perspective

and Kannada and Hindi passably. He also The Rise and Fall of the has a reading knowledge of French and German. On the other hand, Mukul Kesa- Bilingual Intellectual van and I are essentially comfortable in English alone. We can speak Hindi conver- sationally, and use documents written in Ramachandra Guha Hindi for research purposes. But we can- not write scholarly books or essays in Hin- This essay interprets the rise and 1 di. And neither of us can pretend to a third fall of the bilingual intellectual in his essay is inspired by an argu- language at all. modern India. Making a ment between the scholar-librarian TB S Kesavan and his son Mukul that 2 distinction between functional I was once privy to. I forget what they were Let me move now from the personal to the and emotional bilingualism, it fighting about. But I recall that the father, historical, to an argument on the question argues that Indian thinkers, then past 90 years of age, was giving as of language between two great modern writers and activists of earlier good as he got. At periodic intervals he Indians. In the month of April 1921, would turn to me, otherwise a silent spec- M­ahatma Gandhi launched a broadside generations were often tator, and pointing to his son, say: against English education. First, in a intellectually active in more than “makku!”, “paithyam”! Those were words speech in Orissa, he described it as an one language. Now, however, that Mukul, born in Delhi of a Hindi- “unmitigated evil”. Bal Gangadhar Tilak there is an increasing separation speaking mother, did not himself under- and Rammohan Roy would, said Gandhi, stand. But I did. They meant, roughly and have “been far greater men had they not of discourses – between those respectively, “imbecile” and “lunatic”. the contagion of English learning”. In who operate exclusively in B S Kesavan knew that I lived in Banga- G­andhi’s opinion, these two influential English and those who operate in lore, that both my parents were Tamil, and and admired Indians “were so many pig- the language of the state alone. that one of my great-uncles had been a mies who had no hold upon the people Tamil scholar. Thus, when his son’s stupi­ compared with Chaitanya, Sankar, Kabir, The decline of the bilingual dity (real or alleged) could not be ade- and Nanak”. Warming to the theme, intellectual is a product of many quately conveyed in their shared lan- G­andhi insisted that factors, among them public policy, guage, namely, English, he took recourse what Sankar alone was able to do, the whole army of English-knowing men can’t do. I can elite preference, new patterns of to his mother tongue, which was also theo­retically mine. The emphasis must be multiply instances? Was Guru Govind a product of English education? Is there a sin- marriage, and economic change. on “­theoretically”. My great-uncle the gle English-knowing Indian who is a match Tamil scholar used to write postcards ask- for Nanak, the founder of a sect second to ing me to “learn Tamil and lead a simple none in point of valour and sacrifice?... If the life”. I failed him wholly in the second re- race has even to be revived it is to be revived 1 spect, but have down the years managed not by English education. to pick up a few dozen words of Tamil, A friend, reading the press reports of among them makku and paithyam. this talk in Orissa, asked Gandhi to ex- B S Kesavan was formidably multi­ plain his views further. Writing in his own lingual. He was fluent in Tamil, Kannada, newspaper, the Mahatma clarified that and English, spoke Bengali adequately it is my considered opinion that English edu- and Hindi passably, and had a good grasp cation in the manner it has been given has of Sanskrit. No doubt his multilingualism emasculated the English-educated Indian, it has put a severe strain on the Indian stu- came in handy in his work as the first dents’ nervous energy, and has made of us I­ndian director of the National Library, his imitators. The process of displacing the ver- nurturing of a national information sys- naculars has been one of the saddest chap- This essay is based on a lecture delivered at the ters in the British connection. India International Centre, New Delhi, on tem, and his pioneering histories of pub- 15 May 2009, to mark the birth centenary of lishing and printing. However, his taste “Rammohan Roy would have been a B S Kesavan. I am grateful to Rukun Advani, for languages was shared by many other greater reformer”, claimed the Mahatma, André Béteille, Alok Rai, Geetanjali Shree and Indians of his generation who did not “and Lokmanya Tilak would have been a Rupert Snell for their advice and help. The neces­sarily require those skills in their greater scholar, if they had not to start usual disclaimers apply. jobs or careers. My own father, for in- with the handicap of having to think in Ramachandra Guha ([email protected]) is stance, who was a paper technologist by English and transmit their thoughts chiefly a historian and writer based in Bangalore. profession, speaks English and Tamil well, in English”. Gandhi argued that “of all the

