Name: Sushree Saloni Rath

Roll no.: H00MAENG20200327

Submitted to: Prof. Uma Maheswari Bhrugubanda

Course: LCS-101, BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO CULTURAL STUDIES

Date of submission: 25th March, 2021

Semester: 1ST SEMESTER, END-TERM PAPER

Language was always going to be a tough issue for India, with over twenty regional

languages, each with its own culture and history. At the time, most countries defined

their cultural identity through a common language, so the question of a national

language was significantly related with a desire for national unity during the

Constituent Assembly debates.

As a distinct subcontinent with diverse geographies, India has fostered a variety of

lifestyles, resulting in the emergence of numerous cultures. The country, as a

multilingual society, is a prime example of forging unity among diverse lifestyles and

languages. However, those who equate India to the Gangetic plains and see the rest of

the country as peripheral adjuncts to the Hindi-speaking belt find this uniqueness,

which is often celebrated as the very idea of India, indigestible.

If we begin to define language as a medium of communication, then one can assume

that we all are speaking the same language. Still there is a distinct difference in our

languages, dialects and understanding about it. In the present-day scenario, one can

even find difference in language among generations. Thus, this paper is going to

majorly focus on how language has evolved throughout generations, cultures and

movements in India and how these discourses have affected the journey of the various

languages and dialects of the country. I will explore the journey of Sanskrit, English

and Hindi as well as the regional languages and what amount of significance do these

have over our lives.

To begin with, let us dive back to the era of Sanskrit.

SANSKRIT- THE BEGINNING

Sanskrit is the primary sacred language of Hinduism, and has been used as a

philosophical language in the religions of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism. Sanskrit

is a standardized dialect of Old Indo-Aryan, originating as Vedic Sanskrit as early as

1700-1200 BCE. [1]

One of the oldest Indo-European dialects with considerable information, it is

considered to have been the general language of the greater Indian Subcontinent in

earlier civilizations. It is still used in Hindu religious rituals, Buddhist hymns and

chants, and Jain texts. Sanskrit's semantic ancestors are Proto-Indo-Iranian and,

subsequently, Proto-Indo-European languages, suggesting that this could be linked

historically back to the people who spoke Indo-Iranian, also recognised as the Aryan
languages, as well as the Indo-European languages, a family of many hundred related

language groups. [2] Sanskrit literature began with spoken or sung literature of the

Vedas around 1500 BCE and started with the oral tradition of the Sanskrit Epics of

Ancient India, around 1200 BCE, the period following the Bronze Age. Vedic Sanskrit

made a transition from a first language to a second language of religion and learning

around 1000 BCE. In the Indian culture, Vedic Sanskrit is the language of the Vedas,

the oldest Hindu scripts, which were compiled between 1500 and 500 BCE. The four

major collections are the RigVeda, SamVeda, YajurVeda, and AtharvaVeda. The

classical period of Sanskrit literature contributes to the Gupta period and later the pre

middle kingdoms of India, roughly spanning the 3rd to 8th centuries CE. Hindu

Puranas, a type of Indian literature that includes myths and legends, belong to the

Classical Sanskrit period.

But when did Sanskrit become a language of certain classes? As most people argue

Sanskrit being a cultural marker of India, it was never treated as the language of the

masses from the beginning. It’s importance was only for the higher strata of the varna

society. It was used for the study of the Vedas as the language of rituals and literature,

thus, only for the upper castes and banned for the working classes. The Classical

Sanskrit was the language of nobles and influential upper class. To speak Sanskrit, a

Shudra had no choice but hope to be lucky enough to be reborn into another varna. In

the medieval era, Sanskrit continued to be spoken and written, particularly by

Brahmins for scholarly communication. Classical Sanskrit is still one of the 22

scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand. In

present time, the speakers of this language are almost negligible, it is still taught in

Indian schools in effort to preserve it like Latin in western societies. This symbolism

of caste along with Sanskrit is more evidently depicted in Kumud Pawde’s The Story

Of My ‘Sanskrit’, where she writes,

“the point is that Sanskrit and the social group I come from, don’t go together in

the Indian mind. Against, the background of my caste, the Sanskrit I learned appears

shockingly strange. That a woman from a caste that is the lowest of the low should

learn Sanskrit, and not only that, also teach it- is a dreadful anomaly to a traditional

mind.”[3]

Thus, Sanskrit denoted the caste of its speaker. The language, then, can best be

remembered as a marker of the caste system rather than the glory of India.

While Classical Sanskrit was language of upper class, there was another language,

Prakrit (500 BC – 500 AD) which had directly developed from Vedic Sanskrit in the

same era. It was the everyday language of common mass and it was developed in

natural way in contrast to the literary and religious language of Classical Sanskrit.

