her to be universal [...] And so long as the English language is universal, it will always remain Indian [...]. (1978a: 421) It is this type of mantra which Rao uses to respond to the ideological and linguistic war which Thomas Macaulay (18001891) had launched almost 170 years earlier, aiming at the soul and mind of India. Rao is also responding to Indias linguistic chauvinism, particularly that of the post-1960s, when he says: It would then be correct to say as long as we are Indian that is, not nationalists, but truly Indians of the Indian psyche we shall have the English language with us and amongst us, and not as a guest or friend, but as one of our own, of our caste, our creed, our sect and of our tradition. (1978a: 421) (c) 2011 Hong Kong University Press. All Rights Reserved.

Medium and mantra 139 By incorporating the language within the caste, within the creed, and within the sect, the samska- ra is complete and for Rao the Indian identity of English is complete. The initiation, samska- ra, has liberated both the medium and the message that it conveys. And now truly the Empire talks back, reciting its own mantra in multiple voices. The mantra is not just incantation, the intoning and chanting of a word or a phrase. It is more than that. It is a medium of thought, and ... it is not the conceptual, discoursive, differentiating form of thought (vikalpa) that accompanies empirical language. This is more intense, more effective thought, a thought that is also one-pointed since it is connected with a concentrated form of speech, endowed with special potency and efficacy. (Padoux, 1990: 373) This explanation of mantra is consistent with what has been labelled as the Kashmirian theory of mantras.3 Anatomy of the mantra What Raos mantra regarding English does is to contextualize English within five refreshingly new perspectives. First, there is a reference to language as medium and as a vehicle of a message. The medium, as mentioned above, is not ones own. But the spirit that the medium conveys is ones own. The identity is with the functions and acculturation that the language has acquired in Raos India the form or substance appropriately Indianized to serve these ends.4 The second perspective concerns the daunting issues of reconciling local culture and thought-movement in an alien language (... thought-movement that looks maltreated in an alien language (ibid.). And here Rao is encountering the Whorfian dilemma. But having said this, Rao pauses, and almost as an after-thought, he reconsiders his use of the distance-marking term alien. In reconsidering the alienness of English, and how it becomes Indian, Rao says: I used the word alien, yet English is not really an alien language to us. It is the language of our intellectual make-up. We are all instinctively bilingual, ma ny of us writing in our own language and in English. [emphasis added] (1938: vii; 1967 ed.) The term instinctively bilingual has immense implications for our understanding of the multilinguals language behaviour. This concept of instinctive bilingualism has yet to be understood in the societies where monolingualism continues to be treated as a normal linguistic phenomenon. (c) 2011 Hong Kong University Press. All Rights Reserved. 140 Asian Englishes: Beyond the canon And this latter view continues to be held in many linguistic and educational circles in the West. I do not think that the concept instinctive bilingualism, or at least some inherent human capacity for multilingualism, has even now entered the theoretical conceptualization in explaining bilinguals strategies (e.g. see B. Kachru, 1987a, 1996c, 1996d, 1996c, 1997b). Consider the relatively recently articulated views of social scientist Shills and linguist Crystal. Shills claims that: The national language of literary creation is almost always the language of the authors original nationality, there are, of course, exceptions, such as Conrad, and, at a lower level Nabokov and Koestler, Apollonaire and Julien Green. But for writing about public or political matters, a foreign language is often used effectively. (Shills, 1988: 560; emphasis added) When asked to explain the difference between people who have native speaker awareness of a language and those who do not, Crystals response is rather

mystifying. He says (cited in Paikeday, 1985: 667) that it is quite unclear what to make of cases like Nabokov and the others. George Steiner (Extraterritorial Papers) talks about as having no native language. But these are marginal cases. And, elaborating on who is a native speaker (of English), Crystal continues: I know several foreigners whose command of English I could not fault, but they themselves deny they are native speakers. When pressed on this point, they draw attention to [...] their lack of childhood associations, their limited passive knowledge of varieties, the fact that there are some topics which they are more comfortable discussing in their first language. I couldnt make love in English, said one man to me. (cited in Paikeday, 1985: 68) These views only partially reflect the contexts of literary creativity across speech communities, and are particularly inadequate when considering language use in the multilingual societies around the world.5 Raos third perspective relates to the hybridity in terms of convergence of visions when the English language is used in pluralistic contexts: We cannot write like the English. We should not. We cannot write only as Indians. We have grown to look at the large world as part of us. (ibid.) What is called the Rushdiesque language, and defined as a hybrid form of post-colonial and post-modern narrative discourses by Langeland (1996: 16) has its well-conceptualized beginning in Rao. Langeland considers this aspect of Rushdies technique (1996: 16) as a radical linguistic operation implanting new cultural impulses into hitherto more narrowly ethnocentric language. This was the point that Rao was addressing a decade before Salman Rushdie was born and over a generation before Rushdies Midnights Children (1981) was published. (c) 2011 Hong Kong University Press. All Rights Reserved. Medium and mantra 141 Fourth, Rao recognized that there is a linguistic consequence of this convergence that results in formal distinctiveness of the Indian variety of English. He compared the situation with the Irish and American English, both of which had to undergo a long struggle for what was for the USA linguistic liberation (see also Chapter 2): Our method of ex-pression therefore has to be a dialect which will someday prove to be as distinctive and colorful as the Irish or the American. (1938: vii; 1967 ed.) Fifth, hybridity results in stylistic transcreation, and here again, Rao refers to American and Irish varieties of English: After language the next problem is that of style. The tempo of Indian life must be infused into our English ex-pression, even as the tempo of American or Irish life has gone into the making of others. (ibid.) Thus, Rao sees that the tempo of Indian life must be infused in our literary creativity. That tempo is well represented, as Rao reminds us, in our literary parampara, in our epics, and in the puranas in high culture and the vernacular culture: And our paths are interminable. The Mahabharata has 214,778 verses and the Ramayana 48,000. The Puranas are endless and innumerable. (ibid.) And what are our conventions of discourse? What is our culture of grammar? We have neither punctuation nor the treacherous ats and ons to bother us we tell one interminable tale. Episode follows episode, and when our thoughts stop our breath stops, and we move to another thought. This was and is the ordinary style of storytelling. (ibid.) In these five points Rao provides a context and broad features for the Indianization of the English language. In other words, he outlines the grammar of discourse, and emphasizes the culture that the language was gradually acquiring in India. These five perspectives, then, encapsulate the foundations of emerging canons of English in its second diaspora the Asian and African diaspora. This mantra authenticates the crossover of English in its altered sociocultural contexts. The five perspectives may be summarized as:

a. the relationship between the medium (madhyama) and the message (mantra); b. the reconceptualization of the contextual appropriateness of English as a medium of creativity; c. the relevance of hybridity and creative vision and innovation; (c) 2011 Hong Kong University Press. All Rights Reserved. 142 Asian Englishes: Beyond the canon d. the relevance of language variety, linguistic appropriateness, and identity; and e. the stylistic relevance of cultural discourse and its relationship with local parampara. The text of Kanthapura that follows the foreword actually gives life to Raos vision of creativity, and he tells us that I have tried to follow it myself in this story (p. viii). He takes up his own challenge to demonstrate that the thoughtmovement is not maltreated in an alien language. But, then, he makes a distinction between two linguistic functions intellectual and emotional: It is the language of our intellectual make-up like Sanskrit or Persian was before but not of our emotional make-up. We are all instinctively bilingual, many of us writing in our own language and in English. (ibid.) In Raos novel his sthalapurana a new linguistic tradition, a new dimension of creativity in world Englishes, began to develop in the 1930s. This experimentation in creativity in English was not restricted to India. We witness various versions of such gradual and sometimes subdued experimentation in West Africa, in East Africa, and in Southeast Asia and the Philippines. The new paradigm was unfolding itself, primarily with local initiatives. The earlier conceptual frameworks were being altered and set aside, and fresh initiatives were being outlined. The credo of 1938 became the cornerstone for what followed in the years to come. In different ways, and with different emphases, we hear these new voices in, for example, Nigerias Amos Tutuola, Chinua Achebe, Buchi Emecheta, and Wole Soyinka; in Kenyas Ng~ugi wa Thiongo; in Somalian Nuruddin Farah; and in Raos own contemporaries in the Indian subcontinent, particularly in the stylistic and thematic experimentation of post-1947 writers such as Upamanyu Chatterjee, Amitav Ghosh, Mukal Kesavan, Ro http://www.angelfire.com/journal/worldtour99/sapirwhorf.html Build your own FREE website at Angelfire.com Share: del.icio.us | digg | reddit | Twitter | facebook The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis From George Orwell s 1984 (1948): "The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of ex-pression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc [English Socialism ], but to make all other modes of thought impossible. It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought--that is, a thought diverging from the principles of Ingsoc--should be literally unthinkable, at least as far as thought is dependent on words. Its vocabulary was so constructed as to give exact and often very subtle ex-pression to every meaning that a Party member could properly wish to express, while excludin g

all other meanings and also the possibility of arriving at them by indirect method. This was done partly by the invention of new words and by stripping such words as remained of unorthodox meanings, and so far as possible of all secondar y meanings whatever...A person growing up with Newspeak as his sole language would no more know that equal had once had the secondary meaning of "politically equal," or that free had once meant "intellectually free," than, for instance, a person who had never heard of chess would be aware of the secondary meanings attaching to queen or rook. There would be many crimes and errors which it would be beyond his power to commit, simply because they were nameless and therefore unimaginable." The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis theorizes that thoughts and behavior are determined ( or are at least partially influenced) by language. If true in its strongest sense, the sinister possibility of a culture controlled by Newspeak or some other language is not just science fiction. Since its inception in the 1920s and 1930s , the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis has caused controversy and spawned research in a variety of disciplines including linguistics, psychology, philosophy, anthropology, and education. To this day it has not been completely disputed or defended, but has continued to intrigue researchers around the world. Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf brought attention to the relationship betwee n language, thought, and culture. Neither of them formally wrote the hypothesis no r supported it with empirical evidence, but through a thorough study of their writings about linguistics, researchers have found two main ideas. First, a theo ry of linguistic determinism that states that the language you speak determines the way that you will interpret the world around you. Second, a weaker theory of linguistic relativism that states that language merely influences your thoughts about the real world. Edward Sapir studied the research of Wilhelm von Humboldt. About one hundred yea rs before Sapir published his linguistic theories, Humboldt wrote in Gesammelte Wer ke a strong version of linguistic determinism: "Man lives in the world about him principally, indeed exclusively, as language presents it to him." Sapir took thi s idea and expanded on it. Although he did not always support this firm hypothesis , his writings state that there is clearly a connection between language and thought. From "The Status of Linguistics as a Science" (1929) Human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor alone in the world of social activity as ordinarily understood, but are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of ex-pression in their society. It is quite an illusion to imagine that one adjusts to reality essentially without the use of language and that language is merely an incidental means of solving specific problems of communication or reflection: The fact of the matter is that

the real world is to a large extent unconsciously built up on the language habits of the group. No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality. The worlds in which differen t societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached...Even comparatively simple acts of perception are very much mor e at the mercy of the social patterns called words than we might suppose...We see and hear and otherwise experience very largely as we do because the language habits of our community predispose certain choices of interpretation. As the underlined portions show, Sapir used firm language to describe this connection between language and thought. To Sapir, the individual is unconscious to this connection and subject to it without choice. Benjamin Lee Whorf was Sapir s student. Whorf devised the weaker theory of linguistic relativity: "We are thus introduced to a new principle of relativity, which holds that all observers are not led by the same physical evidence to the same picture of the universe..." (1940/1956). He also supported, at times, the stronger linguistic determinism. To Whorf, this connection between language and thought was also an obligation not a choice. From "Science and Linguistics" (1940/1956): "We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native languages. The categories and types that we isolate from the world of phenomena we do not find there becau se they stare every observer in the face; on the contrary, the world is presented i n a kaleidoscopic flux of impressions which has to be organized by our mindsand this means largely by the linguistic systems in our minds. We cut nature up, organize it into concepts, and ascribe significances as we do, largely because w e are parties to an agreement to organize it in this wayan agreement that holds throughout our speech community and is codified in the patterns of our language. The agreement is, of course, an implicit and unstated one, but its terms are absolutely obligatory; we cannot talk at all except by subscribing to the organization and classification of data which the agreement decrees." Both Sapir and Whorf agreed that it is our culture that determines our language, which in turn determines the way that we categorize our thoughts about the world and our experiences in it. For more than fifty years researchers have tried to design studies that will support or refute this hypothesis. Support for the strong version has been weak because it is virtually impossible to test one s world view without using language. Support for the weaker version has been minimal. Yet this hypothesis continues to fascinate researchers. Problems with the hypothesis begin when one tries to discern exactly what the hypothesis is stating. Penn notes that the hypothesis is stated "more and less strongly in different places in Sapir s and Whorf s writings" (1972:13). At some points, Sapir and Whorf appear to support the strong version of the hypothesis a

