The continued use of English in government, law, education [medicine & engineering] and business is certainly not because of any ‘obsession’ but due to necessity. First step to rectify was the Official Language Act, 1963, when Hindi was declared the Official Language for Union Government work, with English as link language till 1965; however, when the situation was nowhere as envisaged, use of English was made indefinite. Surprisingly, all States having regional languages [under Art 345] do not appear to face any anti-English bias as the Hindi-lobby at Centre. One cannot agree with the parallels drawn by the author with Japan, Israel and China; India being a multi-culture and multi-language society cannot have one language like Hebrew. Even Canada had to enact their OLA in 1969! Granted that most Indian languages have a better grammatical structure and phonetic base, all of them suffer from rather convoluted scripts [nowhere as simple as Roman] making their writing extremely tedious. However, their biggest challenge to wider use comes from very low vocabulary content – Hindi, the major claimant, has only 10% of English lexicon [1.2m with 8.5K added every year]. DOL despite spending huge amounts of tax-payers money has done precious little to ‘develop’ the language.
Re: The debate should be without political bias!
by ilayaraja elangovan on Jun 27, 2014 12:19 AM
I totally agree that Hindi can't be the binding solution for Indian states who used to be different countries or kingdoms before the Indian state was born in 1947. This will break the country rather than uniting it. The examples provided for countries with one language rather than multiple ones we got. Another challenge with learning Science or Medicine in native language is that the pundits would create their own terminology for technical words which would become a challenge when you want to work at a place which doesn't speak your language. I studied in Tamil until college and faced challenges when I entered Engineering. I'm not a big fan of even studying in Tamil, leave alone learning Hindi which I did. I'm known as a hardcore Tamil fanatic when it comes to the language but learning in college in Tamil or Hindi is not a solution.
Re: Indeed it must!
by ROFLatyou on Jun 27, 2014 12:18 AM
Nothing is shameful . English is used as a tool for business. Tell the world to stop using 0 zero since it is indian!
Re: Think about it
by ROFLatyou on Jun 27, 2014 12:23 AM
It is much easier to teach a billion people English. Already English is learnt by 250 million people and it is used by native Indian language speakers as well like page , internet, Hotel etc . try using these words in 22 plus Indian languages.
Also it is much easier to teach billion ppl a new language which is readily available then to create 20 centres to first invent millions of words, then translate numerous books , then make our ppl read , write and learn and in the end communicate with each other like France and England!!
Tamil Nadu is not a uniform state where everyone's mother tongue is Tamil. There are people speaking Malayalam, Kannada, Telugu, Marathi, Gujarathi, Hindi, so on in Tamil Nadu. TN government is encouraging only Tamil as official language inspite of Indian government recognizing all these languages as official. TN government should correct this grave injustice to language minorities in TN.
Malayalam is a major language in south TN. Similarly Telugu is a major language around Chennai. Kannada is a major language in North-West part of TN. Also languages like Saurashtrian around Madurai, Marathi around Tanjavur, etc. Why TN is ignoring these languages many of them are India has identified as official language and using Tamil as administrative languages.
Re: TN should first do justice to language minorities in TN
by Talisman on Jun 26, 2014 09:37 PM
You shld learn tamil if u live in tn for years. U hld learn malayalam if in kerala u shld learn telugu in andra. U got some wrk todo boy. Time to hit tye books now
I cannot agree with shri Sankrant Sanu's view due to many reasons. Japan, China and Europe cannot be compared with India for the enormity of of our population and multitude of languages requiring promotion by this poor country. The 2nd largest populated country cannot be integrated by dividing the states and making them language islands. We are already facing the state divide effect in water and other resource sharing aspect. What we urgently need is a close control on population explosion and raise the standard of living. cultural thinking can come only after meeting the roti, kapda aur makan theme. Let us think broadly.
Re: Compare Japan, China and Europe with India???
by bigben bigben on Jun 26, 2014 08:28 PM
Roti kapda aur makan became a problem only after british destroyed India. Before that India was one of the most prosperous countries in the world.
You are still stuck in conventional thinking. Europe has 24 languages and they have no problem with doing business with each other. Just like India never had problem for 5000 years before british in trading and communicating among ourselves.
Re: Compare Japan, China and Europe with India???
by niyama on Jun 26, 2014 08:50 PM
Population of India was 1,241 million in 2013. Population of Europe 742.5 million in 2013. Population of China was 1,355 million in 2013.
Re: Compare Japan, China and Europe with India???
by Sankrant Sanu on Jun 26, 2014 08:53 PM
Please search for Why India is a Nation with my name. Indians have been talking to each other for millenia before English.
This is an economic issue. We are being held back because of our English obsession. We are unable to develop the talents of a large number of our people. If can develop these talents, population will become an asset.
Re: Re: Compare Japan, China and Europe with India???
by ROFLatyou on Jun 27, 2014 12:30 AM
How do you propose to change the economic dynamics by asking to invent millions of words to 20 languages and then asking ppl to learn in the end for each of them to fight over which language is better ??
Re: Compare Japan, China and Europe with India???
by Das on Jun 26, 2014 10:30 PM
Why would there be division if English is sidelined? It has not happened in China where Cantonese speaker accept Mandarin! It has not happened in Belgium with Flemish, French and German speakers, despite that they manage without English. No one is going to stop Tamils, Kanada, or Telgu speakers from learning English. But its time this often-repeated patent nonsense of linking economic, technological and scientific progress with the English language. Its quite the reverse. Indian remains woefully backward in economic,social and science & tech sphere precisely because undue emphasis on foreign language English sidelines 95% of the population.
Re: Re: Compare Japan, China and Europe with India???
by ROFLatyou on Jun 27, 2014 12:35 AM
You really want to know? China , Belgium are still bounded by similar culture. Here in India as author itself put it has 29 different cultures and as much diversity.
Your second phase that English language did not bring progress. Wrong. You can see much progress all across India where English is learnt and keeping their Indian languages intact.
The most woefully backward regions on all parameters is the Hindi belt which has just Hindi instead of 3 language formula.
This inspire centre spending eons of tax payers money To promote Hindi !!
Re: Need to decide now
by Raghavendra Ravi on Jun 26, 2014 08:24 PM
this is rubbish.. bad mouthing Brahmins for everything .. what is the moderator doing??
Demonising English because Sanghi's donot like it OR demonising other religionists - all these could be a part of bigger agenda of creating a Hindu Rashtra. When they want to make it a Hindu Rashtra they want to bring their glorious past into existence. What is this glory? They past glory was limited to only Brahmins not to the masses who were treated like insects.
The masses need to understand that the yoke of casteism could be removed only because of education which was made possible for all by British. Else it was again for their own glory Sanskrit was taught by Brahmin guru to a Brahmin Shishya and nobody else was allowed to learn.
Now that because of English a person of every caste is working in MNC's or Software companies and there is nothing like only Brahmins. Go back to just a few decades and there were no Employees of other caste. Only Brahmins were educated. Whether it was Teachers, Professors, Banking, LIC's, Bureucracy or companies like TATA's etc.
English is the language which has made many lower castes equal to Brahmins.
That is unnerving the Brahmins and hence they want to make it a Hindu Rashtra to bring the glory back to Brahmins.
