Earlier this week, Union Home Minister Amit Shah declared that soon, in India, English speakers would “feel ashamed”. The remark drew predictable outrage. Yet beyond knee-jerk criticism, the statement deserves discussion - about what it says about the ruling party’s approach to cultural politics and what it reveals about elite privilege and the mass resentment it provokes in our country.
I absolutely grant that access to English is an immediate source of inequality in contemporary India. But unlike almost any other form of inequality (caste, money, etc), it's the easiest to fix, by democratizing access to English. This is low hanging fruit.
IMO this needs to become political and cultural commonsense... hence my resistance. (I know you don't disagree, this is a matter of difference of emphasis). Maybe one difference is that I wouldn't even attempt to make common ground with someone who doesn't recognise this...
Being from the southern part of the country and as someone who speaks broken Hindi, it terrifies me that the Honble HM is saying this. So many politicians from the Hindi heartland already spout openly that only those who speak in Hindi can be Indian citizens. This will give more impetus to such elements and as a counter reaction, will further harden the anti-Hindi stance taken by the regional parties in the South. I personally believe all Indian languages need to be promoted while democratizing English like you pointed out rightly. That's the way forward. Thank you.
I see where you are coming from, but I have to register scepticism (which to be fair you do as well) to any good faith interpretation of the Hon'ble HM's statement. 'Shame' is itself a sinister political aim to express so directly.
I see plenty of students whose English skills are not great. While there's plenty of diffidence, I have not seen shame (though maybe it hasn't registered). And attempts at moving away from English in higher education at least are in my view non-starters.
Nor do I see much evidence of the odious looking down on non-English-speaking types by Indian elites of the kind one did see, eg, thirty years ago in places like St Stephen's College. I wonder if it's a generational thing.
One must also remember that there are lots of non-elite speakers of English outside the Hindi belt as well.
Bottom line: I'm troubled by the implicit framing of English-speaking=elite=only questionably Indian, which I think lie in the background of your piece as well as others like Yogendra Yadav. Kudos though for the attempt to move beyond a kind of kneejerk liberal critique!
I absolutely grant that access to English is an immediate source of inequality in contemporary India. But unlike almost any other form of inequality (caste, money, etc), it's the easiest to fix, by democratizing access to English. This is low hanging fruit.
IMO this needs to become political and cultural commonsense... hence my resistance. (I know you don't disagree, this is a matter of difference of emphasis). Maybe one difference is that I wouldn't even attempt to make common ground with someone who doesn't recognise this...
Being from the southern part of the country and as someone who speaks broken Hindi, it terrifies me that the Honble HM is saying this. So many politicians from the Hindi heartland already spout openly that only those who speak in Hindi can be Indian citizens. This will give more impetus to such elements and as a counter reaction, will further harden the anti-Hindi stance taken by the regional parties in the South. I personally believe all Indian languages need to be promoted while democratizing English like you pointed out rightly. That's the way forward. Thank you.
I see where you are coming from, but I have to register scepticism (which to be fair you do as well) to any good faith interpretation of the Hon'ble HM's statement. 'Shame' is itself a sinister political aim to express so directly.
I see plenty of students whose English skills are not great. While there's plenty of diffidence, I have not seen shame (though maybe it hasn't registered). And attempts at moving away from English in higher education at least are in my view non-starters.
Nor do I see much evidence of the odious looking down on non-English-speaking types by Indian elites of the kind one did see, eg, thirty years ago in places like St Stephen's College. I wonder if it's a generational thing.
One must also remember that there are lots of non-elite speakers of English outside the Hindi belt as well.
Bottom line: I'm troubled by the implicit framing of English-speaking=elite=only questionably Indian, which I think lie in the background of your piece as well as others like Yogendra Yadav. Kudos though for the attempt to move beyond a kind of kneejerk liberal critique!