Rajenda, going by your logic, English is a foreign
language in US too which was brought in by Europeans.
That unlike India Native languages have been killed in
US is a different topic.
>>>Opinions are never debatable!
>>>Facts are.
Thanks
Barua
----- Original Message -----
From: Ram Sarangapani
To: A Mailing list for people interested in Assam
from around the world
Sent: Friday, September 28, 2007 11:54 PM
Subject: Re: [Assam] Book review : India After
Gandhi- Bengal democracy
>BTW I am not looking for an response on this from
you. I think this is a waste of >time even to debate
on this issue.
It truely is a colossal waste. Just to let you know,
I didn't say what I said just because I felt like it,
there were very valid reasons, and your "foreign"
comment only triggered it..... and nothing more.
This is a hot topic in India today. If you are
interested, you might want to look into the New York
Times articles from yesterday (Sept. 28th) and also
about Mulayam Singh Yadav and his comments.
Anyway --- I have totally lost interest in the topic
by now.
Thanks
--Ram
On 9/28/07, Rajen & Ajanta Barua <barua25 at
hotmail.com> wrote:
Ram:
If you insist to know my views:
English is a foreign language in India because:
1) It is not rooted in India.
2) There is nothing Indian about it except the
fact the middle class Indians use it to overcome the
difficulty of their too many languages.
3) It was never a language in India during the
last 5000 years of India's history except during the
British colonial rule.
4) We even cannot say that we have been using this
language for 100 years even by the middle class.
5) It can be compared only to Persian language
which was also at one time imposed as a court language
in India during the Moghol rules and which is dead in
India now.
6) Even today, even after 100 years, it is spoken
in India by only 1.5% of Indians (quoted from email
net - less than 1.5% of the population actually have
proficiency in it-KC.)
7) Nobody in India, even the majority of middle
class Indians like you, would consider English as an
Indian language.
and many more.
Indians always need something 'foreign' to rule
themselves:
the Aryans, the Rajputs, the Afghans, the Moghuls,
the British, and now the English language.
BTW I am not looking for an response on this from
you. I think this is a waste of time even to debate on
this issue.
Thanks
Barua
----- Original Message -----
From: Ram Sarangapani
To: A Mailing list for people interested in
Assam from around the world
Sent: Friday, September 28, 2007 10:09 PM
Subject: Re: [Assam] Book review : India After
Gandhi- Bengal democracy
>We can start with a definition of the word
'foreign' looking at a dictionary
Why look into a dictionary? I think most of us
know what "foreign" and what "native" means? The
dictionary is not going to tell me anything different.
>and see if we can call 'English' a foreign
language or a native language.
You were the one who claimed it is a "foreign
language". So, before we put this into a plebicite of
sorts, I wanted to know why you call it "foreign".
I said it is not a foreign language in India,
and I gave netters a few reasons. There are many more.
I hope you will provide us some reasons why you claim
it is foreign.
Once you are able to do that, we can go from
there.:)
--Ram
On 9/28/07, Rajen & Ajanta Barua <barua25 at
hotmail.com > wrote:
We can start with a definition of the word
'foreign' looking at a dictionary and see if we can
call 'English' a foreign language or a native
language.
Next we can take the opinions of the general
Indian public in India whether general Indians think
English language is foreign or not..
Those will be my two starting points.
What do you say?
Barua
----- Original Message -----
From: Ram Sarangapani
To: A Mailing list for people interested in
Assam from around the world
Sent: Friday, September 28, 2007 7:55 PM
Subject: Re: [Assam] Book review : India
After Gandhi- Bengal democracy
Barua,
I will let Alpana put forth her own defenses
:), and just to make it clear this is not a
husband-wife tag team ::)
>Ram's weak defense as English not being a
foregn language also falls >pathetically into the same
catagory.
Why do you think my defense is weak and can
you cite a few reasons why English is foreign, and we
will go from there.