nd at others they only support the weak version. Alford (1980) also notes that neither Sapir nor Whorf actually named any of their ideas about language and cognition the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. This name only appeared after their deaths . This has lead to a wide interpretation of what researchers consider to be the on e and only hypothesis. Another problem with the hypothesis is that it requires a measurement of human thought. Measuring thought and one s world view is nearly impossible without the confounding influence of language, another of the variables being studied. Researchers settle for the study of behavior as a direct link to thought. If one is to believe the strong version of linguistic determinism, one also has to agree that thought is not possible without language. What about the pre-linguist ic thought of babies? How can babies acquire language without thought? Also, where did language come from? In the linguistic determinist s view, language would hav e to be derived from a source outside the human realm because thought is impossibl e without language and before language there would have been no thought. Supporters of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis must acknowledge that their study of language in the "real world" is not without doubt if their language influences h ow they categorize what they seem to experience. Penn writes, "In short, if one believes in linguistic relativity, one finds oneself in the egocentric quandary, unable to make assertions about reality because of doubting one s own ability to correctly describe reality" (1972:33). Yet another problem with the hypothesis is that languages and linguistic concept s are highly translatable. Under linguistic determinism, a concept in one language would not be understood in a different language because the speakers and their world views are bound by different sets of rules. Languages are in fact translatable and only in select cases of poetry, humor and other creative communications are ideas "lost in the translation." One final problem researchers have found with the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is Whorf s lack of empirical support for his linguistic insights. Whorf uses langua ge nuances to prove vast differences between languages and then expects his reader to infer those differences in thought and behavior. Schlesinger attacks Whorf s flimsy thesis support: "...the mere existence of such linguistic diversities is insufficient evidence for the parallelist claims of a correspondence between language on the one hand and cognition and culture, on the other, and for the determinist claim of the latter being determined by the former" (1991:18). Schlesinger also fails to see the connection between Whorf s linguistic evidence and any cultural or cognitive data. "Whorf occasionally supplies the translation s from a foreign language into English, and leaves it to the good faith of the

reader to accept the conclusion that here must have been a corresponding cogniti ve or cultural phenomenon" (1991:27). One infamous example Whorf used to support his theory was the number of words th e Inuit people have for snow. He claimed that because snow is a crucial part of their everyday lives and that they have many different uses for snow that they perceive snow differently than someone who lives in a less snow-dependent environment. Pullum has since dispelled this myth in his book The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax (1991). He shows that while the Inuit use many different terms f or snow, other languages transmit the same ideas using phrases instead of single words. Despite all these problems facing the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, there have been several studies performed that support at least the weaker linguistic relativity hypothesis. In 1954, Brown and Lenneberg tested for color codability, or how speakers of one language categorize the color spectrum and how it affects their recognition of those colors. Penn writes, "Lenneberg reports on a study showing how terms of colors influence the actual discrimination. English-speaking subjec ts were better able to re-recognize those hues which are easily named in English. This finding is clearly in support of the limiting influence of linguistic categories on cognition" (1972:16). Schlesinger explains the path taken in this study from positive correlation to support for linguistic relativity: "...if codability of color affected recognizability, and if languages differed in codability, then recognizability is a function of the individual s language" (1991:27) Lucy and Shweder s color memory test (1979) also supports the linguistic relativity hypothesis. If a language has terms for discriminating between color then actual discrimination/perception of those colors will be affected. Lucy and Shweder found that influences on color recognition memory is mediated exclusivel y by basic color termsa language factor. Kay and Kempton s language study (1984) found support for linguistic relativity. They found that language is a part of cognition. In their study, s perceptions were distorted in the blue-green area while speakers who lack a blue-green distinctionshowed no distortion. However, conditions they found that universalism of color distinction can

Peterson and Siegal s "Sally doll" test (1995) was not intended to test the Sapi rWhorf hypothesis specifically, but their findings support linguistic relativity in a population who at the time had not yet been considered for testingdeaf children. Peterson and Siegal s experiment with deaf children showed a differenc e in the constructed reality of deaf children with deaf parents and deaf children with hearing parents, especially in the realm of non-concrete items such as feelings and thoughts. Most recently, Wassman and Dasen s Balinese language test (1998) found differenc es

English speaker from Tarahumara under certain be recovered.

in how the Balinese people orient themselves spatially to that of Westerners. Th ey found that the use of an absolute reference system based on geographic points on the island in the Balinese language correlates to the significant cultural importance of these points to the people. They questioned how language affects t he thinking of the Balinese people and found moderate linguistic relativity results . There are, on the other hand, several studies that dispute the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Most of these studies favor universalism over relativism in the real m of linguistic structure and function. For example, Osgood s common meaning syste m study found that "human beings the world over, no matter what their language or culture, do share a common meaning system, do organize experience along similar symbolic dimensions" (1963:33) In his universalism studies, Greenberg came to the conclusion that "agreement in the fundamentals of human behavior among speakers of radically diverse languages far outweighs the idiosyncratic differences to be expected from a radical theory of linguistic relativity" (1963:125). Alford s interpretation of Whorf shows that Whorf never intended for perception of the color spectrum to be used to defend his principle of linguistic relativity. Alford states, "In fact, he is quite clear in stating that perception is clearly distinct from conception and cognition, or language-related thinking" (1980). Even Dr. Roger Brown, who was one of the first researchers to find empirical support for the hypothesis, now argues that there is much more evidence pointing toward cognitive universalism rather than linguistic relativity (Schlesinger 1991:26). Berlin and Kay s color study (1969) found universal focus colors and differences only in the boundaries of colors in the spectrum. They found that regardless of language or culture, eleven universal color foci emerge. Underlying apparent diversity in color vocabularies, these universal foci remain recognizable. Even in languages which do not discriminate to eleven basic colors, speakers are nonetheless able to sort color chips based on the eleven focus colors. Davies cross-cultural color sorting test (1998) found an obvious pattern in the similarity of color sorting behavior between speakers of English which has eleve n basic colors, Russian which has twelve (they distinguish two blues), and Setswan a which has only five (grue=green-blue). Davies concluded that the data showed strong universalism. Culture influences the structure and functions of a group s language, which in turn influences the individual s interpretations of reality. Whorf saw language

and culture as two inseparable sides of a single coin. According to Alford, "Who rf sensed something chicken-and-egg-y about the language-culture interaction phenomenon" (1980). Indeed, deciding which came first the language or the cultur e is impossible to discern. Schlesinger notes that Whorf recognized two directions of influencefrom culture to language and vice versa. However, according to Schlesinger, Whorf argues that "since grammar is more resistant to change than culture, the influence from language to culture is predominant" (1991:17). Language reinforces cultural patterns through semantics, syntax and naming. Grammar and the forms of words show hierarchical importance of something to a culture. However, the common color perception tests are not strongly linked to cultural experience. Schlesinger agrees: "Whorf made far-reaching claims about t he pervasive effects of language on the mental life of a people, and all that experimental psychologists managed to come up with were such modest results as t he effect of the vocabulary of a language on the discriminability of color chips" (1991:30). In 1955, Dr. James Cooke Brown attempted to separate language and culture to tes t the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. He suggested the creation of a new languageone not bound to any particular culture--to distinguish the causes from the effects of language, culture, and thought. He called this artificial language LOGLAN, which is short for Logical Language. According to Riner, LOGLAN was designed as an experimental language to answer the question: "In what ways is human thought limited and directed by the language in which one thinks?" (1990). Today with the help of the Internet, many people around the world are learning LOGLAN. Riner appears positive in the continuing work with LOGLAN to test the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: "As far as we can yet know, LOGLAN can accommodate precisely and unambiguously t he native ways of saying things in any natural language. In fact, because it is logically rigorous, LOGLAN forces the speaker to make the metaphysical (cultural , worldview) premises in and of the natural language explicit in rendering the thought into (disambiguated) LOGLAN. Those assumptions, made explicit, become propositions that are open for critical review and amendmentso not only can the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis be tested, but its details can be investigated with LOGLA N" (1990). Further research and linguistic development is necessary to find out if LOGLAN will defend or dispute the theory of linguistic relativism. Other aspects of this hypothesis which warrant further research include another look at Peterson and Siegal s study involving deaf children, and Lucy s suggesti on of a new theoretical account of language and thought. In Peterson and Siegal s study there are revealed two naturally occurring groupsdeaf children of hearing parents and deaf children of deaf parents--which allow for a within culture test of linguistic relativity (Skoyles 1999). Their results offer direct evidence tha t language molds thought. Additional research in this area with specific testing o

f the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis in mind could prove successful. Also, Lucy states tha t all linguistic relativity proposals claim that language has some influence on thoughts about reality. He further suggests that "a theoretical account needs to articulate exactly how languages interpret experiences and how those interpretations influence thought" (1997:291). In his introduction to Whorf s body of work, John Carroll suggests a reason why so much attention and controversy surround the theory of linguistic relativism. Carroll states, "Perhaps it is the suggestion that all one s life one has been tricked, all unaware, by the structure of language into a certain way of perceiving reality, with the implication that awareness of this trickery will enable one to see the world with fresh insight" (1956:27). The world is getting smaller with the diffusion of computers and new communications technology. Interaction between members of different cultures is becoming easier and more prevalent. On a global scale, the hypothesis could be taken as a possible rationalization why foreign nations fail to communicate successfully. Awareness of linguistic relativity, however, should lead to a better understanding of cultura l diversities and help to bridge intercultural communication gaps.

http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00generallinks/macaulay/txt_minute_ education_1835.html Source: http://www.mssu.edu/projectsouthasia/history/primarydocs/education/Macau lay001.htm Numbers in square brackets have been added by FWP for classroom use. ________________________________________ Minute by the Hon ble T. B. Macaulay, dated the 2nd February 1835. It contains nothing about the particular languages or sciences which are to be s tudied. A sum is set apart "for the revival and promotion of literature, and the encouragement of the learned natives of India, and for the introduction and pro motion of a knowledge of the sciences among the inhabitants of the British terri tories." It is argued, or rather taken for granted, that by literature the Parli ament can have meant only Arabic and Sanscrit literature; that they never would have given the honourable appellation of "a learned native" to a native who was familiar with the poetry of Milton, the metaphysics of Locke, and the physics of Newton; but that they meant to designate by that name only such persons as migh t have studied in the sacred books of the Hindoos all the uses of cusa-grass, an d all the mysteries of absorption into the Deity. This does not appear to be a v ery satisfactory interpretation. To take a parallel case: Suppose that the Pacha of Egypt, a country once superior in knowledge to the nations of Europe, but no w sunk far below them, were to appropriate a sum for the purpose "of reviving an d promoting literature, and encouraging learned natives of Egypt," would any bod y infer that he meant the youth of his Pachalik to give years to the study of hi eroglyphics, to search into all the doctrines disguised under the fable of Osiri s, and to ascertain with all possible accuracy the ritual with which cats and on ions were anciently adored? Would he be justly charged with inconsistency if, in stead of employing his young subjects in deciphering obelisks, he were to order them to be instructed in the English and French languages, and in all the scienc es to which those languages are the chief keys? [3] The words on which the supporters of the old system rely do not bear them out, and other words follow which seem to be quite decisive on the other s

ide. This lakh of rupees is set apart not only for "reviving literature in India ," the phrase on which their whole interpretation is founded, but also "for the introduction and promotion of a knowledge of the sciences among the inhabitants of the British territories"-- words which are alone sufficient to authorize all the changes for which I contend. But the admirers of the oriental system of education have used another argument, which, if we admit it to be valid, is decisive against all change. They conceiv e that the public faith is pledged to the present system, and that to alter the appropriation of any of the funds which have hitherto been spent in encouraging the study of Arabic and Sanscrit would be downright spoliation. It is not easy t o understand by what process of reasoning they can have arrived at this conclusi on. The grants which are made from the public purse for the encouragement of lit erature differ in no respect from the grants which are made from the same purse for other objects of real or supposed utility. We found a sanitarium on a spot w hich we suppose to be healthy. Do we thereby pledge ourselves to keep a sanitari um there if the result should not answer our expectations? We commence the erect ion of a pier. Is it a violation of the public faith to stop the works, if we af terwards see reason to believe that the building will be useless? The rights of property are undoubtedly sacred. But nothing endangers those rights so much as t he practice, now unhappily too common, of attributing them to things to which th ey do not belong. Those who would impart to abuses the sanctity of property are in truth imparting to the institution of property the unpopularity and the fragi lity of abuses. If the Government has given to any person a formal assurance-- n ay, if the Government has excited in any person s mind a reasonable expectation- that he shall receive a certain income as a teacher or a learner of Sanscrit o r Arabic, I would respect that person s pecuniary interests. I would rather err on the side of liberality to individuals than suffer the public faith to be call ed in question. But to talk of a Government pledging itself to teach certain lan guages and certain sciences, though those languages may become useless, though t hose sciences may be exploded, seems to me quite unmeaning. There is not a singl e word in any public instrument from which it can be inferred that the Indian Go vernment ever intended to give any pledge on this subject, or ever considered th e destination of these funds as unalterably fixed. But, had it been otherwise, I should have denied the competence of our predecessors to bind us by any pledge on such a subject. Suppose that a Government had in the last century enacted in the most solemn manner that all its subjects should, to the end of time, be inoc ulated for the small-pox, would that Government be bound to persist in the pract ice after Jenner s discovery? These promises of which nobody claims the performa nce, and from which nobody can grant a release, these vested rights which vest i n nobody, this property without proprietors, this robbery which makes nobody poo rer, may be comprehended by persons of higher faculties than mine. I consider th is plea merely as a set form of words, regularly used both in England and in Ind ia, in defence of every abuse for which no other plea can be set up. [6] I hold this lakh of rupees to be quite at the disposal of the Govern or-General in Council for the purpose of promoting learning in India in any way which may be thought most advisable. I hold his Lordship to be quite as free to direct that it shall no longer be employed in encouraging Arabic and Sanscrit, a s he is to direct that the reward for killing tigers in Mysore shall be diminish ed, or that no more public money shall be expended on the chaunting at the cathe dral. [7] We now come to the gist of the matter. We have a fund to be employed as Government shall direct for the intellectual improvement of the people of th is country. The simple question is, what is the most useful way of employing it? [8] All parties seem to be agreed on one point, that the dialects common ly spoken among the natives of this part of India contain neither literary nor s cientific information, and are moreover so poor and rude that, until they are en riched from some other quarter, it will not be easy to translate any valuable wo rk into them. It seems to be admitted on all sides, that the intellectual impro vement of those classes of the people who have the means of pursuing higher stud ies can at present be affected only by means of some language not vernacular amo

