If someone tells me that he’d prefer kids learning German over Sanskrit, I’d first ask him watch The Matrix in Hindi or read Shakespeare in Telugu, or the Gitanjali in Gujarati. Cringing at the thought? Wonder what convinces you that reading translations of Sanskrit works will be good enough.
India had British colonizers, or we’d be speaking Spanish like the Argentinians, or Portuguese like the Brazilians. English became almost our second language, opening up the world for us. I wonder though, if parents would’ve been proud to have their kids narrate poems in Portuguese. It occurs to me that English as a tool of communication, admittedly powerful, and English as a status symbol got mixed up somewhere along the way. Along with the classification of all things native as outdated, looking down upon them.
I live in Berlin now, for a day job, I’d deal with people from 40 countries – some in person, some over calls. We all communicate in English. Often, I need to simplify, when people politely say “My English is not so good”, without being embarrassed. Step out of office, and the local life is all German. Restaurants, Departmental Stores, Ticket Windows – they’d speak limited English to get by, but conduct business largely in German. More interestingly, EVERY newspaper or magazine at a station stall, including a Cosmopolitan – is in German. Not ONE in English.
And that’s Germany, one of the richest countries, with highest standards of development – public insurance, infrastructure, free education – all things developed. Oh, but India’s different. We need to speak English to get jobs with MNCs, and it’s the language of the world. Sure. So we use it for convenience. But why the classism? Why does HMT or behenji get tossed around as an insult? Why does a idea of a Hindi Cosmopolitan seems as crass as the image of Mastram – with low quality paper and B grade pictures. Why did Hindi become cheap?
Is that because the India born, Britain educated civil servants had the English world-view in looking at the rest of us as uncivilized? Are we still carrying the strains of slavery to hold non-white/ non English speakers as inferior? Or shall we credit Macaulay for his success in enslaving a mighty civilization by breaking a generation’s connection with its own roots. By dismissing Indian traditions as pagan sources of embarrassment, they did sell us into the white man’s burden theory. They needed the story to guise their exploitation as a noble mission before the world. No wonder, we need a Kissinger to acknowledge a Chanakya or an Aveda to build a billion dollar business based on Ayurveda, before we realize the worth ourselves. Our language is but one casualty, albeit one of the more impactful ones.
Ironic that we use English as a medium of instruction to potentially understand the works of knowledge created in the west but have shied away, or sometimes even looked down upon learning Sanskrit as the route to accessing the vast knowledge of Indian literature. Like the son of a Harvard professor, who can’t read his dead father’s notes, because he doesn’t understand that language. Someone comes from the outside, sells him MBA in 10 days, pretending to be a savior – and tells him to junk the notes, because they’re worthless.
Why hasn’t enough investment being made into the language – in training teachers, in making advanced studies to bring some of the stories from the Upanishads to the mainstream education process, even as an elective. Why does an Indian kid have to wait for a BBC documentary – to discover all the things that the ancient Indians knew? Shouldn’t the state be investing in getting authentic versions of these works in modern visual formats – perhaps like how BR Chopra brought Mahabharat alive, or what Ramanand Sagar did to Ramayan. Can’t we have high quality animations in sanskrit that entertain as well as educate? Whose job is it, if not the state’s? Chanakya’s Arthashastra is as secular as it can be, and yet it doesn’t appear in any curriculum. Yet, I do remember having studied Max Weber and Emile Durkhiem as part of the compulsory humanities courses at IIT.
Would it help India if each student grew up learning enough Sanskrit to devour one of the ancient texts like he would go through a fat novel? Let him then independently judge if it’s any good or not. Why leave it to his personal pursuits alongside a demanding professional life? How many of us really learn a new language after school? Funnily enough, the original Indian student philosophy has been to question everything – not to reject something without knowing enough about it. And someone advocating Sanskrit would automatically get stereotyped and classified as a right wing > saffronist > sanghi > MCP > hypocrite > anti-muslim > patriarch > moral brigade > fake baba.
But I have faith. Hindi and Urdu are too enmeshed in our lives and hearts to perish away. Till there’s Gulzar and Javed Akhtar, and till there’s Bollywood, we’ll do fine. A good poet in Hindi/Urdu will have an audience and Ghalib will be quoted. Maybe there’ll be a day when the world’s professionals would be lining up to learn Hindi, because they want to operate in the world’s fastest growing markets – those of India’s villages and towns. And India will give more copies of what it’s most precious heritage, the Geeta, around, despite criticism.
So well, speak all the English you want to with me, but don’t be smug about it. And before you tell me that Sanskrit is anachronistic, ask Kissinger to stop wasting time writing such blogs.
Lost! 