--Ram
On 9/28/07, Rajen & Ajanta Barua <barua25 at
hotmail.com > wrote:
A/
What you are trying to say is this:
"Although what you are saying seems to be
true, but I am not going to acknowledge it as truth,
because if I remember you said somthing in the past in
some other context which I did not like. As such
without checking your past words, I cannot acknowledge
it as truth although it may be a truth."
In Indian culture we have been taught to
stand up for the truth irrespective of the speaker.
You aeem to be doing just the opposite.
It does not matter what I said in the past
in some other context.
A truth must acknolwedged as a truth.
Otherwise we will be always walking on
quick sands.
Ram's weak defense as English not being a
foregn language also falls pathetically into the same
catagory.
Barua
----- Original Message -----
From: Alpana B. Sarangapani
To: A Mailing list for people interested
in Assam from around the world
Sent: Friday, September 28, 2007 2:54 PM
Subject: Re: [Assam] Book review : India
After Gandhi- Bengal democracy
>Can people just stand for the truth
without any qualm?
Yes, they can. Absolutely! :)
It is just that I remember your
suggesting that something was a justified cause for
Assam's asking for sovereignty, No?
If you did, to remind you, it will take
me some time to dig into the emails again to find the
exact words though.
In the mean time, please don't let that
bot.her you.
Thank you.
- A.
"In order to make spiritual progress you
must be patient like a tree and humble like a blade of
grass"
- Lakshmana
----------------------------------------------------------------
From: barua25 at hotmail.com
To: assam at assamnet.org
Date: Fri, 28 Sep 2007 14:22:58 -0500
Subject: Re: [Assam] Book review :
India After Gandhi- Bengal democracy
A/-
Why do you think I have any qualm at
all?
I am just statiung the facts for
people to acknowledge.
In the ancient India, it was also a
situational demand to learn Sanskrit to get into the
elite. Now it is English.
Is this a fact or not?
Can people just stand for the truth
without any qualm?
Barua
----- Original Message -----
From: Alpana B. Sarangapani
To: A Mailing list for people
interested in Assam from around the world
Sent: Friday, September 28, 2007
1:16 PM
Subject: Re: [Assam] Book review :
India After Gandhi- Bengal democracy
Hi Barua:
I didn't quite understand. Your
qualm is against which - Hindi, English, or India's
being a united country.
What do you suggest as a solution?
All states should balkanize and use their regional
language as the official language? Fine.
What will be the official language
for Assam then? Assamese or Bodo or any other language
that are spoken in different parts of the state? Even
for Assamese, would it be the upper-Assamese or the
lower-Assamese version of it?
Trust all is well with you all.
Regards,
-Alpana
"In order to make spiritual progress
you must be patient like a tree and humble like a
blade of grass"
- Lakshmana
------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 27 Sep 2007 20:50:21
-0700
From: pseude at yahoo.com
To: assam at assamnet.org
Subject: Re: [Assam] Book review :
India After Gandhi- Bengal democracy
First you said - "to get into the
elite, one must learn english". I gave you the example
of Laloo. There are many others like him.
Next you said - "indian unity is
because of english".
In India, more than 30% are native
speakers of Hindi and a total of between 65 and 75%
read, write and understand/speak the language. That
includes many southern speakers as well .
Compare that to English - less
than 1.5% of the population actually have proficiency
in it.
English is there not because it is
necessary to enforce unity but because it helps us get
business and do business with most of the outside
world. How you apply it is upto you. Remember I
mentioned "business" and "admin". "Admin" doesnt
necessarily mean government administration only.
So how can I aggree with your
conclusions??
Rgds,
SD
----- Original Message ----
From: barua25 < barua25 at
hotmail.com>
To: A Mailing list for people
interested in Assam from around the world <assam at
assamnet.org >
Sent: Thursday, September 27, 2007
11:31:36 PM
Subject: Re: [Assam] Book review :
India After Gandhi- Bengal democracy
>now it is a situational demand.