ngst them. [9] What then shall that language be? One-half of the committee maintain that it should be the English. The other half strongly recommend the Arabic and Sanscrit. The whole question seems to me to be-- which language is the best wor th knowing? [10] I have no knowledge of either Sanscrit or Arabic. But I have done w hat I could to form a correct estimate of their value. I have read translations of the most celebrated Arabic and Sanscrit works. I have conversed, both here an d at home, with men distinguished by their proficiency in the Eastern tongues. I am quite ready to take the oriental learning at the valuation of the orientalis ts themselves. I have never found one among them who could deny that a single sh elf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India an d Arabia. The intrinsic superiority of the Western literature is indeed fully ad mitted by those members of the committee who support the oriental plan of educat ion. [11] It will hardly be disputed, I suppose, that the department of liter ature in which the Eastern writers stand highest is poetry. And I certainly neve r met with any orientalist who ventured to maintain that the Arabic and Sanscrit poetry could be compared to that of the great European nations. But when we pas s from works of imagination to works in which facts are recorded and general pri nciples investigated, the superiority of the Europeans becomes absolutely immeas urable. It is, I believe, no exaggeration to say that all the historical informa tion which has been collected from all the books written in the Sanscrit languag e is less valuable than what may be found in the most paltry abridgments used at preparatory schools in England. In every branch of physical or moral philosophy , the relative position of the two nations is nearly the same. [12] How then stands the case? We have to educate a people who cannot at present be educated by means of their mother-tongue. We must teach them some fo reign language. The claims of our own language it is hardly necessary to recapit ulate. It stands pre-eminent even among the languages of the West. It abounds wi th works of imagination not inferior to the noblest which Greece has bequeathed to us, --with models of every species of eloquence, --with historical compositio n, which, considered merely as narratives, have seldom been surpassed, and which , considered as vehicles of ethical and political instruction, have never been e qualed-- with just and lively representations of human life and human nature, -with the most profound speculations on metaphysics, morals, government, jurispru dence, trade, --with full and correct information respecting every experimental science which tends to preserve the health, to increase the comfort, or to expan d the intellect of man. Whoever knows that language has ready access to all the vast intellectual wealth which all the wisest nations of the earth have created and hoarded in the course of ninety generations. It may safely be said that the literature now extant in that language is of greater value than all the literatu re which three hundred years ago was extant in all the languages of the world to gether. Nor is this all [13] The question now before us is simply whether , when it is in our power to teach this language, we shall teach languages in wh ich, by universal confession, there are no books on any subject which deserve to be compared to our own, whether, when we can teach European science, we shall t each systems which, by universal confession, wherever they differ from those of Europe differ for the worse, and whether, when we can patronize sound philosophy and true history, we shall countenance, at the public expense, medical doctrine s which would disgrace an English farrier, astronomy which would move laughter i n girls at an English boarding school, history abounding with kings thirty feet high and reigns thirty thousand years long, and geography made of seas of treacl e and seas of butter. [14] We are not without experience to guide us. History furnishes severa l analogous cases, and they all teach the same lesson. There are, in modern time s, to go no further, two memorable instances of a great impulse given to the min d of a whole society, of prejudices overthrown, of knowledge diffused, of taste purified, of arts and sciences planted in countries which had recently been igno rant and barbarous.

[15] The first instance to which I refer is the great revival of letters among the Western nations at the close of the fifteenth and the beginning of th e sixteenth century. At that time almost everything that was worth reading was c ontained in the writings of the ancient Greeks and Romans. Had our ancestors act ed as the Committee of Public Instruction has hitherto noted, had they neglected the language of Thucydides and Plato, and the language of Cicero and Tacitus, h ad they confined their attention to the old dialects of our own island, had they printed nothing and taught nothing at the universities but chronicles in AngloSaxon and romances in Norman French, --would England ever have been what she now is? What the Greek and Latin were to the contemporaries of More and Ascham, our tongue is to the people of India. The literature of England is now more valuabl e than that of classical antiquity. I doubt whether the Sanscrit literature be a s valuable as that of our Saxon and Norman progenitors. In some departments-- in history for example-- I am certain that it is much less so. [16] Another instance may be said to be still before our eyes. Within th e last hundred and twenty years, a nation which had previously been in a state a s barbarous as that in which our ancestors were before the Crusades has graduall y emerged from the ignorance in which it was sunk, and has taken its place among civilized communities. I speak of Russia. There is now in that country a large educated class abounding with persons fit to serve the State in the highest func tions, and in nowise inferior to the most accomplished men who adorn the best ci rcles of Paris and London. There is reason to hope that this vast empire which, in the time of our grandfathers, was probably behind the Punjab, may in the time of our grandchildren, be pressing close on France and Britain in the career of improvement. And how was this change effected? Not by flattering national prejud ices; not by feeding the mind of the young Muscovite with the old women s storie s which his rude fathers had believed; not by filling his head with lying legend s about St. Nicholas; not by encouraging him to study the great question, whethe r the world was or not created on the 13th of September; not by calling him "a l earned native" when he had mastered all these points of knowledge; [17] A nd what are the arguments against that course which seems to be alike recommende d by theory and by experience? It is said that we ought to secure the co-operati on of the native public, and that we can do this only by teaching Sanscrit and A rabic. [18] I can by no means admit that, when a nation of high intellectual at tainments undertakes to superintend the education of a nation comparatively igno rant, the learners are absolutely to prescribe the course which is to be taken b y the teachers. It is not necessary however to say anything on this subject. For it is proved by unanswerable evidence, that we are not at present securing the co-operation of the natives. It would be bad enough to consult their intellectua l taste at the expense of their intellectual health. But we are consulting neith er. We are withholding from them the learning which is palatable to them. We are forcing on them the mock learning which they nauseate. [19] This is proved by the fact that we are forced to pay our Arabic and Sanscrit students while those who learn English are willing to pay us. All the declamations in the world about the love and reverence of the natives for their sacred dialects will never, in the mind of any impartial person, outweigh this u ndisputed fact, that we cannot find in all our vast empire a single student who will let us teach him those dialects, unless we will pay him. [20] I have now before me the accounts of the Mudrassa for one month, th e month of December, 1833. The Arabic students appear to have been seventy-seven in number. All receive stipends from the public. The whole amount paid to them is above 500 rupees a month. On the other side of the account stands the followi ng item: Deduct amount realized from the out-students of English for the months o f May, June, and July last-- 103 rupees. [21] I have been told that it is merely from want of local experience th at I am surprised at these phenomena, and that it is not the fashion for student s in India to study at their own charges. This only confirms me in my opinions. Nothing is more certain than that it never can in any part of the world be neces

sary to pay men for doing what they think pleasant or profitable. India is no ex ception to this rule. The people of India do not require to be paid for eating r ice when they are hungry, or for wearing woollen cloth in the cold season. To co me nearer to the case before us: --The children who learn their letters and a li ttle elementary arithmetic from the village schoolmaster are not paid by him. He is paid for teaching them. Why then is it necessary to pay people to learn Sans crit and Arabic? Evidently because it is universally felt that the Sanscrit and Arabic are languages the knowledge of which does not compensate for the trouble of acquiring them. On all such subjects the state of the market is the detective test. [22] Other evidence is not wanting, if other evidence were required. A p etition was presented last year to the committee by several ex-students of the S anscrit College. The petitioners stated that they had studied in the college ten or twelve years, that they had made themselves acquainted with Hindoo literatur e and science, that they had received certificates of proficiency. And what is t he fruit of all this? "Notwithstanding such testimonials," they say, "we have bu t little prospect of bettering our condition without the kind assistance of your honourable committee, the indifference with which we are generally looked upon by our countrymen leaving no hope of encouragement and assistance from them." Th ey therefore beg that they may be recommended to the Governor-General for places under the Government-- not places of high dignity or emolument, but such as may just enable them to exist. "We want means," they say, "for a decent living, and for our progressive improvement, which, however, we cannot obtain without the a ssistance of Government, by whom we have been educated and maintained from child hood." They conclude by representing very pathetically that they are sure that i t was never the intention of Government, after behaving so liberally to them dur ing their education, to abandon them to destitution and neglect. [23] I have been used to see petitions to Government for compensation. A ll those petitions, even the most unreasonable of them, proceeded on the supposi tion that some loss had been sustained, that some wrong had been inflicted. Thes e are surely the first petitioners who ever demanded compensation for having bee n educated gratis, for having been supported by the public during twelve years, and then sent forth into the world well furnished with literature and science. T hey represent their education as an injury which gives them a claim on the Gover nment for redress, as an injury for which the stipends paid to them during the i nfliction were a very inadequate compensation. And I doubt not that they are in the right. Surely we might with advantage have saved the cost of making these pe rsons useless and miserable. Surely, men may be brought up to be burdens to the public and objects of contempt to their neighbours at a somewhat smaller charge to the State. But such is our policy. We do not even stand neuter in the contest between truth and falsehood. We are not content to leave the natives to the inf luence of their own hereditary prejudices. To the natural difficulties which obs truct the progress of sound science in the East, we add great difficulties of ou r own making. Bounties and premiums, such as ought not to be given even for the propagation of truth, we lavish on false texts and false philosophy. [24] By acting thus we create the very evil which we fear. We are making that opposition which we do not find. What we spend on the Arabic and Sanscrit Colleges is not merely a dead loss to the cause of truth. It is bounty-money pai d to raise up champions of error. It goes to form a nest not merely of helpless placehunters but of bigots prompted alike by passion and by interest to raise a cry against every useful scheme of education. If there should be any opposition among the natives to the change which I recommend, that opposition will be the e ffect of our own system. It will be headed by persons supported by our stipends and trained in our colleges. The longer we persevere in our present course, the more formidable will that opposition be. It will be every year reinforced by rec ruits whom we are paying. From the native society, left to itself, we have no di fficulties to apprehend. All the murmuring will come from that oriental interest which we have, by artificial means, called into being and nursed into strength. [25] There is yet another fact which is alone sufficient to prove that t he feeling of the native public, when left to itself, is not such as the support

ers of the old system represent it to be. The committee have thought fit to lay out above a lakh of rupees in printing Arabic and Sanscrit books. Those books fi nd no purchasers. It is very rarely that a single copy is disposed of. Twenty-th ree thousand volumes, most of them folios and quartos, fill the libraries or rat her the lumber-rooms of this body. The committee contrive to get rid of some por tion of their vast stock of oriental literature by giving books away. But they c annot give so fast as they print. About twenty thousand rupees a year are spent in adding fresh masses of waste paper to a hoard which, one should think, is alr eady sufficiently ample. During the last three years about sixty thousand rupees have been expended in this manner. The sale of Arabic and Sanscrit books during those three years has not yielded quite one thousand rupees. In the meantime, t he School Book Society is selling seven or eight thousand English volumes every year, and not only pays the expenses of printing but realizes a profit of twenty per cent. on its outlay. [30] The fact that the Hindoo law is to be learned chiefly from Sanscrit books, and the Mahometan law from Arabic books, has been much insisted on, but seems not to bear at all on the question. We are commanded by Parliament to asce rtain and digest the laws of India. The assistance of a Law Commission has been given to us for that purpose. As soon as the Code is promulgated the Shasters an d the Hedaya will be useless to a moonsiff or a Sudder Ameen. I hope and trust t hat, before the boys who are now entering at the Mudrassa and the Sanscrit Colle ge have completed their studies, this great work will be finished. It would be m anifestly absurd to educate the rising generation with a view to a state of thin gs which we mean to alter before they reach manhood. [31] But there is yet another argument which seems even more untenable. It is said that the Sanscrit and the Arabic are the languages in which the sacre d books of a hundred millions of people are written, and that they are on that a ccount entitled to peculiar encouragement. Assuredly it is the duty of the Briti sh Government in India to be not only tolerant but neutral on all religious ques tions. But to encourage the study of a literature, admitted to be of small intri nsic value, only because that literature inculcated the most serious errors on t he most important subjects, is a course hardly reconcilable with reason, with mo rality, or even with that very neutrality which ought, as we all agree, to be sa credly preserved. It is confined that a language is barren of useful knowledge. We are to teach it because it is fruitful of monstrous superstitions. We are to teach false history, false astronomy, false medicine, because we find them in co mpany with a false religion. We abstain, and I trust shall always abstain, from giving any public encouragement to those who are engaged in the work of converti ng the natives to Christianity. And while we act thus, can we reasonably or dece ntly bribe men, out of the revenues of the State, to waste their youth in learni ng how they are to purify themselves after touching an ass or what texts of the Vedas they are to repeat to expiate the crime of killing a goat? [32] It is taken for granted by the advocates of oriental learning that no native of this country can possibly attain more than a mere smattering of Eng lish. They do not attempt to prove this. But they perpetually insinuate it. They designate the education which their opponents recommend as a mere spelling-book education. They assume it as undeniable that the question is between a profound knowledge of Hindoo and Arabian literature and science on the one side, and sup erficial knowledge of the rudiments of English on the other. This is not merely an assumption, but an assumption contrary to all reason and experience. We know that foreigners of all nations do learn our language sufficiently to have access to all the most abstruse knowledge which it contains sufficiently to relish eve n the more delicate graces of our most idiomatic writers. There are in this very town natives who are quite competent to discuss political or scientific questio ns with fluency and precision in the English language. I have heard the very que stion on which I am now writing discussed by native gentlemen with a liberality and an intelligence which would do credit to any member of the Committee of Publ ic Instruction. Indeed it is unusual to find, even in the literary circles of th e Continent, any foreigner who can express himself in English with so much facil ity and correctness as we find in many Hindoos. Nobody, I suppose, will contend

