By Dr. Ram Sharma

There are many languages in India. There recorded a total of 1652 mother tongues in the census of 1971. This multi-lingual situation is the product of India’s long history and the basic structure of the Indian languages is thus made up of Aryan and Dravidian families. Aryans form the biggest of the language groups in India, accounting for 75 percent of the entire population. The important languages for this group are Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Marathi, Oriya, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Kashmiri, Sindhi and Urdu. The Dravidian family of languages account for 25 percent of the entire population. The important languages in this group are Telugu, Tamil, Kannada and Malayalam. English came to India with the English.

Since the English had come here for the purpose of trade, in the beginning, they focused their attention only on trade and did not bother to encourage the teaching of English, but with them had come some missionaries who started schools where English was taught as one of the subjects. The reason why the English initially did not think of encouraging the teaching of English was that they feared that they might lose their colonies in India as they did in America. This fear was expressed by Randle Jackson, a member of the House of Commons, Who said “We lost our colonies in America by imparting our education there, we need not do so in India too.” However, after the battle of Plassey in 1757, the situation began to change. The traders found themselves in the position of rulers. In order to have full command over the people whom they had begun to govern they decide to open educational institutions. Two such institutions were Calcutta Madorssa started in 1781 and Benares Sanskrit College founded in 1791. They were the institutions of classical learning, but they also made a provision for the teaching of English. In this way, the teaching of English in India was begun by the British rulers.

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The importance of English went on increasing with the passage of time. A great demand for the spread of English education begun to be raised from the different parts of the country. To meet this demand Raja Ram Mohan Roy established the Hindu College in 1817. Soon, thereafter the missionaries opened a number of schools and colleges in which the teaching of English was given utmost importance. In 1835, Macaulay, in his famous minute, strongly recommend that the spread of western learning could only be possible through the medium of English language. Macaulay argued that, “English is better worth knowing than Sanskrit and Arabic” That “the natives are desirous to be taught English” and that “it is possible to make natives of this country thorough good English scholars”. Macaulay’s recommendation gave an impetus to the study of English as a result of which the study of the regional languages got marginalized.

By 1837, the missionaries had begun to provide a significant part of the facilities for teaching English. Not very long thereafter, English became the language of administration and judiciary in India even as the vernaculars continued to be used in several instances. Almost simultaneously subordinate level positions in the judicial and administrative institutions were thrown open to Indians by a government resolution. In 1853, the year when the Company’s charter was renewed once more, under the pressure of government personnel to manage the widening domain of its, “India activities” the company decided to open up its highest Civil Service appointments to Indians by allowing them to appear for a competitive examination set up for this purpose. As a follow up of the Wood’s Despatch of 1854, the first formalised and formulated education policy statement of the East India Company three universities were established in 1857 at Calcutta, Bombay and Madras respectively. However, the Indian Education Commission (1882) expressed its dissatisfaction at the exclusive use of English as the medium of education. The Indian Universities Commission (1902) also raised its voice against the neglect of regional languages. The Calcutta University Commission (1917-1919) tried to strike a balance by observing that, “The educated classes in the various provinces of India will wish to be bilingual, to use their mother tongue for those dear and intimate things which form part of life and to use English as a means of inter-communication necessary for the maintenance of the unity of India, and of touch with other countries.” Favouring the idea of encouraging the teaching of regional languages in scholars and colleges the commission recommended, “We are emphatically of the opinion that there is something unsound in a system of education which leaves a young man, at the conclusion of his course, unable to speak or write his own mother tongue fluently and correctly. It is thus beyond controversy that a systematic effort must henceforth be made to promote the serious study of vernaculars in secondary schools, intermediates colleges and in the university.” As a result of this recommendation, the medium of English was restricted only to the colleges and universities from 1920 onwards throughout the country.

India got independence in 1947. Commissions and Committees and the leaders of public opinion took a close at the value of English and tried to strike a balance between gains and losses. People like C. Rajagopalachari favoured the continuance of English language, but there were persons who, under the influence of nationalism, advocated that English should go with the English as it had come with them. They argued that English being a foreign language was responsible for the waste of student’s time and energy. They declared that students could learn and express their ideas more easily in their mother tongue. Consequently, it was decided that regional languages should be developed and Hindi should replace English. The University Education Commission (1949) suggested, among other things, that English be replaced, as easily as practicable, by an Indian language as the medium of instruction of higher education. The constitution of India, adopted in 1950 provided for English to continue as the official language of the country for a period of fifteen years to be replaced by Hindi at the end of that period. Parliament later decided to allow English to continue as the associate official language of the Union till such time as Hindi began to be used for administrative purpose all over the country. During the fifties the three language formula was formulated. It gives due importance to the regional languages and attempts to promote national integration and national identity through a national link language that serves as a “Window of the World”.

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In 1964 an Education Commission was set up to resolve the question of medium. The commission discussed this question and proposed that mother tongue should be used upto the highest level of instruction, but English should be taught both as a subject and as a library language at higher levels. As a result of the implementation of this proposal, mother tongue got precedence over English language and a state of stability has prevailed for two decades afterwards. The trend during the part two decades has however remarkably titled in favour of English. with the result that English medium schools have cropped up like mushrooms in urban areas with under-qualified teachers. Since the students of such schools do not find exposure to mother tongue, their knowledge of mother tongue is very poor. They are being subjected to alienation from Indian culture and their cognitive development is also being blocked. English language teaching deserves an immense weight in the present age of globalization, but equal attention has to be paid to a multi-dimensional development of children so that they may excel in all spheres of life.

Works-Cited

1. P.D. Pathak – The Teaching of English in India.
2. R.N. Ghosh-Indian Bilingualism and the teaching of English CIEFL, Hyderabad.
3. R.P. Bhatnagar – Decolonizing English Teaching in India.
4. Jayshree Mohanraj-Spoken Conversational English, CIEFL, Hyderabad.

About the Author

DR. RAM SHARMA IS WORKING AS A SENIOR LECTURER IN ENGLISH IN JANTA VEDIC COLLEGE, BARAUT, BAGHPAT, U.P. ,INDIA