With 14+ official languages, English is naturally the
language of choice for business and admin.
Thanks for supporting my point. I
was not referring to any demand to learn English but
it is a situation demand in India to learn English
today.
In the ancient India, it was also
a situational demand to learn Sanskrit to get into
the elite. Now it is English. That was my point.
So you should start by saying, 'I
agree' instead.
Thanks
Barua
----- Original Message -----
From: SANDIP DUTTA
To: A Mailing list for people
interested in Assam from around the world
Sent: Wednesday, September 26,
2007 11:53 PM
Subject: Re: [Assam] Book review
: India After Gandhi- Bengal democracy
I disaggee - Earlier it could
have been a problem of compulsion but now it is a
situational demand. With 14+ official languages,
English is naturally the language of choice for
business and admin.
Also it depends if you really
are insistent on defining "elite" in the manner you
do.
Taking the earlier example of
Laloo - he is not exceptionally good with English but
he is still in the elite class by virtue of being
minister. His recent successes in reforming IR have
now made him unofficial management consultant as well.
Hope that makes sense.
Rgds,
Sandip
----- Original Message ----
From: barua25 < barua25 at
hotmail.com>
To: A Mailing list for people
interested in Assam from around the world <assam at
assamnet.org >
Sent: Thursday, September 27,
2007 9:37:37 AM
Subject: Re: [Assam] Book review
: India After Gandhi- Bengal democracy
>I myself know an IRS officer
now posted in Coorg district of Karnataka. He is from
UP and from a very lower middle class background.
However >after 15 years in the services, his english
is as good as anyone else's and he has good working
knowledge of Kannada.
If the guy knows good English,
it actually proves my original point that in India in
ancient when one had to learn Sanskrit to be in the
elite class, now one has to be good in English to be
in the elite class.
Barua
----- Original Message -----
From: SANDIP DUTTA
To: A Mailing list for people
interested in Assam from around the world
Sent: Wednesday, September 26,
2007 10:45 PM
Subject: Re: [Assam] Book
review : India After Gandhi- Bengal democracy
Rather than coming to
conclusions about whether this attributes to
dictatorship - why not involve someone from that state
in this discussion to see if he concurs with this
view.
Ditto for IAS/IPS officers
coming from vernacular mediums. Contrary to belief,
such officers actually have very good (if not
excellent) knowledge of English and at times local
languages wherever they are posted.
I myself know an IRS officer
now posted in Coorg district of Karnataka. He is from
UP and from a very lower middle class background.
However after 15 years in the services, his english is
as good as anyone else's and he has good working
knowledge of Kannada.
No wonder we see most of the
demands for sovereignity and seperation from foreign
settled people who have got disconnected with the way
this country works (and still works).
Rgds,
Sandip
----- Original Message ----
From: barua25 < barua25 at
hotmail.com>
To: umesh.sh05 at
post.harvard.edu; A Mailing list for people interested
in Assam from around the world < assam at
assamnet.org>
Sent: Thursday, September 27,
2007 8:00:10 AM
Subject: Re: [Assam] Book
review : India After Gandhi- Bengal democracy
>a nexus prevents anyone
from voting against the "party" or else face
ex-communication a-la erstwhile Pope's rule in Europe
in medieval times ->as per a Bengali researcher
This is in fact what is called
'elected dictatorship' going on in West bengal in name
of democracy.
Rajenda
----- Original Message -----
From: umesh sharma
To: A Mailing list for
people interested in Assam from around the world
Sent: Tuesday, September 25,
2007 11:52 PM
Subject: Re: [Assam] Book
review : India After Gandhi- Bengal democracy
Rajen-da
Good example of
India-Shining rhetoric.
But just becos there is
peace (despite armed militancy in 25% of India's
districts- NE, Kashmir, Bihar, Central India, LTTE
South India etc etc) and not many are dying of
starvation and voting not by reading election
manifestos but by recognizing cartoons (election
symbols) of political parties .