that English is so difficult to a Hindoo as Greek to an Englishman. Yet an intel ligent English youth, in a much smaller number of years than our unfortunate pup ils pass at the Sanscrit College, becomes able to read, to enjoy, and even to im itate not unhappily the compositions of the best Greek authors. Less than half t he time which enables an English youth to read Herodotus and Sophocles ought to enable a Hindoo to read Hume and Milton. [33] To sum up what I have said. I think it clear that we are not fetter ed by the Act of Parliament of 1813, that we are not fettered by any pledge expr essed or implied, that we are free to employ our funds as we choose, that we oug ht to employ them in teaching what is best worth knowing, that English is better worth knowing than Sanscrit or Arabic, that the natives are desirous to be taug ht English, and are not desirous to be taught Sanscrit or Arabic, that neither a s the languages of law nor as the languages of religion have the Sanscrit and Ar abic any peculiar claim to our encouragement, that it is possible to make native s of this country thoroughly good English scholars, and that to this end our eff orts ought to be directed. [34] In one point I fully agree with the gentlemen to whose general view s I am opposed. I feel with them that it is impossible for us, with our limited means, to attempt to educate the body of the people. We must at present do our b est to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern, --a class of persons Indian in blood and colour, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect. To that class we may leave it to refin e the vernacular dialects of the country, to enrich those dialects with terms of science borrowed from the Western nomenclature, and to render them by degrees f it vehicles for conveying knowledge to the great mass of the population. [35] I would strictly respect all existing interests. I would deal even generously with all individuals who have had fair reason to expect a pecuniary p rovision. But I would strike at the root of the bad system which has hitherto be en fostered by us. I would at once stop the printing of Arabic and Sanscrit book s. I would abolish the Mudrassa and the Sanscrit College at Calcutta. Benares is the great seat of Brahminical learning; Delhi of Arabic learning. If we retain the Sanscrit College at Bonares and the Mahometan College at Delhi we do enough and much more than enough in my opinion, for the Eastern languages. If the Benar es and Delhi Colleges should be retained, I would at least recommend that no sti pends shall be given to any students who may hereafter repair thither, but that the people shall be left to make their own choice between the rival systems of e ducation without being bribed by us to learn what they have no desire to know. T he funds which would thus be placed at our disposal would enable us to give larg er encouragement to the Hindoo College at Calcutta, and establish in the princip al cities throughout the Presidencies of Fort William and Agra schools in which the English language might be well and thoroughly taught. [36] If the decision of His Lordship in Council should be such as I anti cipate, I shall enter on the performance of my duties with the greatest zeal and alacrity. If, on the other hand, it be the opinion of the Government that the p resent system ought to remain unchanged, I beg that I may be permitted to retire from the chair of the Committee. I feel that I could not be of the smallest use there. I feel also that I should be lending my countenance to what I firmly bel ieve to be a mere delusion. I believe that the present system tends not to accel erate the progress of truth but to delay the natural death of expiring errors. I conceive that we have at present no right to the respectable name of a Board of Public Instruction. We are a Board for wasting the public money, for printing b ooks which are of less value than the paper on which they are printed was while it was blank-- for giving artificial encouragement to absurd history, absurd met aphysics, absurd physics, absurd theology-- for raising up a breed of scholars w ho find their scholarship an incumbrance and blemish, who live on the public whi le they are receiving their education, and whose education is so utterly useless to them that, when they have received it, they must either starve or live on th e public all the rest of their lives. Entertaining these opinions, I am naturall y desirous to decline all share in the responsibility of a body which, unless it alters its whole mode of proceedings, I must consider, not merely as useless, b

ut as positively noxious. T[homas] B[abington] MACAULAY 2nd February 1835. I give my entire concurrence to the sentiments expressed in this Minute. W[illiam] C[avendish] BENTINCK. ________________________________________ From: Bureau of Education. Selections from Educational Records, Part I (1781-183 9). Edited by H. Sharp. Calcutta: Superintendent, Government Printing, 1920. R eprint. Delhi: National Archives of India, 1965, 107-117. ________________________________________ -- Macaulay index page -- Glossary -- fwp s main page -http://www.swaraj.org/multiversity/paranjape_english.htm Decolonizing English Studies: Attaining Swaraj? Makarand Paranjape Professor of English, Jawaharlal Nehru University I What I propose to do in this paper is to offer a shorter and revised version of a Valedictory Address that I was invited to deliver at a national seminar on Deco lonizing English Studies held at the North Gujarat University, Patan, in early 20 01. The colloquial tone of the paper may be attributed to this detail of its nat ivity. I choose this piece for the Festschrift to Professor C. D. Narasimhaiah f or some special reasons. First of all, given his own passionate pursuit of India nizing and indigenizing literary studies in India, my own humble efforts in that direction will find a consonance with his titans labour. But more importantly, I think a piece such as this could not have been written had it not been for CDN and others like him who had, in a sense, both shown the way and paved it for us. To that extent, it not only endorses his own project, but also, I hope, further s it. Before I go on to my paper, I want to record my own personal debt of grati tude to CDN. He encouraged me when I was but a fledgling in the Indian teaching machine, as he encouraged several other younger scholars. I had joined as a Fell ow in the Department of English, University of Hyderabad in February 1986. Someh ow, he heard about me and promptly invited me to a seminar at Dhvanyaloka. The s eminar, if I remember it correctly, was on the impact of T. S. Eliot on India. I was undoubtedly the youngest of the invited speakers and yet CDN treated me wit h the courtesy and graciousness that are his hallmarks. The food and the hospita lity were both memorable. I was to meet some very fine senior scholars at that s eminar, some of whom still count me among their friends. The seminar opened the door to many such visits to Dhvanyaloka as well as to other meetings with CDN. I must say that Ive been fortunate to spend time with CDN not only on his home tur f in Mysore, but also in Hyderabad, Austin (USA), and in Delhi. On all these occ asions he unfailingly treated me as one of his own, almost as a member of the fa mily. As a well wisher, elder, and guide, CDN has certainly been a benevolent an d encouraging presence in my academic life in India. I am certainly happy and ho noured to be a part of this Festschrift. II Before I proceed, let me say in a few words what I will not do in this paper. I do not wish to reiterate what several others may have said on this subject, nor do I wish to expend more verbal energy on castigating the West for its continuin g domination of the rest of the world. In saying so, I have already anticipated myself in that such a view represents a shift from my earlier perspective on how to attain a semblance of autonomy in our intellectual enterprises in India. One way to do this, I thought, could be by attempting an internal audit of my own i deas on this topic of decolonization. I want to ask myself how my own ideas had progressed or changed or grown since my book Decolonization and Development: Hin d Swaraj Revisioned (1993) was published. This paper affords me the opportunity

to make such an assessment and also to propose directions that take our project farther. III With these preliminary qualifications in mind, let me straightaway go to what is so obviously the central question before us as scholars, teachers, and members of the academy. Simply put, the question is this: how are we going to go about d ecolonizing the academy? Political independence, at least a semblance of it, we may have attained, but, clearly, the intellectual and cultural independence that accompanies it is still only a distant possibility on the horizons. I think one definite way of proceeding in that direction, a way that has been tried and kno wn to work in the past is that of recovering our own indigenous and native and t raditional knowledge systems and strengthening them. Now this work is being done in many different ways, in many different parts of India. For example, Dhvanyal oka itself, as its name suggests, is dedicated to the task of recovering and usi ng Indian traditions of criticism and poetics. Let me cite another example. Ther e is an organization called PPST, short for Patriotic Peoples Science and Techno logy. What they have been trying to do is to look at indigenous science and tech nology, some of which survives to this day and was available before the British conquest. A lot of very useful and groundbreaking research has already been done on this subject. One of the people who inspired it, who has been connected with it is, Dharampalji. I would suggest that all of us should read a book called Th e Beautiful Tree. The Beautiful Tree is, of course, a quotation taken from Mahatma Gandhi. I believe that he used it as a metaphor to describe the totality of Ind ian society. When you destroy its root, the whole of the beautiful tree perishes . Dharampaljis book is called The Beautiful Tree because he wanted to show how st rong the roots of our culture and civilization were before the British tried to destroy them. What this book does is to look at education in 18th century India from British records. Note that unfortunately our own native records are usually not available. So Dharampalji looks at colonial records and the results are ast onishing. We are used to thinking that before British rule, we were totally uned ucated. In fact, the paradox is that literacy was higher in the 18th century, in certain parts of the country, than it is today. So in this survey of several vi llages in Tamil Nadu where records were maintained, we find that the populace in general was fairly well educated, regardless of caste. Similarly, Dharampalji a nd others have looked at the state of science and technology in 18th century Ind ia, before British paramountcy or the consolidation of the Empire. The question is what was the state of India? The British would like us to believe that it was very, very backward, but their own records show that this was far from the case . Dharampaljis Collected Writings, should you be interested, are now available fr om The Other India Press in Goa. Claude Alvarez has published them. Claudes work is also very important when we talk about indigenous science and technology. He did a Ph.D. on Indian science and technology in the Netherlands. When he was res earching on this topic, he found very little material. At last, he came across o ne of Dharampaljis articles, which he read like thirsty man drinks a glass of coo l water. Claudes book was republished in 1997 by the Other India Press under the title, Decolonizing History. Let me give you just one or two examples of our ind igenous science and technology. One is the advanced metallurgical traditions of India. Nowadays we talk about the need to cut down on the high energy expended t o make steel. In India, we had a tradition of small furnaces in which we made pr etty high quality steel in villages. This skill was known and recorded in the 18 th century and still continues today. Another example is inoculation. In Bengal there were people who toured the countryside inoculating adults and children aga inst small pox. In the early 18th century, the British were learning from them. The latter made records, some of which are still available. Yet another example is plastic surgery. In Pune, for instance, barbers were expert plastic surgeons. There are detailed British records of how a person whose nose was cut off had a new nose grafted on to his face. Now, nose surgery is very sophisticated. Even today not everybody can do it. So also the case of artificial limbs, especially the world-famous Jaipur foot. These were made, and continue to be made, extremel y effectively in India. These knowledge systems-and many more-were available in

India in the 18th century and some of them survive to this day. So the point is that one way of decolonization is certainly by looking at traditional knowledge systems in whichever field they are. Whether they are in science and technology, whether they are in humanities, whether they are in social sciences, and what P rofessor C. D. Narasimhaiah has done is to help this process of recovery and ren ovation of traditional knowledge systems in our literary, aesthetic, and philoso phical traditions. Because there has been a rupture in our own mind, that is to say that the continuity is broken, a lot of such work of recovery needs to be do ne before we can feel reconnected with ourselves. For example, when we read Aris totle we hardly realize that a lot of work had to be done on the Poetics before it could be applied to texts. To make the past contemporary is the great task of the archaeologist of knowledge. Similarly, a lot of work has to be done on our ancient texts, whether its the Natyashastra or Kavyamimansa or whatever. We need to make these texts not just available, but current; we need to make them applic able to our own lives and also to the literary texts that we read. So this is on e important way of decolonizing ourselves, and this is something that Professor Narasimhaiah and Professor Kapoor, to name two examples, have been doing. IV To move ahead, we all know that decolonisation means changing the mindset, right ? But the question is whose mindset do we want to change? And how? This is when the question of agency comes in. Who is it that needs the change and who is goin g to be the agent of change? It is an extremely crucial question. If you want to change the mindset you have to change the mindset of the culture determining gr oup, the mindset of the so called elites of India. And one of the problems with the elites of India is that they are unable to recognize the work of any of thei r peers, so busy are they observing the latest developments in the West. That is where their sights are trained or, should I say, locked. Do you agree? Tell me how many people have been accorded recognition who have not been endorsed by the West? Whether its Rabindranath Tagore or Ravi Shankar, Mother Teresa or Arundhat i Roy, you know the impetus for the process of recognition in India comes from a broad. Even if you live and work in India, if you wish to be better known, not a broad, but in your own country, you need to be published by Oxford University Pr ess or Cambridge University Press or by Rutgers or Johns Hopkins or what have yo u. There are no well-established native systems of recognition and wherever thes e systems exist, they do so in a peculiar relation of subordination to those of the West. So, practically speaking, whatever you do in India is not going to be recognized. It might-will-be eventually but not now, not yet. So if you are Saty ajit Ray you will not be recognized unless you get an award at Cannes. Ravi Shan kar wont be recognized until the Beatles lionize him. Even a Mahatma Gandhi had a C.F. Andrews or a Mira Behn; even he earned his satyagrahi spurs in South Afric a before returning to India. Similarly, Swami Vivekananda had to go abroad, to t he Parliament of Religions 1893, before Indians paid any attention to him. You m ay give your life for this society and still die without a word of gratitude or kindness from your countrymen and women. Especially the intelligentsia-they will not appreciate what you have done. The people may love you for it, but the inte lligentsia, whom I call the culture-determining group, will continue to ignore y ou. You will not appear on NDTV, you will not be interviewed by Prannoy Roy. So this is the diseased mind we are dealing with. That is why it is all the more im portant, you know, to accord this recognition to one another, to read one anothe r as a process of decolonization. The first step is not to have this vertical an d unequal relationship with the West, but to have a horizontal, mutually nourish ing contact with your own peers, your own people. When speakers in seminars like this talk about subverting the canon or introducing Foucault in the curruculum, a disturbing thought cames to my mind. When we speak of subversion and dissent, we usually do so in conformity to the latest tools from the West. The problem i s that if you are first going to import the tools and the means of dissent, arent you actually consenting and compromising yourself in the first place. If your e ntire vocabulary of dissent is imported, if you import the methods of decoloniza tion from your colonizers, how can you ever be free? Because you have to use Fou cault to dissent your dissent is also in accordance with the dominant paradigm.

