My mother could not speak English. This proved to be a hurdle because in spite of being qualified, creative and hardworking, the absence of posh English-speaking skills came in her way. She hoped her children wouldn’t face the same struggle. Yet, once, she got so bogged down trying to teach me in a language that she couldn’t comprehend, that she decided to take me out of my English-medium school and enroll me in a regional school instead.
My astute grandmother, a primary school teacher herself, vetoed the decision. She reasoned that on growing up, I might accuse mother of bias, of not giving me the same opportunities as were given to my elder sister. Sharing such a personal memory while discussing the current medium of instruction (MoI) issue may seem out of place. However, it is essential because I believe that the question of language is not political, religious, or even educational per say. Choice of language has a far more personal root, one that has to do with aspirations, communication and love.
My mother’s discomfort at being sidelined because of professional coquetry that put English on a pedestal and promoted it from being a means of communication to a sign of social status and elitism still singes me. And yet, it is ironic that today, English is more often the language I think in, express myself in and speak up for people like my mother without getting ashamed of my heavy mother-tongue influence on spoken English. Gujarati is my mother tongue and remains the language of my heart. Marathi, my father tongue, is a close second emotionally. So, language preferences can be complex and personal, and in that sense, I can empathize with the sentiments of Bharatiya Bhasha Suraksha Manch (BBSM) to protect Marathi and Konkani.
The current BJP government played up the MoI issue in the pre-election campaigns and assured support to fulfill the BBSM demands of stopping government grants to English-medium primary schools. BBSM’s ire is especially on government support to institutions managed by Christian groups. On several occasions in the past, they have pointed out that English education is tantamount to eroding of cultural and religious values.
This is not a first socio-political battle waged on linguistic grounds. The first anti-Hindi imposition agitation was launched in 1937, in opposition to compulsory teaching of Hindi in the schools of Madras Presidency. A disastrous educational experiment was also carried out by the CPI (M) government in West Bengal in 1983, when the Left Front banned the teaching of English till Class VI. Ironically, the children of Left leaders continued to study in expensive English-medium schools. However, students from the state who couldn’t afford unaided education suffered in all-India examinations. Their discomfort with English often left them with professional disadvantages.
In her 2013 research paper, The Cost of Revival “ The Role of Hebrew in Jewish Language Endangerment, Elizabeth Freeburg of Yale University discusses “reversing language shift” (RLS) as the attempts of a community to slow or even reverse language endangerment. Freeburg studies RLS strategies, including heavy government grants, which caused Hebrew’s “miraculous” resurgence after more than 2000 years. However, while Hebrew had not been spoken fpr two millennia, we have a safe number of Marathi and Konkani speakers. These languages do not suffer from any existential threat from English from a strictly linguistic and demographic point of view. The anti-English demands of BBSM, then, fall flat on their face.
BSSM fails to justify this passion by running a negative campaign against an equally pragmatic language “ English. The decline of others should not be a measure of one’s success. The definition of promoting a regional language cannot be as simplistic as trying to bulldoze the use of another popular language. Prejudice to English and bizarre, misguided propaganda of implications of English education on culture is a weak, counter-productive argument that most parents of school-going kids will be unwilling to buy.
Blind passion and knee-jerk changes in the syllabus at primary school level can have far-reaching, serious implications. We cannot harm the future of our generations by leaving them without options to study in affordable, government-aided institutions in the language of their choice. Even if we assume that all primary schools instructed in Konkani (or Marathi), do we realistically have undergraduate and post graduate colleges that can impart higher education in the same language? A February 2016 report in a local daily stated that Goa University has close to 83 vacancies yet to be filled for various teaching positions because the rules of domicile and knowledge of mother tongue are causing a hurdle in getting qualified faculty.
Real growth can come only if we empower our young generations not just with fluency in its mother tongue, but with confidence to compete with any other dominant language “ be it English, German or French. Love for language can be exhibited in various innovative ways. Under former Congress government, then education minister Atanasio Monserrate established three chairs at Goa University in the names of Dayanand Bandodkar, D D Kosambi and Kavi Varya B B Borkar. Excellent lectures, in regional languages as well as English, are regularly organized since. Ironically, this uplifting contribution to language and culture in the field of education came from a government that was keen on maintaining status-quo on the MoI issue.