Even democratically elected
communist govt (an anamoly) of West Bengal is
allegedly in power for past 25 years non-stop since
a nexus prevents anyone from voting against the
"party" or else face ex-communication a-la erstwhile
Pope's rule in Europe in medieval times -as per a
Bengali researcher
But ofcourse noone can deny
that despite is shortcomings the India that is Bharat
is growing - despite spoofs like Hollywood's "Borat"
movie (Bharat ??) from Kazakhstan (Rajasthan???)
Umesh
Rajen & Ajanta Barua
<barua25 at hotmail.com> wrote:
Following may be added
from another review about the book:
India is the country that
was never expected to ever be a country. In the late
19th century, Sir John Strachey, a senior British
official, grandly opined that the territory's diverse
states simply could not possess any sort of unity,
physical, political, social or religious. Strachey,
clearly, was wrong: India today is a unified entity
and a rising global power. Even so, it continues to
defy explanation. India's existence, says Guha, an
internationally known scholar ( Environmentalism: A
Global History), has also been an anomaly for academic
political science, according to whose axioms cultural
heterogeneity and poverty do not make a nation, still
less a democratic one. Yet India continues to exist.
Guha's aim in this startlingly ambitious political,
cultural and social survey is to explain why and how.
He cheerfully concludes that India's continuing
existence results from its unique diversity and its
refusal to be pigeonholed into such conventional
political models as Anglo-American liberalism, French
republicanism, atheistic communism or Islamist
theocracy. India is proudly sui generis, and with
August 15, 2007, being the 60th anniversary of Indian
independence, Guha's magisterial history of India
since that day comes not a moment too soon. 32 pages
of b&w illus., 8 maps.
----- Original Message
-----
From: Rajen & Ajanta
Barua
To: assam at
assamnet.org
Sent: Tuesday, September
25, 2007 10:42 PM
Subject: [Assam] Book
review : India After Gandhi
Good review of a grand
900 page book on India recently published:
India After Gandhi: The
History of the World's Largest Democracy by
Ramachandra Guha
From The Washington
Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com
Reviewed by George
Perkovich
A toast to India on its
60th birthday: No country has more heroically pursued
the promise of democracy. Against the odds of
staggering poverty, conflicting religious passions,
linguistic pluralism, regional separatism, caste
injustice and natural resource scarcity, Indians have
lifted themselves largely by their own sandal straps
to become a stalwart democracy and emerging global
power. India has risen with epic drama -- a nonviolent
struggle for independence followed by mass mayhem and
bloodletting, dynastic succession and assassination,
military victory and defeat, starvation succeeded by
green revolution, political leaders as saints, sinners
and sexual ascetics. And yet, the Indian story rarely
has been told and is practically unknown to Americans.
India After Gandhi
masterfully fills the void. India needs a wise and
judicious narrator to convey its scale, diversity and
chaos -- to describe the whirlwind without getting
lost in it. It needs a biographer neither besotted by
love nor enraged by disappointment. Ramachandra Guha,
a historian who has taught at Stanford and Yale and
now lives in Bangalore, has given democratic India the
rich, well-paced history it deserves.
Much will be new to
American readers. Large-scale conflicts in India's
northeast between tribal groups and the center have
been as enduring, and in some ways as important, as
the more familiar violence in Kashmir. The framing of
India's constitution from 1946 through 1949 should
induce awe, especially in light of Iraq's post-Saddam
experience.
In the midst of
Hindu-Muslim bloodshed, a flood of 8 million refugees,
starvation, and other profound conflicts, Indian
representatives worked out constitutional provisions
to protect minorities, keep religion out of state
power, correct thousands of years of caste
discrimination and redistribute power and wealth
accumulated by still-regnant princely states. This was
done with no external guidance or pressure. The
drafting committee was chaired by an "untouchable,"
B.R. Ambedkar -- analogies are inexact, but imagine if
James Madison at the Philadelphia Constitutional
Convention had been a freed slave.