I dont wish to distort what my colleagues have said in order to score a point. Bu t the fact of the matter is that there are official forms of assent and there ar e official forms of dissent. Unfortunately, these two options exhaust the possib ilities of the elites cultural praxis. The crucial difference between dissenters and assenters almost evaporates as a result. So we have to be careful about rely ing too much on imported technologies of dissent. I have been talking about the elites of India. Their problem is that they utterly lack in self-confidence. The ir self-contempt is so great that they are unable to recognize each other, let a lone read each other. We have several scholars in our midst today who exemplify. At J.N.U., for instance, where I teach contemporary literary theory, nobody wan ts to read our own critics. They want to read the latest from the West. If you c alled Derrida to Delhi tomorrow you could fill a cricket stadium! But if announc ed a lecture by Ashis Nandy, you might have difficulty filling this hall. So som ething is terribly wrong with the Indian mindset. That is why it is so important a part of our decolonization process to recognize each other, read and cite eac h others work, and teach each other, none of which we do. Before I end this secti on on changing the minds of our elites, I must also emphasize and appreciate the locations from which the process of decolonisation is to progress. It is my bel ief that such a process will not happen, is not likely to begin from J.N.U. or D elhi University or the University of Hyderabad. Because these, by and large, are actually centres of neo-colonialism. We will have to go elsewhere, to the so ca lled hinterland of India for such a self-apprehension to take place. I would lik e to remember what Dr. Adesh Pal, who organized the seminar in which this paper was first presented said in the inaugural session. We are a new university, he adm itted, and that is why we can be so brash or foolish as to attempt something like this. What he was saying in effect is, look we dont have this baggage, we dont hav e these hang-ups. We are more innocent than you, we can afford to take these ris ks-venture, as it were, where angels fear to tread. But here its the opposite-her e angels have ventured where fools fear to tread. These initiatives are happenin g here because you are not the stakeholders and beneficiaries of neo-colonialism . The elites in Delhi or Bombay or Calcutta are. We who come from such centres o f privilege and authority are the elites who have been the stakeholders and bene ficiaries of colonialism and also neo-colonialism. And how will we, as beneficia ries, destroy our own power base and ourselves? Apne hi pair pe kulhari kaun mare ga? We will not do it or we will twist it around in one way or another so that ev entually it gets dilated and lost. So this job has to be done from Mysore and Bu rdwan and Pauri and Rajkot, not just from Delhi or Mumbai. V Now I want to move on to my presentation proper after this very long preamble. I am reminded of what a friend of mine told me at a meeting at Sao Paolo. This wa s a meeting of activists from all over the world. I want to relate this briefly because after all we are all activists today sitting in this room, not just acad emics. In fact it is this activism which has its own joy and josh, its own ecstas y. What my friend found very interesting about the Sao Paolo meeting was a disti nctive pattern in the presentation. He found that there were the Europeans who h ad a particular style and then there were the Latin Americans, who had another s tyle. The two discourse styles were quite different. The Europeans were extremel y analytical and theoretical. And what were the Latin American activists doing? They were not engaging in theory. They were telling stories! Stories about what? Well, they were sharing their experiences in the field and did so in a moving a nd powerful way. Telling your story, in a sense, is a more eloquent way of engag ement, of consciousness raising, than being analytical and theoretical. Because, as the feminists used to say in the 1960s, the personal is the political. What Im trying to say is that since all of us are victims of colonization, simply telli ng our stories of how we dealt with it, how we got out of it, how we tried to li berate ourselves, is in itself producing theory. We create theory as we breathe because our lives exemplify the struggle against colonialism and neocolonialism. So telling your story is an alternative discourse style, which is what I wanted to adopt today. But not at very great length, mind you. So, I want simply to te ll you my own story, to share with you the trajectory that my own academic caree

r. It is, no doubt, a predictable trajectory on the one hand, but with some inte resting variations on what might happen to a member of the Indian intelligentsia . I studied in Christian institutions, such as a lot of us did. Sometimes you ha ve to study in such institutions to understand what happened to our country and culture. My school, Bishop Cotton Boys School, Bangalore, was modeled on Rugby. T he then assistant headmaster of Rugby-you know that it was Matthew Arnolds father who was the headmaster-a man called Rev. Cotton, later became the Bishop of Cal cutta. There are two schools named after him, one in Shimla and one in Bangalore . In fact, in Bangalore, you have the Bishop Cotton Boys and the Bishop Cotton Gi rls Schools. These schools are more than a 120 years old, very old by modern Indi an standards. They were created basically for Europeans and Anglo Indians so tha t the colonies too could turn out products like those of Rugby and Winchester an d Eton and Harrow to run the British Empire. The motto of the School was the Lat in injunction, Nec dec trosum, nec sinis trosum-neither to the right nor to the left! And the school song that we had to know by heart went something like this: On straight on! On Cottonians on! Muster on the side of right, March like warri ors to the fight. See the foe and strike with might- Nec dec trosum, nec sinis t rosum. When I look back at the school song, I shudder at how colonial it was. Wh o was the foe that had to be struck down with might? It was the Indian, the Mara tha or the Sikh, or the Jat. We were the foes in that militarist 19th century co lonial song! The first Indian Principal of the school was appointed when I reach ed high school in the 1970s. Until then, the School had been run by Rev. I. L. T homas, an English bachelor who, though confined to a wheel chair, lived up to hi s designation of the Warden of the School. Most of our teachers were either of m ixed Anglo-Indian stock or of Indo-Portuguese descent. Apart from the Smiths and the Jones and the Russels, there were the Pintos and the Rosarios and the Rodri gues. I even had a P.T. teacher who publically said, Oh, these Indian names are t oo much for me so dont expect me to pronounce them! When I spoke of my nationalist leanings to an Anglo-Indian friend, he retorted, Do you make your servants sit a t the table with you? If you dont, how can you claim equality with your former ma sters? You are a subject race and will remain so in the eyes of the world. Sure e nough, he left for Australia for good. It is paradoxes such as these that in som e way trigger your mental growth. From that kind of school, the transition to Ma dras Christian College, another old institution founded by the Presbyterians, wa s almost seamless. Thence to the even more elitist St. Stephens College of Delhi, formed a hundred years back by the Cambridge missionary brotherhood. This was a College famed for producing our civil servants. As soon as you entered, you got an English nickname. Aniruddha became Andy, Mandeep became Mandy, Chakravarty b ecame Chuck, Bhaskar became Buck, and so on. It was not hard to understand the m indset of those who ruled India. Then going abroad to the USA to study to see an d experience how this thing called capitalism and imperialism and the engines of modernity really worked. It was like being Jonah in the Belly of the Beast and then coming back alive! Well, very few people do that, come back that is. And wh y would one want to come back at all? To a backward, slow, static, restricted, p oor, underdeveloped country? Well, there was certain recklessness, certain exube rance to it. Now I see that the reason that one wanted to come back was to be a part of something bigger than oneself, something exciting and challenging. It wa s to participate in this process that was taking place in India. It was nothing short of the recovery and the remaking of a whole civilization. True, the site o f this was the postcolonial nation, hamstrung by its selfish and callous elites. But this process of recovery and reassertion was undeniable and omnipresent. May you live in interesting times, they say as a sort of backhanded blessing. Well, these are interesting times. No doubt about it. Interesting because so much is h appening and so much is going unnoticed. Interesting because you matter so much and yet not at all. It is a strange and sublime narrative, this journey that all of us are a part of, one way or another. Nowadays as postmodernists, we tend to be very suspicious, especially of grand narratives. But, arguably, it is grand narratives that give a vision and a direction to all our local narratives. Natio nalism was one grand narrative which illumined and touched, transformed and tran sfigured the lives of ordinary Indians by bringing them in contact with somethin

g that was so big and so elevating that their mundane realities were changed int o something magical and meaningful. The struggle for freedom brought out the bes t in them. The spirit of sacrifice, the courage to fight, the will to resist-the average man and woman discovered these. This process of nationalism is not yet complete; Swaraj is still a distant dream. That is why I think that this great c ivilization of ours is in a process of rediscovering itself, reasserting itself, recovering itself, rejuvenating itself-and this is quite a grand narrative. It certainly has the energy to sustain us. Of course it has lots of distortions. I am not here to endorse everything thats taking place in the name of this civiliza tion. We have to be very skeptical and critical when we look at what happens in our culture. But whats happening in India can be read as a great story to be a pa rt of which has been my privilege. So I am very happy to have made the choice to come back. Without question, this country has given me everything and more than everything! To conclude this section, I have often wondered what a liberated mi nd is. Am I free? Am I decolonized completely? I dont know how absolutely liberat ed I am, but I do consider myself to be among the really free human beings, with out fear and without any sense of anxiety, without nagging doubts about who I am and without a sense of inferiority about my culture. And I also consider myself a patriotic Indian though patriotism might be an unfortunate sort of word. As y ou know, its a very patriarchal word, but still I think I mustnt refrain from usin g it. VI By telling my own story here, I have been trying to suggest that we must recogni ze how inextricably our individual and collective experiences are a part of a bi gger story, one whose exact shape or plot may still elude us. But there is this story, glimpses of which we catch during our more lucid and lucky moments. So, w e mustnt make the mistake of thinking that the process of decolonization has begu n at Patan or can be finished here. Not at all. Its 150 years old-perhaps, 175 ye ars old or even older story. Its also a long story. So many people have made thei r contribution to it. I will just give you two or three instances, just to ackno wledge the history of this process of decolonization. Later, in this section, I shall also attempt a typology of decolonization. Through these examples I would like to show the complexity and multiplicity of this process of decolonzation. L ets begin this exercise of mapping the different schools of decolonization by loo king at a book that was already mentioned earlier, Hind Swaraj, published in 190 9 by Gandhi. I think he wrote it when he was on a ship going from England to Sou th Africa. Its a very important book, which we all need to read repeatedly. Its av ailable for only Rs. 5 from its publishers, Navjeevan Trust in Ahmedabad. Hind S waraj is like a primer for the non-violent revolutionary and contains a very rad ical critique of Western or, rather, modern civilization. Its something that we n eed to read, whether we agree with it or not. Then, twenty years later, around 1 929, K. C. Bhattacharya presented a very important paper called Swaraj in Ideas. I n it he talked about the shadow mind of the Indian intelligentsia, something tha t weve all been referring to. The shadow mind reminds you of the famous dialogue in Platos Republic, where you have somebody chained in a cave and everything that person sees is distorted. Similarly, this Indian intelligentsia is afflicted wi th the shadow mind, which destroys its capacity for meaningful thinking and acti on. As it happens with such papers, it remained unpublished during his lifetime, and was posthumously offered to the reading public in the Vishwa Bharati Journa l in 1954. I referred to Bhattacharyas essay because whenever we talk about decol onizing the Indian mind we are talking also about Swaraj in ideas. As recently a s 1984 there was a very interesting discussion on Bhattacharyas paper, which was published in the Indian Philosophical Quarterly. In a special number both the or iginal article and several comments and responses were published. The writers in cluded some of the very important thinkers of contemporary India like A.K. Saran , Ramamachandra Gandhi, Ashis Nandy, and several others. After reading and study ing this history of Swaraj, I have come to understand that right from the first glimmers of imperial domination in modern India weve had patterns of resistance. It is therefore a mistake to think that either our generation or our times are u nique in this respect. Lets look at some of the available attitudes to the phenom

