Musings by M.V.Kamath

Whose language is it any way

By M.V. Kamath

Take a taxi or drive a car along Mumbai's main arteries and note what happens when one stops at a red traffic light. The chances are that a swarm of urchins will surround the vehicle to ask the passenger:"Uncle, want magazine?". It is always uncle; never mama or kaka.

A recent survey asked slum children what they want most to learn. Invariably, the answer was: English. The children in Mumbai's teeming slums have no use for Hindi, much less for Marathi or any other Indian language. A smattering of English, as they saw it, would take them to a better future than punditry in any Indian language. Indian language medium schools are now closing. The growing demand is for English, no matter how poorly taught.

It is against this background that the decision of two governments, one in Tamil Nadu and another in Maharashtra should be noted. The Government of Maharashtra would like English to be introduced in school from Standard I. The Government of Tamil Nadu has ordered that Tamil be the compulsory medium of instruction in all schools, including matriculation and private primary schools from standard I to V.

That many school managements in Chennai have moved the Madras High Court challenging the Government Order is another matter.

According to the Tamil Nadu government, in the land of Tamils with a population of approximately 6 crores, only 1,008 schools were run for those whose mother tongue was other than Tamil. Though there were more than 40,000 government and aided schools in the State, there had been a mushroom growth of nurseries which had been thrusting on children "a foreign culture" of calling their parents 'mummy' and 'daddy' instead of 'pappa' and 'amma'.

If only the Tamil Nadu government had made a study of upper middle class families in Mumbai it would have learnt hat most of the children are deficient in knowledge of their mother tongues, whether it be Gujarati or Marathi or ought else and parents spoke to their children in English.

The pros and cons
The argument in favour of teaching English right from Standard I is that it would prepare children to face teaching in English at higher levels, and that, what is more, it would prepare them for migration to the United States, Canada or Australia, forgetting that 99 per cent of school children would never leave their shores.

In a surfeit of linguistic patriotism Gujarat State once experimented with education strictly through the Gujarati medium but there came a time when advertisements began to appear that said that Gujarat University students need not appear for tests. Gujarat State got the message.

But is not strictly true that education in one's mother tongue is detrimental to a child's future. Raghunath A. Mashelkar who is now Director General of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research went as a child to a municipal school in Mumbai and did his entire schooling, on his own admission, in Marathi.

He came, besides, from a desperately poor family. That he later won several scholarships to go abroad, get a doctorate, became a Fellow of the prestigious Royal Society (FRS) and even become chairman of the Standing Committee on Information Technology of the World Intellectual Property Organisation in Geneva, Switzerland, which has world wide a membership of 171 countries, testifies to the fact that getting the entire school education in one's mother tongue is not necessarily a bad thing, even if it is argued that Mashalkar as a genius must be considered exception to the general rule.

Tamil Nadu fails to learn education
The plain tragedy is that even after 50 years of freedom of our States have not been able to formulate a uniform policy towards education. The Tamil Nadu government in its submission to the media has been quick to point out how Telugu has been the medium of instruction up to the university level in Andhra Pradesh. But if it were left entirely to the wishes of parents almost everywhere in the country, governments would have to introduce English in schools right from Standard I.

The rush for English-medium schools is truly amazing.

Following the alleged model set up by Andhra Pradesh, the Tamil Nadu government in its order has made it mandatory for all institutions, including matriculation schools in Tamil Nadu to adopt Tamil as the only medium of instruction. It is too early to state how the Tamil public will react.

Does teaching of English from Standard I vitiate the ethos of a state? Will we, in the end, turn out only Brown Sahibs who were deficient in knowledge of their own culture and heritage? The matter has been in the past debated ad nauseum but as yet there has been no study made on the subject - country-wide.

In Tamil Nadu several school managements have moved the Madras High Court challenging the Government Order, on the ground that the government move would ultimately affect lakhs of students who would find it difficult to switch to English medium after Standard V.

Much, of course, would depend upon how many hours are spent in the teaching of English after Standard V. For that matter even in Maharashtra, exactly how many hours would be allocated to the teaching of English from Standard I?

And how many hours would be allocated to teach the mother tongue? In the end a great deal will depend on parents themselves, and the domestic surroundings. If, in their anxiety to help their children learn English faster, the parents themselves resort to English even at the dining table, then the battle is lost even before it has been fought.

It is not so much what is taught at school that is of over-riding consideration as what parents do to guide their children in their daily life at a time when there are several television channels open in Indian languages, that would matter in the end.

Language and culture intertwined
Language is a reflection of our culture and if, for strictly economic reasons, we encourage the study of all subjects only in English to the detriment of our own languages we may find a generation that is out of step with the real India in another thirty years if not sooner.

The warning has to be sounded. There is need for a proper balance in the roles assigned to English as well as peoples' mother tongues in structuring our curricula.

In this regard, the experience of West Bengal which is also now switching to English as the medium of instruction should be taken into consideration. Hasty decisions taken in panic can only lead to confusion.

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