Use English to spread our culture

Dr Bharat Jhunjhunwala
Narendra Modi has decided to speak with foreign dignitaries in Hindi-even when they are English speaking. This is a departure from Vajpayee who spoke in English with English-speaking dignitaries and in Hindi with non-English-speaking dignitaries. Speaking in Hindi certainly makes a major cultural statement. It is assertion of our Indian culture. There is a flip side, however. Speaking with an English-speaking dignitary in Hindi through a translator would not be able to establish the one-to-one chemistry that may be developed by speaking directly in English. We have to weigh the gains from this better chemistry against the gains from assertion of our Indian culture. Modi has also issued orders for Central Government officials to do work in Hindi. Use of Hindi will certainly put our non-Hindi speaking countrymen at a disadvantage. I was once travelling with a friend in train from Bengaluru to Delhi. Two of us were speaking in English. Our co-passengers felt ignored and downcast. Ultimately, one of them made an outburst and we started talking in Kannada. Increasing use of English in national discourse will put vernacular speaking persons at a distinct disadvantage. Here again we will have to weigh the gains from national integration obtained by the use of English versus the gains we will obtain by assertion of our national identity.
Use of vernacular may also endanger our global economic prowess. An article in the Harvard Business Review gives startling statistics from a different perspective. The writer asserts that “there is a direct correlation between the English skills of a population and the economic performance of the country. Indicators like gross national income go up.” Statistical data provided by him indicate that the average per capita income rises from US Dollars 10k to 60k per year as the nation’s English Proficiency Index (EPI) rises from 45 to 70. To cite a specific example, Russia has a EPI score of 50 and Income of US dollars 20k per person per year. In comparison Singapore has EPI score of 60 and average income of 60k per person. This shows that countries that adopt English have higher incomes. At an individual level, recruiters and HR managers around the world report that job seekers with exceptional English compared to their country’s level earned 30-50% percent higher salaries.”
There is a vast body of anecdotal evidence that indicates a positive impact of English on income. Japanese Company Rakuten implemented 100 percent use of English.  Swiss food giant Nestlé saw great efficiency improvements in purchasing after it enforced English as a company standard. When Germany’s Hoechst and France’s Rhône-Poulenc merged in 1998 to create Aventis, the fifth largest worldwide pharmaceutical company, the new firm chose English as its operating language over French or German. These and many other examples indicate that global economy is inexorably moving towards the use of English. This is happening, I believe, because the driver of the global economy is technology which has largely been developed in the United States in the last century in English language. Therefore, abandonment of English means losing in the race of technology and of prosperity. These costs, however, are of a short term nature. The pain of adopting English and some losing the race would persist for a decade or so only. The gains from adoption of English come over the long run.
The objection to English more seriously comes from the argument of cultural diversity. It is feared that adoption of English will smother our native cultures. English-speaking children, for example, appear to have lesser knowledge of the Ramayana and the Koran. This connection between language and culture appears dubious to me though. Our ancestors of the Indus Valley Civilization used the Indus Language. In due course of time the Indus language evolved into Brahmi and then to Sanskrit and Hindi. The Rig Veda and other scriptures have been written in this Sanskrit. The culture of the people of the Indus Valley was transmitted jumped from Indus Language to Sanskrit. Similarly writings in Latin which are the foundations of Western Culture have been transmitted in English. I have, for example, read the Rig Veda mainly in English; and I regularly refer to Monier-William’s dictionary of Sanskrit. This shows that culture can move from one language to another just as the passenger changes platform on the railway station. Indeed, reading the texts in the original language is best. Errors may creep into translations. But similar errors also happen in interpreting the texts in the original languages. Therefore, we must not be deterred by this.
The respect expressed by Modi towards Indian culture by stressing the use of Hindi is welcome. The challenge, however, is to assert our identity in a way that also enables us to develop good chemistry with visiting foreign dignitaries and also helps our people integrate with each other and engage more aggressively with the English speaking world. The way forward is not to reject English and confine ourselves to our desi languages. The way forward is to adopt the middle path of bilingualism.  We must not jettison local languages for English; nor reject English and restrict ourselves to the use of native languages. We must make it compulsory to learn English as well as one’s mother tongue beginning from the primary schools. Second, we must try to modify and adapt English to our requirements. Singapore is creating ‘Singlish’ by combining certain grammatical features of Singaporean with English. We must similarly create Hinglish by a combination of Hindi and Tinglish with a combination of Tamil. Third, we must take up a massive program to translate our scriptures and regional literature in English so that it becomes accessible to the people world over. We must make English an instrument of spreading our culture globally.
We should look at the positive features of English and use them to spread our own culture instead of enscombing ourselves in the narrow confines of our native languages. Language is only the vehicle of our culture. It is not the content of our culture. We must focus on holding on to the content and not get distracted in focusing on the language. It is like writing a bad exam in Hindi versus writing a good exam in English. The Congress Party was established by the British rulers to provide a platform for the native leaders to vent their feelings and thereby stabilize the British Empire. Gandhiji turned it around and used that same organization to throw the British out of India. Similarly we must use English to spread our culture across the globe instead of letting it become an instrument of the death of our culture. Let the bureaucrats do the job of governance instead of consulting Hindi dictionaries.

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