enon of colonialism in the 19th century, which is the cauldron of modern India. What you find is a variety of approaches and attitudes to Western colonization, to Western knowledge systems, to Western domination. You can start with Rammohan Roys minute to Lord Amherst, in 1823. You find a certain kind of insufficiency t hesis being propounded there. Rammohun says Indian civilization is lacking in ce rtain respects and is badly in need of these inputs from modern knowledge system s from the West. One aspect of Rammohuns letter that is very clear is that he doe s not have much use of traditional or Sanskrit learning. He says, whats the use o f learning vyakrana, grammar, or nyaya, logic. We might say that his attitude an d approach is very unfortunate. This is one side of the argument. But you should also look at what it is that he is asking for. Hes not asking for English educat ion, if you read his letter carefully. Hes not asking to read Milton and Shakespe are there. The latter is what was foisted upon us by Macaulay and the others. Wh at Rammohun wants is anatomy, chemistry, physical sciences. He want modern empir ical and scientific knowledge. Now, I am not sure that this unqualified enthusia sm for techno-modernity is entirely positive, but it is almost entirely understa ndable. Rammohun shows a curiosity and thirst for knowledge as a basic human rig ht. He wants the doors of the Indian mind to be opened up. Now this is not at al l a bad thing. How will we understand and discriminate if we dont know? In Rammoh un, we already see the ability of the Indian mind to engage with and evaluate mo dernity. Rammohun definitely wanted something from the West. But what he-or we-g ot was quite different. I think we need to understand this difference before we endorse or reject Rammohuns insufficiency thesis on India. Rammohan is, of course , a complex figure. There was a debate between Gandhi and Tagore on him. Gandhi with his usual bluntness said that in comparison to the saints of medieval India , Rammohan Roy is a pigmy. Tagore, who was born in a Brahmo family, was very off ended and wrote a long rejoinder. The correspondence is published in a book call ed The Mahatma and the Poet edited by Sabyasachi Bhattacharya and published by N ational Book Trust. Tagore said, and I think rightly, that you cant dismiss Rammo han Roy so easily. Lots of other people, especially Bengali intellectuals, would agree. They see Rammohun as the progenitor of modern India. That Rammohuns moder nity was based on a rejection of Indian traditions does not bother them much. It does bother me, however. And yet, his rationalism, skepticism, libertarianism, catholicity, and activism are attractive to me. Gandhi saw things differently. H is Hind Swaraj, which I mentioned earlier, contains the anti-thesis of Rammohuns insufficiency thesis. Gandhi advances what might be termed the complete self-suf ficiency thesis. He says Indian civilization is superior to modern civilization. The word he uses for civilization is the Gujarati sudharo. You will remember th at Hind Swaraj was originally written in Gujarati. Now sudharo means improvement , betterment, or progress but without the post-enlightenment or utilitarian conn otations of these words. We will understand this if we ask what is the opposite of sudharo. Its kudharo or the unrighteous path. So su-dharo, not only means impr ovement, but it also means the right path. To Gandhi, then, a great civilization is one, which points the way to virtue, which guides and enables you to become a better human being. Such a civilization emphasizes virtue as its desired objec tive, not the accumulation of material goods. This, for Gandhi, is the mark of a superior civilization. Modern civilization, by contrast, is based on pleasure a nd consumption according to Gandhi and is therefore kudharo. It will only take y ou to your own destruction. To understand Gandhis mindset, we need to remember th e great Kathopanishad, where Nachiketa confronts Yama, the Lord of Death. The la tter becomes his teacher, initiating Nachiketa into higher wisdom. Yama says the re are two paths-one is shreya and one is preya. Shreya is that which is good and pr eya is that which is pleasing. And all of us have to decide which of the two we want. But, if you really go into it deeply, what is wonderful is that shreya can also be preya. That which is virtuous is also pleasing, but not necessarily vic e-versa. That which is virtuous is not devoid of pleasure. But most people dont k now it; they think virtue is boring and uninteresting. So its very interesting to note that one reason Gandhi was opposed to modern technology in Hind Swaraj is because it adds speed, not virtue. He said that the devil loves speed, whereas v irtue moves much more slowly and steadily. So it is that with any new technology

the evil people are the first ones to get onto it. The hackers, the pornographe rs-they are the first ones to capture the information highway. Anyway, Gandhis id ea of traditional Indian civilization was that it was self-sufficient and couldnt really be improved. Some people might consider this a very limited and static v iew of human endeavour, extremely conservative. Again, Gandhi is a most complex figure. He had no use for several detestable and crippling aspects of Indian cus tom and tradition. These included untouchability and the oppression of women. He not only found no scriptural sanction for these practices, but he also went to extent of saying that if scriptural sanction were found, he would reject it. Gan dhis self-sufficiency thesis was thus tempered by a stringent social critique and by an admiration for several qualities of Western culture. Between Rammohans ins ufficiency thesis and Gandhis sufficiency thesis may be placed most important thi nkers of modern India, whether it is Bankim or Nehru, or Vivekananda or Tagore, Aurobindo or Ambedkar. Most of these thinkers advocated some kind of compromise between these two positions. And I would say that this is the broad modern intel lectual tradition to which most of us belong. In my humble opinion, both Rammohu n and Gandhi were interested in resisting colonialism. Neither was a self-servin g traitor or betrayer of Indian civilization, though several critics of either o f them assert otherwise. So they were not on opposite sides, as it might at firs t seem. If we wish to trace the best of this lineage of resistance and renewal t o present times, I would site the example of the Swadhyaya movement inspired by Pandurang Shastri Athavale. Im sure that Swadhyaya work is being done right here, even in Patan today. Based on the idea of kriti bhakti or action-oriented devot ion, hundreds of thousands of volunteer-devotees are active in over 80,000 villa ges in India, working tirelessly to build communities and improve the lives of t he most neglected sections of our society. Of course, I will also admit that the re are thinkers and activists who dont quite fit into this spectrum, who were act ually supporters of imperialism, feudalism, communalism, or totalitarianism. For instance, there was the gifted Bangla poet, Michael Madhusudan Dutta. During on e of his radical outbursts, he likened Hinduism to a rotten tree trunk, which ha s to be cut. Then there are those who believe that everything that needs to be k nown is contained in the Vedas, including the design of aeroplanes and nuclear p ower reactors. There are also those who want to turn India into a Muslim or a Hi ndu or a Communist state and are therefore against democratic processes of chang e. I shall not focus on them because they will not help us in decolonizing our m inds. There are also those, from the beginnings of colonialism to now, who want to capitulate entirely to the West and make us completely modern, entirely Weste rn people, remade in our masters image. I dont think that is the Indian way, the way of most of us. Youve read Grant Duffs statements or Macaulays letter to his sister where, I think, he said that were going to convert everybody because no Hindu wi ll have faith in his texts once they have English education. This is a constant refrain among not just the missionaries, but the British liberals as well. Willi am Wilberforce openly stated in the British parliament that one of the missions of the empire was to Christianize India and to destroy its heathen civilization. Even Max Muellers private papers reveal this hidden agenda. So you have this utte r and cynical disregard of Indian civilization on the one hand and then, on the other hand you have a person like Radhakanta Deb, again a very complex figure, w ho was actually a proponent of sati and several other orthodox customs. For instan ce, he was against the remarriage of widows and an advocate of child marriage. T oday, most of us would find these positions both untenable and unacceptable. So there are complete capitulators and complete revivalists, both of whom are outsi de the spectrum of the Indian consensus. That is why we mustnt think that we are making a new beginning. We dont have to reinvent the wheel. There is a very rich and varied tradition of decolonization that is available to us. When we examine the parameters of this process of decolonization in India, we know how we can id eologically map all the major thinkers. For instance, you will find that some ar e more spiritual, while others are more materialistic or some are more militaris tic while others are more nonviolent. Thus, you might argue that the Indian Marx ists are more materialistic, while Tagore, Aurobindo, or Ramana Maharshi are mor e spiritual. While Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose is more militaristic, Gandhi is ar

e more non-violent. Again, some, like Dayananda Saraswati or Gandhi will use the language of tradition, while Dadabhai Naoroji or Nehru will use that of moderni ty. But both are opposed to British imperialism. So you can actually conceive of this map of opinions, can you not? You, get a spectrum of decolonizing strategi es if you examine that the last 150 or 200 years of our cultural encounter with the West. I think that in our efforts towards decolonization we can derive stren gth from this spectrum. So the most important things that we should bear in mind about this process of decolonization is that there is not one and only one way of achieving it. There is no one official or right way of decolonization, just a s there is no one official way of colonization. Both colonization and decoloniza tion are complex and polyphonic processes. That is why I would like us to recons ider the whole criticism of the Orientalists that Edward Said made so fashionabl e. One might wish to disagree with the manner in which Said has made his point-a fter all, all the Orientalists werent scoundrels, rogues, or villains. A lot of w hat they did was actually very useful, and continues to be useful, to us. Simila rly, the work of Western Indologists, to this day, is of considerable value to u s. But what is important to remember is that this work is neither innocent, apol itical, or disinterested. It is informed by a large network of interests which mig ht easily be colonial or neocolonial. In other words, we need to understand that colonialism is a complex system of domination and subordination, a system in wh ich individual intentions may not override larger interests. Colonialism, then, is a system in which a set of one or more countries, cultures, races, religions, languages, dominates and exploits another. The entire productive capacity, that is, the economic, social, political, cultural, spiritual resources of the latte r are subordinated to the interests of the former. Its a kind of vampirism. Someb ody is drinking your blood, sucking the sap out of your body and soul. Ive put it a bit crudely, but there it is. In this huge system of exploitation and dominat ion, culture plays a very important role. The Orientalists, however useful their efforts might have been to us, were actually serving themselves and their empir es-this is a fact whether we like it or not. That they were also serving knowled ge is something that I will not deny, but this pursuit of knowledge was tainted by the same urge to dominate and exploit that had characterized most of the hist ory of the Wests interaction with the non-West. Even today, globalization is a st rategy to extract surpluses without physical colonialism. It is not a system to share wealth or to remove poverty. So what were up against is a gigantic economic , cultural, political network. You may actually benefit from its internal contra diction, just a bright young engineer or MBA benefits from a job in a multinatio nal corporation. But the purpose of the corporation is to extract the surplus fr om the country in which it does business and it will reward all the natives of t hat country who will help it to do so. So just as there is a linked network of c olonial and neocolonial interests, there is also a linked network of the forces of decolonization, not only in India, but all over the world. That is to say tha t the work that Professor Narasimhaiah has been doing is not isolated but connec ted with what my friends in the Tarun Bharat Sangh are doing in Alwar, for insta nce. They are rebuilding and recharging tanks and local water bodies. Another fr iend of mine, Smitu Kothari, is documenting all these efforts in a large and amb itious project called, Seeds of Hope. In other words, just as there is a discourse of colonialism, there is also a discourse of decolonization. Here, I am using t he word discourse in the Foucouldian sense, as Said himself does. Discourse as a large body of texts with a similar intent and set of protocols. In this manner, the different movements that are taking place all over India bear the seeds of the resurgence that I spoke of. We dont have to make either colonialism or decolo nization a unified, singular or a monolithic process. Lets never forget that its a plural process. There is no need to be alarmed, therefore, if we disagree with each other. Theres no cause for fear if I disagree with Professor Narasimhaiah or if someone disagrees with me. You do your decolonization in your way; let me do mine my way. There are millions of ways in which you or I can do it. But yet bo th you and I do need to make a choice. Do you want to be a part of the solution or do you want to be a part of the problem? I think this is the crucial choice t hat we have to make in English studies. Do we want to continue our subordination

and inferiority or do we want to grow out of it to a selfhood and dignity? That is why I used this opportunity to tell my own story, just to share with, you th e joy and exuberance of being a part of a larger narrative, of being part of a l arger movement which can unite us, which can give us hope, which can inspire us. This is so important because we in India tend to get so easily dispirited and d isheartened. We get so depressed and we always complain. So we do need inspirati on, we do need some hope. We do need positive things to do that will keep us ali ve and kicking, intellectually and morally. As intellectuals we need to work, no t just for our survival, or to get a degree or a job, but also get to something, which feeds our soul, our deeper selves. Its not just the feeding of our bellies , which brings us together, but also something nobler, I hope. Of course, theres nothing as noble as filling ones belly with the right kind of food and in the rig ht company! I have been arguing so far that the processes of recovery, resistanc e and selfhood are complex and multiple, just as processes of subordination are complex and multiple. VII Now in the last part of my presentation what I want to do rather quickly is to o utline five levels at which this process of decolonization can take place. Some of these, no doubt, have already been discussed. That is why I wont go into them in great detail. The first level is the level of what Professor Kapil Kapoor, in his inaugural address, called the code. This refers to the ideology, the mindse t, or the drivers of the system. Now how do we change the code? And again there are a variety of options. But the first one is that you have to try to understan d what this Indian mind with its multiplicity was all about. And to do this you have to try to understand what the traditions are. Because all discussions of co lonization and decolonization hinge on constructions of India and of the Indian past, as also on constructions of the West. For instance, if you construct India a s an area of darkness or a wounded civilization, with every imaginable form of s ocial ill-as a superstitious, benighted and unfortunate country-then you will ha ve a certain kind of ideology. Regardless of how Marx felt about the poor and di spossessed, regardless of how much he hated capitalism, he still believed that B ritish rule was necessary to get India out of its barbarian stasis, the so-calle d Asiatic mode of production. Similarly, read Hegel on India. I think he called us the land of lotus-eaters. All these people had a certain view of India and they thought of it as a very backward and woe-begone country, feudal, obscurantist, and superstitious. And the British-or whoever-would have to destroy this useless , old system before something new could be born. I, for one, would beg to differ with these images and representations of India. And we can do this not only by empirical analysis and by really good historical scholarship, but also through a change in attitude, through a change in mentality. So at the level of the code, at the level of the ideology, at the level of the mind, we will have to work ve ry hard. We also need to see what our tools are and what the possibilities of re covery might be. Because when you go deeply into what the traditions mean, then you get an entire world view, a cosmology, not just a fragment from a certain hi storical conjuncture. This may be a hierarchical worldview, a worldview which yo u may not wish to accept in its totality, but it is a worldview where everything is ordered, coherent and meaningful. This sense of order comes from several sou rces. The ashramas, for example. From childhood to death theres a certain pattern which gives cohesion to your life. Modern life, on the other hand, is without c ohesion, without order, without a sense of purpose and, ultimately, despite all its pleasures and blandishments, without a sense of satisfaction We have to unde rstand all this. Hence the code, ideology, mind-level one. But its not enough jus t to stay with this. We also have to look at the institutions. If you want to de colonize, you need appropriate institutions. Everyone knows that our institution s are in a very bad shape. This is what we have learnt from so many presentation s yesterday. We are in desperate need for institutional reform. Our university s ystems, for instance, have to be revamped. Professor Jasbir Jain talked about th is. We have to change these structures because they are so stultified, and becau se decolonization wont take place just through an exchange of words like this. Li kewise, we need journals, we need books, we need libraries. But look at the stat