During the era, another form of Prakrit, Pali (500 BC – 500 AD) was in use. It was a

literary language of the Prakrit language family and was mostly seen in Buddhist

scriptures. Pali was also used extensively by a legendary emperor of India, Asoka the

Great (304 BC – 232 BC). Prakrit and Pali both grew in vernacular and gave rise to

another language, Apbrunsh (500 AD – 1000 AD). Apbrunsh was succeeded by Khari
Boli (900 AD – 1200 AD). It was created in the north Indian region. Khari Boli gave

way to Hindustani, a more refined language that was a mix of modern Hindi and

Urdu. Both Urdu and Hindi separated and refined in their own ways in the nineteenth

century. Although Hindi and Urdu share much of the grammar, they use different

scripts for writing, and Hindi uses more of its words that are derived from Sanskrit.

Urdu borrows more words from Persian, Arabic, and Turkish.

HINDI- THE BEGINNING

Hindi (Devanagari: हिन्दी, IAST/ISO 15919: Hindī), or more precisely Modern

Standard Hindi (Devanagari: मानक हिन्दी, IAST/ISO 15919: Mānak Hindī), is an

Indo-Aryan language spoken in India. Hindi has been described as a standardised and

Sanskritised register of the Hindustani language, which itself is based primarily on the

Khariboli dialect of Delhi and neighbouring areas of Northern India. Hindi, written in

the Devanagari script, is one of the two official languages of the Government of India,

along with the English language. It is an official language in 9 States and 3 Union

Territories and an additional official language in 3 other States. Hindi is also one of

the 22 scheduled languages of the Republic of India.[4]

But can we assume Hindi to act as a political marker among religions? Language

posed a significant problem in the post-independence era and continues to be a

significant burden on the country's political system. During the freedom struggle,

national leaders repeatedly promised the masses that Indian languages would be fully

developed in a free India, and that states would be reorganised on the basis of
languages, giving each language equal opportunity to develop and grow. However,

when the Constituent Assembly debated the issue of India's national language, it

discovered that the task was not easy.

During the anti-colonial movement, in an attempt to unite Hindus and Muslims over

language issue, the Indian National Congress insisted on the use of Hindustani, a

hybrid language that mixed Hindi and Urdu and was written in either Urdu or

Devanagari script. The Indian National Congress at Karachi,1925 decided that

Hindustani — a popular, undifferentiated blend of Hindi and Urdu — should be the

independent nation's lingua franca. To promote the Hindustani language for

communal unity, the Indian National Congress leadership, under the guidance of

Mahatma Gandhi, came up with the Wardha Scheme of Education in 1937. Under this

plan, which was endorsed at the Haripura session of the Congress in 1938, education

was to be promoted in Hindustani written in both Hindi and Urdu script. However, due

to the influence of the Hindi Sahitya Sammelan, which advocated for Hindi to be the

national language, this resolution was modified a few years later. Many members of

Congress, including Muslims, were disappointed by the resolution, which strained the

communal angle.

The Muslim League, which was founded in 1906, endorsed Urdu as a symbol of

Muslim identity and thus best suited to serve as India's lingua franca. As India’s

partition became imminent in 1946, Urdu — perceived as aligned with Pakistan —

was discarded from national language contenders of newly independent India. On the
other hand, the pro-Hindi/Hindustani group, which included Jawaharlal Nehru and

Mahatma Gandhi, argued for one of the two languages to be designated as the sole

national language. The anti-Hindi group opposed this and favoured keeping English as

the official language. To resolve the issue, the Indian Constitution Committee reached

a compromise known as the Munshi-Ayyangar formula in 1949. The language's name

was Hindi (in Devanagari script), but proponents of Hindustani were reassured by a

directive clause directing Sanskrit as the mainstay of Hindi vocabulary, with an

explicit non-boycott of words from other languages within it.

After considering all aspects of the issue, the Constituent Assembly decided that Hindi

in Devnagri script should be India's national language. It was not easy, however, to

immediately replace English with Hindi, and as a result, the Constitution provides that

English will be retained for official work for a period of 15 years.

Since coming into power in May 2014, the Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP)-led National

Democratic Alliance government has issued a number of official orders, circulars and

notifications that it claims are meant to promote the Hindi language. For example, the

new rupee notes issued by the Reserve Bank of India after demonetization in

November 2016 carry numerals in the Devanagari script (used to write in Hindi,

among a number of other languages). In March 2017, milestones on national highways

in Tamil Nadu suddenly changed from English to Hindi. Most recently, in April 2017,

the president of India gave “in principle” approval to the recommendation made by a

Parliamentary panel that the “HRD [Human Resource Development] Ministry needs to
make credible efforts for making Hindi a compulsory subject,” and that Hindi should

be “compulsorily taught in all CBSE [Central Board for Secondary Education] schools

and Kendriya Vidyalayas [Central Schools] until Class X.” [5] All of these steps are

viewed as part of a plan to impose Hindi on non-Hindi speaking areas while  the

government has justified its actions by claiming that it is promoting rather than

imposing the language.

