His views on language issue in India
(Extract)
I am outlining my views on language as compactly as I can, so that should criticism or ridicule be still poured on them, it should atleast be well founded.
English does harm to India not so much because it is foreign but because it is in the Indian context feudal. Only a tiny minority of 1% of the population achieves such efficiency in the language as to be able to use it for power or profit. To this tiny minority, English is an instrument of domination and exploitation over the vast masses....
English is an elegant language in its own sphere, not as spiced as French, nor as deep as German, but more competent, inclusive and generous. When we say ‘banish English’, we certainly do not wish to banish it from England or America, nor even from India’s colleges, if it is an optional subject. There is no question of banishing it from the libraries.
India is the only civilised country in the world, assuming that we are civilised, with an ancient way of life that refuse to die, which runs its legislatures, courts, laboratories, factories, telegraph, railways and almost all government and other public activities in a language which 99% of the people do not understand....
Original thinking in India died nearly a thousand years ago. It has not yet been revived. A major reason is the stranglehold of English. If some first-class scientists, that only a very few and not really the very top, have been produced in recent decades, it is because scientists do not deal with language so much as with numerals and symbols. The complete blank in social sciences and philosophy, I do not mean the descriptive aspect, but that of their foundations, must be ascribed to the fact that Indian scholars devote as much time, if not more, to accent, phrase and idiom as to depth and consistency of thought. From the school student to the scholar, who struts ephemerally on the stage, a curse has befallen knowledge. Not knowledge of the subject but phrase-making and empty style have become the lode-stars of Indian thinking....
The question of adequacy of Hindi or other Indian languages should not at all arise. If they are inadequate, they can be made adequate only through use. Not through committees that fix upon technical terms or through the compilation of dictionaries and text books, does a language become adequate. It becomes efficient only through use at laboratories, courts, schools and the like. Its first use may occasion some confusion but shall in no event be more than that caused by a feudal or minority language. The establishment of a language comes first and its evolution afterwards. By reversing this process, India has stultified herself. India’s languages shall never evolve to equal degree with English through this process and the question always be a lag between the evolution of Bengali, Tamil or Hindi and that of English unless the drastic remedy is applied. The establishment of these languages may overcome the lag and bring them up to a level where they would be able to compare and perhaps favourably with the most modern and excellent language in the world today.
The enemies of Hindustani are in reality also the enemies of Bengali, Tamil or Marathi. This has been perfectly obvious over the past decade to anybody who has seen through the nervous anxiety of the upper classes to maintain their domination and exploitation. The attempt to introduce Bengali as medium in Bengal colleges raised a howl precisely from people who shout provincial slogans of a vague but dangerous character. I have tried to make it absolutely clear that the banishment of English does not mean the substitution of Hindi, to those who so desire, it may mean substitution by Tamil or Bengali and all along the line....
Worst of all, English has made the Indian people feel inferior. Not knowing English, they think they are no good for any kind of public activity and they abdicate. It is precisely such abdication by the mass, which is the foundation for minority or feudal rule. Not through the gun alone but more so through an incomprehensible speech are the people held down. People’s rule is impossible without people’s language....
English must go. People’s action alone can accomplish it. The capacity of the upper classes to deceive the people is if anything growing. When such ignorant hardening takes place, legislative solutions are not easy and people’s action and sacrifice can alone effect a change of attitude....
Dated: 19.09.1962 Ram Manohar Lohia
Source : J.P. Narayan Papers (I & II Instalments), MSS, NMML
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