e of our libraries. The tallest building in J.N.U. is the library building. It i s not only the tallest building but also built on a plateau, which makes it look er taller. But if you go there, you feel like weeping. Books are scattered every where, every thing is in a mess, you cant find anything, windows panes are broken ; what is worse, books have been stolen, torn, ripped off, defaced, and misplace d. We have become a jahiliya society of people who dont read. Others used to burn libraries; we dont burn libraries, we bury them alive, we turn them into garbage dumps or graveyards. Who can we blame for this? The British, who colonized us? Fifty years after independence, in the name of postcolonialism, can we blame the m? Or the Americans? The fact is that we cant blame anybody now but ourselves. On ce you start decolonizing you have to take responsibility. How long can you go o n blaming others? The politics of blame will not suffice, revenge histories will not satisfy. That is why institution-building is so important. Let me give you a small anecdote here. Youll all agree that we need access to information. I was lucky to use e-mail and the internet here. But when I asked a friend here who is in this very Department whether he used this facility, he told me hum ko to allo wed nahin hai. You see this attitude everywhere-allowed nahin hai. Everything is under lock and key. We need to work so hard just to open up things so that peopl e can use them to grow and flourish. Therefore level two-institutions. Then leve l three-content. Take the case of our English syllabus. Its so obvious that we ha ve to change it. That this has already happened in several universities is heart ening. We need to ask what it is that we are actually teaching, and why. Here wev e been changing our syllabus, including new texts, but is anybody reading Bhartr ihari? Yes there are some people, as we know only too well, but so few of them. That is why I said that we need to create a little tool kit for decolonizing the Indian mind. We can put in Ngugi Wa Thiongo in it; in fact he uses this very phr ase decolonizing the mind in his essay on the need to write in an African language . We can put Franz Fanon in this kit. But we also need to put Gandhi in it. As m y friend Professor Satendra Nandan of the Australian National University says, h ow is it that the works of the man who led the largest struggle against colonial ism in human history are excluded from every reader on postcolonialism? Or we mi ght put in Sri Aurobindos Foundations of Indian Culture in our kit. When you read texts like these, you feel empowered. You feel that you have a surer grip, a fi rmer handle on this business of colonialism. This process needs to be effected i n all our areas and disciplines of study. The content has to be changed constant ly in keeping with our goals and needs. We simply cant afford the sort of syllabi , which remain static for, literally, half a century at a time, as is still the case in India. Now to the fourth level. It is what I would call the medium. And Im sorry to repeat this but just as the Governor said this morning, you cannot co nstantly keep talking about decolonization only in English. Ho nahin sakta, ho n ahin payega. Yadi ungreziat ko hatana hai to sirf ungerzi mein is ungreziat ko k aise hataenge? Ungreziat ko hatana hai to ungrezi ki bhi jo jageh hai usko badal na padega, uski bhi reordering honi padegi. Now again I wouldnt like to go so far as to suggest ki ungerzi ko hi hata do. Even Gandhi didnt say that. Magar uska s thanantaran karna bahut zarori hai. You will remember that we got very interesti ng views on this topic in this very seminar. We had a speker here who almost sai d, lets be recolonized. Let have more British literature. Weve benefited so much from the British, from the English language, from our contact with the West, so lets get more of this. Havent we heard such views before, so many times, over the last 150 years? The providential intervention of the West into our sad and wretc hed country-havent we sung hosannas of praise for all that they did for us? The r ailways that they built, the modern institutions that they gave us, and above al l, this wonderful language, which is today the worlds number one medium of commun ication. Surely we have so much to be grateful for. Lets forget about how many pe ople died of famine and starvation, how an entire civilization was beggared, bea ten into submission, and oppressed. After her talk I asked her, why is it that y ou cant conceive of a world without English domination? If somebody else had colo nized us would you still be speaking English? Or what if nobody had colonized yo u? Why cant you even conceive of such a situation? Why is it that it is almost im possible even to conceptualize an uncolonized India? She said, English were bett

er than the Japs or the Germans. But, what if the English hadnt been there--would nt that have been even better? English has no monopoly over knowledge or culture or science and technology. The Russians make do, the Japanese, Chinese, French, Spanish, and so on, all do with little or no English. Sure, lets use English as a resource to earn or to gain knowledge, but we mustnt think that we cant survive w ithout it. If the position of English has to be changed, then what is the best w ay to do this? Professor Krishnaswamy talked about translation. He said that all communication is interpretation. Therefore translation is so important. I agree with him. We must read translated texts, even if we do so in English. We know t hat English monolingualism in India is a curse. Imagine being an Indian and know ing no other language but English! How impoverished culturally such a person wou ld be, dont you think? This is actually happening in our cities today. And its goi ng to be disastrous because language is a system of culture, not merely a system of communication. A culture is deeply embedded in a language. The citizens of I srael knew this; thats why they switched to modern Hebrew, though it was no ones m other tongue. So we need bilingualism and multilingualism. At the same time, we need to remember that there are different kinds of multilingualisms. Do we want an English dominated multilingualism? Or do you want a Hindi dominated multiling ualism? Or do you want a pluralistic multilingualism in which no single language dominates all over India? I would favour the latter kind. I also agree with the proposition that to decolonize you need English. But I would not agree that you can decolonise only through English. If we want Swaraj, we need also to look be yond English. So that was level four--the medium. Now, finally, let me come to t he idea of agency that Ive already mentioned. That is the fifth level. Whos going to do this job of decolonizing for us? Are you going to look to the state? Of co urse, the state is important. I would never want to dismiss it. But are we going to wait for the state to take the initiative? Shouldnt the independent Indian st ate have accomplished this way back? Why didnt it? Why couldnt it? Or, alternative ly, will the initiative have to come from civil society? And if it is from the c ivil society, what do we mean by that phrase? Who constitutes the civil society? Will the elites have to do it? Or will the masses have to do it? There are no e asy answers to this. But I would say that ultimately the responsibility rests wi th the more privileged people, with us. How can we expect the disenfranchised pr oletariat to take the lead? All their energies are consumed by the struggle to s urvive. That is why we have to plant a traitor in every family. I am merely reph rasing what Gandhi said. You have to be traitorous not to the state but to the d ominant culture of the elites, a culture which is self-serving, self-seeking, an d exploitative. That is the culture that breeds inferiority in us. That is the c ulture that makes us think that we are second best or third best in the world sy stem. Let me give you an example of canon formation in contemporary Indian Engli sh literature. A book receives attention only when its accepted by a foreign publ isher; its the advance that first generates the hype. Then, when it is published, the first reviews come from abroad. Whether it is Arundhati Roy or Manil Suri, the Indian press starts by genuflecting to the Anglo-American reviews. India Tod ay quotes John Updike on Arundhati Roy. This is what we are. The Head of Departm ent of Gao University once made the mistake of inviting my friend, Claude Alvare z, to give a lecture at a Refresher Course for English lecturers. Claude began b y saying, You buggers have less self-respect than the bloody coolies at the railw ay station. After the initial hush, there was the predictable pandemonium. Claude was booed out; he told me that he was most happy to leave the room full of frau ds and phonies. Unfortunately, weve become a society, a culture of glamourphiliac s. This is a neologism, of course, but the disease is as serious culturally as h emophilia. Such a culture is sure to bleed to death. People go to listen to the Dalai Lama not because he has something to say but because he is so glamorous, b ecause Richard Gere and Steven Seagal are his followers. Look at the Times of In dia or any major newspaper. All the supplements are full of pictures of beautifu l people whore partying. Why do you and I need to know about them? What does it m atter which party who goes to? The result of all this glamourmania is the murder of somebody like Jessica Lal. All because someone who has money in his pocket a nd a gun says, I want to gate crash into this culture of the rich and famous. So

this is so important-this question of agency. I think that this is where we hav e to decide that we have to decolonize ourselves first at the individual level a nd then, or simultaneously, we have to work for this collectively too. So we hav e to accept this whole idea of agency; we have to own up to our responsibility b oth towards this country and its people. VIII In conclusion what I want to say is that as we move forward on this path, we rea lize that were forced back on our own resources. Its a lonely road and a seemingly futile struggle. Why bother? Well, why not? Do we and the others like us really have a choice? Havent we been marked for life, condemned to plow a lonely furrow ? You have to be prepared to walk alone if you wish to decolonize yourself. But not forever. Im doing some loud thinking here because after I returned from the U S I experienced a terrible kind of enclosure if not isolation. Much of my work w as pushed back by many years. I had little access to books and computers. I coul dnt afford to travel very much. And yet, Ive survived, if not thrived. This was po ssible because of what Id learned as a graduate student in the U.S. What a countr y like the U.S. does for you is you is to force you back into your essential sel f. Its an ideal place to discover India. The U.S., as Whitman said so eloquently, is actually a passage to India. Of course, it is also a passage to more than In dia-it would never do to belittle the potential that it possesses. What the US g ives you is the resources to learn and discover whatever you wish to. I had acce ss to the most wonderful library where I could read whatever I liked. This is al so a very dangerous situation, isnt it? You have access to nearly all the knowled ge in the world and you are forced back onto your own resources. You have to ask yourself, who am I really? When I met Professor T.G. Vaidyanathan for the first time he said something quite interesting: What has happened to you, Makarand, is that the West has worked like sieve and only the most essential things have rem ained. Youve eliminated from your life all the inessentials. That must make you s o threatening to so many people who live at the surface of their lives. When you are in India you are still listening to rock music and youre doing all sorts of t hings because you want to be like anybody else. And then you go there and it for ces you to confront yourself in a very deep way and then you start eliminating, shedding things because life is not unlimited. And you cherish only what is real ly valuable. Am I going to listen to Madonna or am I going to listen to Dhrupad? And the answer is that of course I want to listen to something that will uplift my soul. No doubt, I can listen to both. But you still have a sense of the diff erence between the two. When I came back to India, I thought I was through with the West. I had seen what it was and that we didnt really need it. I thought we h ad everything that we needed to pull ourselves up entirely by ourselves, by our own efforts. But now, after years of living and working here, I dont think we can , and I am very sorry to say this. Its not that we dont have the brains or the res ources, but because we dont have the self-respect or the courage to honour oursel ves. The damage is so deep that the backbone is broken and the psyche deeply wou nded. That is why we will always need some form of collaboration and help from t hem. And I am happy to say that in the West also there are people who are actual ly happy to oblige. Its almost as if they need us to need them. Moreover, they ha ve grown tired of the dominant system. They too want a change and they look for help from us. So there are possibilities of co-operation and of doing things tog ether. We need them because I dont think that we have the confidence to do it all by ourselves; they need us because they need to help others in order to help th emselves. That is why, at the end of my presentation, I would like to acknowledg e this shift in my own position on decolonization. From a sort of hard-line postur e, I think I would now like to adopt a more compassionate, softer stance. So I w ould say that we have to get out of the older paradigms of the colonized and the colonizers, not in the manner in which Homi Bhabha does-which is to collapse di fferences-but to retain differences and yet to seek ways and means of co-operati on. That we have to do it partly with the help of the West, partly with the help of modern technology, shouldnt frighten or dishearten us. Let us have the grace to accept it. We have to rethink what we mean by Swadeshi, so that we can use th e resources of the contemporary world. This is how, together, we have to rebuild

this nation and this civilization. Native elites alone are incapable of doing t his. If we talk about cultural choices and alternatives, we must produce alterna te texts, alternate traditions. We have to show results, not just talk, talk, an d talk. This is what I tell my friends even in the alternative sector: you cant j ust tell people consume less, be less wasteful, kamre ke bahar hi mat jao, plane mein safar mut karo. You cant go around telling people not to use aeroplanes bec ause it adds to the global warming! That cannot be the solution. Temporarily, we might be persuaded to abstain or down size, but that cant be the permanent condi tion of the human race. That is why, the alternative must exceed the dominant sy stem. It should be better because human beings want more freedom, more power. Th ey dont want to be told dont move around, dont read, close your eyes, close your mi nd. That is not the solution. Decolonization doesnt mean make do with little, dont explore, dont venture, be rigid, be confined, close your mind, tala bandh! It do esnt mean apne aap ko lock kar diya jaye. You have to do better than that. That i s why the challenge is greater and that is why I think we need to have original and multiple notions of what we mean by decolonization. This innovation must inc lude an interrogation of even the term decolonization itself. Remember, after al l, that decolonization is a negative term: de + colonization. That is why the wo rd I have used constantly in my book, and which Ive taken of course from Gandhi, is swaraj. Swaraj is very important because it indicates a positive state, not a negative one. It doesnt depend on its opposite for its definition. It is also a term which is culturally grounded, ultimately going back to the Upanishads-apnoti swarajyam-(Brihadaranyaka Upanishad). It means not just personal liberation but collective amelioration also. So we need a bridge between the two. Each one of u s should grow individually as a human being to higher and higher levels of aware ness and freedom and power and vitality, rather than growing weak and helpless a nd disheartened. At the same time, our individual growth should contribute to th e growth of the collective as well. That is the kind of link between the individ ual and the collective, swa and sarva, swaraj and sarvodaya that I have been adv ocating. Thank you very much. Works Cited Alvarez, Claude. Decolonizing History: Technology and Culture in Ind ia, China and the West: 1500 to the Present Day. Goa: The Other India Press, 199 7. Bhattacharya, K. C. Swaraj in Ideas. 1954; rpt. in Indian Philosophical Quarterly. Special Issue on Swaraj in Ideas. 11. 4( October 1984): 383-393. Dharampal. Col lected Writings. 5 vols. Goa: The Other India Press, 2000. Gandhi, M. K. Hind Swaraj or Indian Home Rule. Ahmedabad: Navajivan,1984. Paranajape, Makarand. Decolonization and Development: Hind Swaraj Revisioned. Ne w Delhi: Sage Publications, 1993. Roy, Raja Rammohun. Address to Lord Amherst 11 December 1823. Rpt. In Tradition, M odernity & Svaraj. 1.1 (1990): 96-98. http://www.languageinindia.com/may2003/annika.html LANGUAGE IN INDIA Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow Volume 3 : 5 May 2003 Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D. Associate Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D. Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D. B. A. Sharada, Ph.D. ENGLISH IN INDIA Loyalty and Attitudes Annika Hohenthal ________________________________________ CONTENTS Chapter 1 Introduction Chapter 2 Spread of English Around the World

