On Wednesday 12 Dec 2007 9:25 pm, Deepa Mohan wrote: > Ironic that English has to be the link language and is yet a sharp > divider of the "haves" and "have-nots", whether it is a bank balance > or education or access to information that the "haves" have. But I > suppose that is true everywhere in the English-speaking world?
Not having English may be a problem everywhere in the Anglosphere but I believe India counts as a special variant of "Anglosphere". My childhood was spent devouring English books that were published from London, New York, Toronto, Sydney and Johannesburg and it took a while for me to start wondering why Delhi did not feature on the list. Even more puzzling was the realization that English speakers in India probably outnumbered Australia and Canada put together. Even more perplexing to me was the realization that for all the numbers, English is spoken by perhaps 5% of Indians. The history of English in India seems to fit in with the frequently touted theory that it all started with Macaulay's minute. Macaulay's minute lays out the exact arguments for commencing English education in India with the idea being to create a class of Indian who had British tastes and culture but could serve as interpreters to the vast mass of Indians and thus help in governance, apart from other lofty ideals. Macaulay also asked for stopping the funding of education in "Sanscrit" and Arabic. I quote his exact words because I believe they are relevant in an interesting way today: "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 raise up champions of error. It goes to form a nest, not merely of helpless place-hunters, but of bigots prompted alike by passion and by interest to raise a cry against every useful scheme of education." I believe the British did succeed in creating an educated class of English speakers with values that the British wanted to see. Apart from speaking English, those values included an appreciation of British style rule of law and a "religion-neutral" Indian Penal Code was applied to replace the old laws (whatever they were) A lot has been said about what Macaulay allegedly did, but what interests me is what he did not do, or did not manage to do. If we assume that 5% of Indians speak English, then Macaulay's language did not reach 95%. The question is what percentage of this 95% of Indians now belong to Macaulay's characterization of people as forming a "nest, not merely of helpless place-hunters, but of bigots prompted alike by passion and by interest to raise a cry against every useful scheme of education" One can look at Macaulay's viewpoint in two ways: The less kind method is to see him as a racist ignoramus and that is how some people do see him. A kinder view of Macaulay would be to agree that from his viewpoint the Hindus and Muslims of India really were " bigots prompted alike by passion and by interest to raise a cry against every useful scheme of education" If we remove our love or hate of Macaulay and look at his views in dispassionate terms some questions arise. There MUST be a significant percentage of Indians who were not touched at all by Macaulay. If we search for these "untouched by Macaulay" people, can we *really* find among them a large proportion of Indians who are bigots and who have no real innate sense of rule of law as per the "imposed" Indian Penal Code and prefer rule according to whatever system they had traditionally followed? An empirical examination of this question suggests that the answer is "Yes" (to me) We know that Muslims of India in general did not like Macaulay's scheme and tended to stick to Madrassas. So let me declare all Muslims as people untouched by Macaulay who are "bigots prompted alike by passion and by interest to raise a cry against every useful scheme of education." But condemning all Muslims at 15% of the Indian population still does not explain the behavior and views of the remaining (95%-15%)=80% of Indians ostensibly untouched by Macaulay. If my extrapolation is even approximately right, it could also mean that the vast majority of Hindus in India also fall in the category of " bigots prompted alike by passion and by interest to raise a cry against every useful scheme of education" The conclusion is this entire goddam country is full of bigots who have no innate sense of rule of law other than the laws that they had before the British came - either sharia or whatever else they held sacred. This conclusion makes the minority anglophone Indians, whose apparently "model behavior" is assumed to represent the real Indian is merely a coat of varnish on a rickety termite ridden chair. Even that is if we assume that the coat of varnish has completely rid itself of the faults of the chair and I am not totally sure about that. There is nobody to study whether disquieting extrapolations such as mine are correct or not, but much of the behavior of Indians seems to suggest that there may be some truth to it. If true, it calls for action to move society toward rule of law and acceptance of that from all groups. Playing one group against the other is what I see happening in India, with no effort going into moving all groups towards the end goal of rule of law and respect for individual rights. But there has to be a widespread self recognition that India is this way. Only sociological studies can prove or disprove a hypothesis such as mine and those studies do not exist AFAIK. Did someone say where's the research data? shiv