Specialists will quicken
over insights from the private papers of Indira
Gandhi's confidant, P.N. Haksar, who gave his papers
to Guha. These documents reveal, among other things,
that it was the Soviet Union that proposed the 1971
treaty of cooperation and friendship between the two
countries, and that suspicion of China motivated both
nations more than was appreciated at the time.
Miniature biographies of
grassroots leaders and movements also enliven Guha's
storytelling. Jay Aprakash Narayan -- "JP" -- plays a
leading role. A onetime friend of Nehru who became the
bête noir of his daughter, Indira Gandhi, JP led a
massive movement for radical governmental reform in
1974-75, which moved Indira Gandhi to declare a
national emergency and suspend democracy.
Some themes go
under-explored: For example, why has the Indian Army
abstained from interfering in politics, unlike the
military in many other developing countries? And why
has India given short shrift to primary education,
even as it has developed technological institutes that
rival M.I.T?
Many chapters begin or
end with India's future in doubt. "India is almost
infinitely depressing," Aldous Huxley wrote in 1961,
"for there seems to be no solution to its problems in
any way that any of us [in the West] regard as
acceptable." He predicted that "when Nehru goes, the
government will become a military dictatorship." Guha
records that "ever since the country was formed there
have also been many Indians who have seen the survival
of India as being on the line, some (the patriots)
speaking or writing in fear, others (the secessionists
or revolutionaries) with anticipation."
Yet, marvelously,
India's survival as a democracy seems more assured
than ever. Less clear is the nature of its
relationship with America. Since 2005, the U.S. and
Indian governments have moved toward nuclear
cooperation, reversing 30 years of U.S. policy against
nuclear assistance to countries that refuse to sign
the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
Washington clearly views
India as a counterbalance to China's strategic power.
But Guha records an important historical parallel.
In 1962, China crossed
disputed boundaries in the northwest and northeast of
India. A shocked Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru
abandoned nonalignment and pleaded for emergency U.S.
military assistance. Ambassador John Kenneth Galbraith
wrote to President Kennedy: "The only Asian country
which really stands in [China's] way is India and pari
passu the only Western country that is assuming
responsibility is the United States. . . We should
expect to make use of India's political position,
geographical position, political power and manpower or
anyhow ask."
Four decades later,
another Harvard professor-cum-American ambassador to
India, Robert Blackwill, championed the proposed
nuclear deal with similar reasoning. As different as
the presidents they served, Blackwill and Galbraith
were tempted by strategic abstraction and a desire to
raise "their" country -- India -- in American
priorities. Yet supplying arms to India in 1962 did
not make India any more deferential to U.S. foreign
policy. Washington will delude itself again if it
thinks that nuclear India will be a pliant instrument
in its geostrategy. As long as India is a democracy,
it will go its own way.
To comprehend India's
achievement, imagine if Mexico became the 51st of the
United States, followed by Brazil, Argentina and the
rest of Central and South America. Add Egypt, Saudi
Arabia and Bahrain to give this union the Sunni-Shia
mix of India. The population then represented in
Congress would still be smaller and less diverse
linguistically, religiously, culturally and
economically than India's. If such a state could
democratically manage the interests and conflicts
swirling within it, and not threaten its neighbors,
the world should ask little else from it. If we were
such a state, we would feel that our humane progress
contributes so much to global well-being that smaller,
richer, easier-to-manage states should not presume to
tell us what to do.
Sixty years after
Gandhi, India has earned greater appreciation than we
give it.
_______________________________________________
assam mailing list
assam at assamnet.org
http://assamnet.org/mailman/listinfo/assam_assamnet.org
_______________________________________________
assam mailing list
assam at assamnet.org
http://assamnet.org/mailman/listinfo/assam_assamnet.org
Umesh Sharma
Washington D.C.
1-202-215-4328 [Cell]
Ed.M. - International
Education Policy
Harvard Graduate School of
Education,
Harvard University,
Class of 2005
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