Chapter 3 A Historical Overview: English Travels to India Chapter 4 Multilingualism in India Chapter 5 English In India -Who Speaks English To Whom And When? Chapter 6 Measuring Language Attitudes Chapter 7 Speech Repertoires in Multilingual Settings Chapter 8 Methodology Chapter 9 Attitudes towards the Use of English in India Chapter 10 Conclusion References Appendices *** *** *** http://www.arvindguptatoys.com/arvindgupta/hindswaraj.pdf Gandhi, Mohandas K. Indian Home Rule or Hind Swaraj. Navajivan: Ahmedabad, 1938. Several English writers refuse to call that civilization which passes under that name. Many books have been written upon that subject. Societies have been forme d to cure the nation of the evils of civilization. A great English writer has wr itten a work called Civilization: Its Cause and Cure. Therein he has called it a disease. READER: Why do we not know this generally? EDITOR: The answer is very simple. We rarely find people arguing against themsel ves. Those who are intoxicated by modern civilization are not likely to write against it. Their care will be to find out facts and arguments in support of it and this they do uncons ciously, believing it to be true. A man whilst he is dreaming, believes in his d ream; he is undeceived only when he is awakened from his sleep. A man labouring under the bane of civilization is like a dreaming man. What we usually read are the works of defenders of modern civilization, which undoubtedly claims among it s votaries very brilliant and even some very good men. Their writings hypnotize us. And so, one by one, we are drawn into the vortex. READER: This seems to be very plausible. Now will you tell me something of what you have read and thought of this civilization? EDITOR: Let us first consider what state of things is described by the word civil ization. Its true test lies in the fact that people living in it make bodily welfare the object of life. We will take some examples. The people of Europe today live in better-built houses than they did a hundred years ago. This is considered an emblem of civilization, and this is a lso a matter to promote bodily happiness. Formerly, they wore skins, and used spears as their we apons. Now, they wear long trousers, and, for embelishing their bodies, they wea r a variety of clothing, and, instead of spears, they carry with them revolvers containing five or more chambers. If people of a certain country, who have hithe rto not been in the habit of wearing much clothing, boots, etc., adopt European

clothing, they are supposed to have become civilized out of savagery. Formerly, in Europe, people ploughed their lands mainly by manual labour. Now, one man can plough a vast tract by means of steam engines and can thus amass great wealth. This is called a sign of civilization. Formerly, only a few men wrote valuable b ooks. Now, anybody writes and prints anything he likes and poisons peoples minds. Formerly, men travelled in waggons. Now, they fly through the air in trains at the rate of four hundred and more miles per day. This is considered the height o f civilization. It has been stated that, as men progress, they shall be able to travel in airship and reach any part of the world in a few hours. Men will not n eed the use of their 29 HIND SWARAJ OR INDIAN HOME RULE hands and feet. They will press a button, and they will have their clothing by t heir side. They will press another button, and they will have their newspaper. A third, and a mo tor-car will be in waiting for them. They will have a variety of delicately dish ed up food. Everything will be done by machinery. Formerly, when people wanted t o fight with one another, they measured between them their bodily strength; now it is possible to take away thousands of lives by one man working behind a gun f rom a hill. This is civilization. Formerly, men worked in the open air only as m uch as they liked. Now thousands of workmen meet together and for the sake of ma intenance work in factories or mines. Their condition is worse than that of beas ts. They are obliged to work, at the risk of their lives, at most dangerous occu pations, for the sake of millionaires. Formerly, men were made slaves under phys ical compulsion. Now they are enslaved by temptation of money and of the luxurie s that money can buy. There are now diseases of which people never dreamt before , and an army of doctors is engaged in finding out their cures, and so hospitals have increased. This is a test of civilization. Formerly, special messengers wer e required and much expense was incurred in order to send letters; today, anyone can abuse his fellow by means of a letter for one penny. True, at the same cost, one can send ones thanks also. Formerly, people had two or three meals consisting of home-made bread and vegetables; now, they require something to eat every two hours so that they have hardly leisure for anything e lse. What more need I say? All this you can ascertain from several authoritative books. There a re all true tests of civilization. And if anyone speaks to the contrary, know that he is ignorant. This civilization takes note neither of morality nor of religion. Its votaries calmly state that t heir business is not to teach religion. Some even consider it to be a superstitious growth. Others pu t on the cloak of religion, and prate about morality. But, after twenty years experience, I have come to the conclusion that immorality is often taught in the name of morality. Even a child can understand that in all I have described above there can be no inducement to morality. Civil ization seeks to increase bodily comforts, and it fails miserably even in doing so. This civilization is irreligion, and it has taken such a hold on the people in E urope who are in it appear to be half mad. They lack real physical strength or courage. They keep up their energy by intoxication. They can hardly be happy in solitude. Women, who should be the queens of

households, wander in the streets or they slave away in factories. For the sake of a pittance, half a million women in England alone are labouring under trying circumstances in facto ries or similar institutions. This awful fact is one of the causes of the daily growing suffrage tte movement. This civilization is such that one has only to be patient and it will be self-de stroyed. I cannot give you an adequate conception of it. It is eating into the vitals of the English nation. It must be shunned. Parliaments are really emblems of sla very. If you will sufficiently think over this, you will entertain the same opinion and cease to b lame the English. They rather deserve our sympathy. They are a shrewd nation and I therefore belie ve that they will cast off the evil. They are enterprising and industrious and their mode of thought is not inherently immoral. Neither are they bad at heart. I therefore respect them. Civ ilization is not an incurable disease, but it should never be forgotten that the English people are at present afflicted by it. 30

Works Cited Al-Azm, Sadik J. The Satanic Verses Post Festum: The Global, The Local, The Liter ary. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East. vol. XX Nos. 1&2 (2000). n.d. cssaame.com. Web. 15 March 2011. Black, Shameem. Is There a Global Literature? The European Business Review. n.d. Web. 15 March 2011. Boneza, Rais Neza. Ghettoization or Globalization Of African Literature. author-me .com . 2006. Web. 15 March 2011. Chinnammai, S. Effects of Globalisation on Education and Culture University of Mad ras.. www.openpraxis.com. . n.d. Web. PDF file. Jay , Paul. Beyond Discipline? Globalization and the Future of English. PMLA, Vol. 116, No. 1, Special Topic: Globalizing Literary Studies (Jan., 2001), pp. 32- 4 7 MLA. 31 August 2009. Web. 15 March 2011 Vesajoki, F. The Effects of Globalization on Culture: A Study of the Experiences of Globalization among Finnish Travellers. 16 December 2002. University of Jyvsky l, Department of Ethnology. Web. 15 March 2011. Vriezen, Samuel. Globalization in Literature - Vierde Column Voor Vooys. Vooys. is sue 27-4, December 2009. Web. 15 March 2011. Park, Tim. Tim Park On The Globalization Of Literature. Underbelly-buce.blogspot. com. 09 February 2010. Web. 15 March 2011. Paranjape, Makarand. Decolonizing English Studies: Attaining Swaraj? swaraj.org. n .d. Web. 27 December 2011. Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin. Key Concepts in Post-Colonial Studies. Routledge: London, 1998. Print. Kachru, Braj B. Asian Englishes Beyond The Canon.Hong Kong University Press: Hon g Kong, 2005. Print. Kachru, Yamuna and Cecil L. Nelson. World Englishes in Asian Contexts. Hong Kong University Press: Hong Kong, 2006. Print.

Hohenthal, Annika. English in India: Loyalty and Attitudes. Language in India. Vo lume 3 : 5 May 2003. Ed. M. S. Thirumalai. Web. 25 December 2011. http://www.arvindguptatoys.com/arvindgupta/hindswaraj.pdf Gandhi, Mohandas K. Indian Home Rule or Hind Swaraj. Navajivan: Ahmedabad, 1938. Several English writers refuse to call that civilization which passes under that name. Many books have been written upon that subject. Societies have been formed to cure the nation of the evils of civilization. A great English writer has written a work called Civilization: Its Cause and Cure. Therein he has called it a disease. READER: Why do we not know this generally? EDITOR: The answer is very simple. We rarely find people arguing against themselves. Those who are intoxicated by modern civilization are not likely to write against it. Their care will be to find out facts and arguments in support of it and this they do unconsciously, believing it to be true. A man whilst he is dreaming, believes in his dream; he is undeceived only when he is awakened from his sleep. A man labouring under the bane of civilization is like a dreaming man. What we usually read are the works of defenders of modern civilization, which undoubtedly claims among its votaries very brilliant and even some very good men. Their writings hypnotize us. And so, one by one, we are drawn into the vortex. READER: This seems to be very plausible. Now will you tell me something of what you have read and thought of this civilization? EDITOR: Let us first consider what state of things is described by the word civilization. Its true test lies in the fact that people living in it make bodily welfare the object of life. We will take some examples. The people of Europe today live in better-built houses than they did a hundred years ago. This is considered an emblem of civilization, and this is also a matter to promote bodily happiness. Formerly, they wore skins, and used spears as their weapons. Now, they wear long trousers, and, for embelishing their bodies, they wear a variety of clothing, and, instead of spears, they carry with them revolve rs containing five or more chambers. If people of a certain country, who have hitherto not been in the habit of wearing much clothing, boots, etc., adopt European clothing, they are supposed to have become civilized out of savagery. Formerly, in Europe, people ploughed their lands mainly by manual labour. Now, o ne man can plough a vast tract by means of steam engines and can thus amass great wealth. This is called a sign of civilization. Formerly, only a few men wrote valuable books. Now, anybody writes and prints anything he likes and poisons peoples minds. Formerly, men travelled in waggons. Now, they fly through the air in trains at the rate of four hundred and more miles per day. This is considered the height of civilization. It has been stated that, as men progress, they shall

be able to travel in airship and reach any part of the world in a few hours. Men will not need the use of their 29 HIND SWARAJ OR INDIAN HOME RULE hands and feet. They will press a button, and they will have their clothing by their side. They will press another button, and they will have their newspaper. A third, and a motor-car will be in waiting for them. They will have a variety of delicately dished up food. Everything will be done by machinery. Formerly, when people want ed to fight with one another, they measured between them their bodily strength; now it is possible to take away thousands of lives by one man working behind a gun from a hill. This is civilization. Formerly, men worked in the open air only as much as they liked. Now thousands of workmen meet together and for the sake of maintenance work in factories or mines. Their condition is worse than that of beasts. They are obliged to work, at the risk of their lives, at most dangerous occupations, for the sake of millionaires. Formerly, men were made slaves under physical compulsion. Now they are enslaved by temptation of money and of the luxuries that money can buy. There are now diseases of which people never dreamt before, and an army of doctors is engaged in finding out their cures, and so hospitals have increased. This is a test of civilization. Formerly, special messengers wer e required and much expense was incurred in order to send letters; today, anyone can abuse his fellow by means of a letter for one penny. True, at the same cost, one can send ones thanks also. Formerly, people had two or three meals consisting of home-made bread and vegetables; now, they require something to eat every two hours so that they have hardly leisure for anything else. What more need I say? All this you can ascertain from several authoritative books. There a re all true tests of civilization. And if anyone speaks to the contrary, know that he is ignorant. This civilization takes note neither of morality nor of religion. Its votaries calmly state that their business is not to teach religion. Some even consider it to be a superstitious growth. Others pu t on the cloak of religion, and prate about morality. But, after twenty years experience, I have come to the conclusion that immorality is often taught in the name of morality. Even a child can understand that in all I have described above there can be no inducement to morality. Civilization seeks to increase bodily comforts, and it fails miserably even in doing so. This civilization is irreligion, and it has taken such a hold on the people in

Europe who are in it appear to be half mad. They lack real physical strength or courage. They keep up their energy by intoxication. They can hardly be happy in solitude. Women, who should be the queens of households, wander in the streets or they slave away in factories. For the sake of a pittance, half a million women in England alone are labouring under trying circumstances in factories or similar institutions. This awful fact is one of the causes of the daily growing suffragette movement. This civilization is such that one has only to be patient and it will be selfdestroyed. According to the teaching of Mahommed this would be considered a Satanic Civilization. Hinduism calls it the Black Age. I cannot give you an adequate conception of it. It is eating into the vitals of the English nation. It must be shunned. Parliaments are really emblems of slavery. If you will sufficiently think over this, you will entertain the same opinion and cease to blame the English. They rather deserve our sympathy. They are a shrewd nation and I therefore belie ve that they will cast off the evil. They are enterprising and industrious and their mode of thought is not inherently immoral. Neither are they bad at heart. I therefore respect them. Civilization is not an incurable disease, but it should never be forgotten that the English people are at present afflicted by it. 30