Historically, the use of Hindi has not only been a source of debate between speakers

and non-speakers, but it has also politicised India's religious communities. Hindi is a

regional language spoken in many dialects and is claimed to be the mother tongue of

only 25% of Indians. During British rule in India, Hindi – in Khari Boli form – was

considered the Hindu language. This sentiment is still prevalent in the minds of many

people, and it is supported by some religious organisations.

Successive Union governments took steps in subsequent years to spread the use of

Hindi in non-Hindi speaking parts of India. However, people outside of north India

have not readily accepted Hindi as their "own" language. Though the number of non-

native Hindi speakers who can speak or understand the language has increased, this

may be due to cultural factors rather than government policy.

Language flourishes by attracting people and not through imposition from the above.

One major attraction has been the Hindi film industry, which has popularized the

Hindi language in non-Hindi speaking areas of India. As historian Ramachandra Guha

writes, Hindi cinema, over time, “made the Hindi language comprehensible to those
who previously never spoke or understood it. When imposed by fiat by the central

government, Hindi was resisted by the people of the south and the east. When

conveyed seductively by the medium of cinema and television, Hindi has been

accepted by them.”[6]

It was not easy, however, to immediately replace English with Hindi.

ENGLISH- THE BEGINNING

English is a West Germanic language first spoken in early medieval England, which

has eventually become the leading language of international discourse in the 21st

century. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that

migrated to the area of Great Britain that later took their name, England. Both names

derive from Anglia, a peninsula on the Baltic Sea.[7] English has developed over the

course of more than 1,400 years. The earliest forms of English, a group of West

Germanic dialects brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the 5th century,

are collectively called Old English. Middle English began in the late 11th century with

the Norman conquest of England; this was a period in which English was influenced

by Old French, in particular through its Old Norman dialect. Early Modern English

began in the late 15th century with the introduction of the printing press to London,

the printing of the King James Bible and the start of the Great Vowel Shift.[8]

Modern English has been spreading around the world since the 17th century by the

worldwide influence of the British Empire and the United States. English is the largest

language by number of speakers and the third most-spoken native language in the
world, after Standard Chinese and Spanish. It is the most widely learned second

language and is either the official language or one of the official languages in almost

60 sovereign states. There are more people who have learned it as a second language

than there are native speakers.

Vasco da Gama’s discovery of the sea route to India also paved way for the

introduction of English in the sub-continent in 1498. However, it was only in the 18th

century, when the Mughal Empire was on the decline and the English East India

Company had secured a foothold in India that India’s journey with the English

language began. During this period, English was the language of communication of

the elite people and was not the lingua franca of the people. With the consolidation of

the activities of the East India Company in eighteenth century, began the efforts of

teaching English in the South Asian subcontinent.

T.B. Macaulay, in the Minutes of 1835, for the first time, formally introduced the

teaching of English in the South Asian subcontinent. In his Minutes he mentioned the

importance and usefulness of the education that would be given to the natives through

the medium of English. There were primarily two objectives of such education. The

first was to create through this education a class of natives who, despite their blood

and colour, would be English in culture and be able to ‘interpret’ between the rulers

and the subjects. The second was to create a ‘demand’ for the European institutions.

Although both the objectives were designed to serve the interest of the Masters, not of

the subjects, but it provided the framework of formal English education to India which
to a large extent is followed even today. For the entire period of British rule four broad

developments with regard to English education took place i.e. from 1600 to 1800, in

the early years the variety of English used was imitative and formal. It was the

language of the rulers and the elite class. And then from 1850 to 1947, the later years

more varieties appeared. Indian intellectuals and freedom fighters effectively used

English as tool of political awakening and resurgence. As the use of English

penetrated the different sections of the educated Indians, a new variety of English

emerged. This variety of English had a very distinct Indian flavour and a number of

words of vernacular origin were absorbed in English, e.g., Brahmin. Coolie, jungle,

and so on.

But has English become a cultural marker between classes and cultures? The

2011 Census showed English is the primary language of 256,000 people, the second

language of 83 million people, and the third language of another 46 million people,

making it the second-most widely spoken language after Hindi (which includes more

than 50 so-called dialects like Bhojpuri which is spoken by more than 50 million

Indians). According to the Lok Foundation survey, English is far more an urban than a

rural phenomenon, just 3% of rural respondents said that they could speak English, as

against 12% of urban respondents. There is a clear class element at work—41% of the

rich could speak English as against less than 2% of the poor.

Speaking English is also linked to education: one-third of all graduates are fluent in

the language. The ability to communicate in English has religious and caste
implications. More than 15% of Christians are fluent in English, compared to 6% of

Hindus and 4% of Muslims. An upper-caste person is more than three times more

likely to speak English than a scheduled caste or scheduled tribe member. Younger

people chose to speak English slightly more than older people.

Despite popular belief that more people in southern India speak English as a bridge

language rather than Hindi, English is spoken by a greater proportion of residents in

several northern and north-eastern states than in the south. The likelihood of speaking

English appears to be linked to the prosperity of a state such as Delhi and Haryana and

the presence of Christianity such as Goa and Meghalaya.

Thus, one can see that English language in India has a lot of demand because of the

stereotypical superiority imposed by the colonizers. Post-independence, the perception

of English as having an alien power base changed. Braj Kachru notes that “English

now has national and international functions that are both distinct and complementary.

English has thus acquired a new power base and a new elitism.” [9] For the majority

of the twentieth century, it was a language spoken by a small group of people. English

has remained primarily the language of law and administration.

As twentieth century witnessed great technological as well as business advancements

in India, it led to the need for acquiring proficiency in English as an international

language. Now, English was not just the language of the administrators and policy

makers but also became the language of the business and professional class. In India,

the English speaking population is only about 3-4%, but with India’s massive
population, India is among the top three countries in the world with the highest

number of English speakers. This small segment of the Indian population is in charge

of the country's economic, industrial, professional, political, and social progress. The

majority of interactions in the aforementioned spheres of life take place in English.

English is taught as a second language at all levels of education in all Indian states,

and it is widely accepted as the primary medium of instruction in higher education.

English is also the official language of two eastern Indian states, Meghalaya and

Nagaland. It has become an integral part of the curriculum at almost all levels of

education in India. However, a variety of social, political, and cultural factors

influence the position of English in various boards, universities, and other institutions.

Even the curriculum and evaluation tools used vary greatly across the country.

THE GREAT INDIAN LANGUAGE DIVIDE

My mother always had the fear of talking or answering English. She was almost

always conscious about her accent as well as sentences construction. Even though

being a highly educated woman with a master’s degree in architecture, she feared

talking or answering in English. She would rather prefer talking in hindi or in our

regional language of Odia. But she always found the need to learn English to survive

in this world more important, thus, enrolling me and my brother in English medium

schools. While growing up in an English medium school, I cant seem to remember the

point when I realised that I could speak fluent English. It always felt natural. But when

school got over and I joined a local college for my under graduate studies, I realised
how less number of English speakers are present around us. While I majored in

English, there were a total of six other batchmates, half of whom weren’t even

interested to learn anything. They had taken up the subject because seats were

available and they needed a graduate degree.

Now, while I went to college everyday, I would meet judging pair of eyes every

corner. Being from an English medium school, people expect one to take up

engineering or medical studies or go out of state to pursue such subject but studying

English literature in a local college was a new thing for them. Also being from an

English medium had a stereotype in the college, that I was bound to be an arrogant

person. At first, it got pretty difficult for me to make friends as even though we shared

the same mother tongue, my school background as well as my Bachelor’s subject

added fuel to the local stereotypes. Either they found it intimidating or they had

opinions about me which wasn’t true. Soon, a year had passed and finally I could

break the wall of stereotypes among my batchmates that even though I was from an

English medium and had taken up English literature as my Bachelor’s subject, I am

still like them, an ordinary Odia speaking human. Later, I found that some people

stayed away from me because they thought that all I could speak and understand was

English and I might not understand their language.

This made me wonder about the amount of intimidation a language can cause. It also

made me realise that languages depend on the environments we are in. While in

school, talking in our regional language of Odia was discouraged to improve our
English-speaking skills, and on the other hand, at college speaking in Odia with others

made them feel friendly and welcoming.

However, English proficiency helps a person in many ways, for example, getting a job

in an MNC is possible only if you are really good with this language, it helps the

drivers and shopkeepers to converse with foreigners in English and it helps Indians

who travel abroad. For this reason, people prefer to send their children to private

English language schools rather than government schools where English is regarded as

the students’ first language followed by Hindi, their second language. It is a fact that

in most of the private schools, it is compulsory for students to study Hindi language

only till 8th grade whereas it is the 12th grade for the English language.

One can understand the importance of learning English in our country through the

hindi movies of ‘Hindi Medium’ and ‘English Vinglish’.

While in ‘hindi medium’,it is shown that for a child to learn good English, it is

essential to send him/her to a good school and getting admission in a good school is no

less than a rat race. The director was successful in showing what the parents go

through in getting their child admitted in a good English-medium school. It was shown

that the parents are well aware of the fact that their child can find it difficult to adjust

to the society if he/she is unable to speak proper English. In the movie ‘English

Vinglish’, it is displayed that the child gets embarrassed to take her mother played by

Sridevi for parent teacher meeting as she is unable to converse in English. And even
she is several times demeaned by her husband and her daughter as she doesn’t know

English.