36 august 15, 2009 vol xliv no 33 EPW Economic & Political Weekly perspective superstitions that affect India, none is so to English learning as such”, but merely to east and west were either written in Eng- great as that a knowledge of the English its being made a fetish, and to its being lish or translated by a colleague under his language is necessary for imbibing ideas preferred as a medium of education to the supervision. Tagore understood that while of liberty, and developing accuracy of mother tongue. “Mine is not a religion of love and humiliation at the personal or thought”. As a result of the system of edu- the prison-house”, he insisted: “it has room f­amilial level were best expressed in the cation introduced by the English, “the even for the least among God’s creation.” mother tongue, impersonal questions of t­endency has been to dwarf the Indian Refuting the charge that he or his non-co- reason and justice had to be communi­ body, mind and soul”.2 operation movement were a manifestation cated in a language read by more people One does not know whether the Mahat- of xenophobia, he said: and over a greater geographical space ma’s anonymous friend was content with I hope I am as great a believer in free air as than Bengali. this clarification. But someone who was the great Poet. I do not want my house to be By writing in English as well as their less than satisfied with Gandhi’s views walled in on all sides and my windows to be mother tongue, Gandhi and Tagore were was the poet Rabindranath Tagore. He stuffed. I want the cultures of all the lands to serving society as well as themselves. was then travelling in Europe, where he be blown about my house as freely as possi- They reached out to varied audiences – ble. But I refuse to be blown off by any.4 received, by post, copies of Gandhi’s arti- and, by listening to their views, broadened cles. Tagore was dismayed by their general These words are emblazoned in halls the bases of their own thought. This open- tenor, and by the chastisement of Ram­ and auditoria across India, but always minded-ness was also reflected in their mohan Roy in particular. On the 10 of May without the crucial first line: “I hope I am reading. Thus Gandhi read (and was influ- 1921, he wrote to their common friend as great a believer in free air as the great enced by) thinkers who were not neces- C F Andrews saying “I strongly protest Poet”. In truth, despite this argument in sarily Gujarati. The debt he owed to against Mahatma Gandhi’s depreciation of theory, in practice Gandhi and Tagore Ruskin and Tolstoy was scarcely less than such great personalities of Modern India were more-or-less on the same side. that owed to Raychandbhai or Narsi as Rammohan Roy in his zeal for declaim- G­andhi wrote his books in Gujarati, but M­ehta. Gandhi was also enriched by the ing against our modern education”. made certain that they were translated time he spent outside Gujarat – the several G­andhi had celebrated the example of into English so as to reach a wider audi- years in England, the several decades in Nanak and Kabir, but, as Tagore sug­ ence. And when required he could use the South Africa, the millions of miles travel- gested, those saints “were great because conqueror’s language rather well himself. ling through the Indian countryside. in their life and teaching they made orga­ His first published articles, that appeared On his part, Tagore was widely read in nic union of the Hindu and Muhammadan in the journal of the Vegetarian Society of European literature. When he visited Ger- cultures – and such realisation of the spir- London in 1891, were written in the direct many in the 1920s at the invitation of his itual unity through all differences of and unadorned prose that was the hall- publisher, Kurt Wolff, his host remem- a­ppearance is truly Indian”. mark of all his work in English, whether bered the “universal breadth of Tagore’s In learning and appreciating English, petitions to the colonial government, learning”, their conversations revealing argued Tagore, Rammohan Roy had e­ditorials in his journals Indian Opinion, “without doubt that he knew far more of merely carried on the good work of Nanak Young India, and Harijan, or numerous the West than most of the Europeans he and Kabir. Thus “in the modern age Ram- letters to friends.5 encountered knew of the East”. Tagore mohan Roy had that comprehensiveness had spoken, among other things, of the of mind to be able to realise the funda- Early Bilingual Intellectuals work of T S Eliot. “It is quite remarkable”, mental unity of spirit in the Hindu, In writing in more than one language, said Wolff, “that someone born in India in Muham­madan and Christian cultures. Gandhi was in fact merely following in the 1861 should display such an interest in and Therefore he represented India in the full- footsteps of those he had criticised. For grasp of an Anglo-American poet thirty ness of truth, and this truth is based, not Bal Gangadhar Tilak’s mother tongue was years his junior”.6 upon rejection, but on perfect comprehen- Marathi, a language in which he did cer- Like Gandhi, Tagore learnt as much sion”. Tagore p­ointed out that tainly publish essays. On his part, Ram- from his travels as from his books. He Rammohan Roy could be perfectly natural mohan Roy had published books in Per- spent long periods in Europe, visited Japan in his acceptance of the West, not only be- sian and essays in Bengali before he came and the United States several times, and cause his education had been perfectly East- to write in English (he was also fluent in also went to China, south-east Asia, Iran, ern, he had the full inheritance of the Indian Sanskrit and Arabic). As for Tagore, this and Latin America. wisdom. He was never a school boy of the West, and therefore he had the dignity to be man who shaped and reshaped the B­engali the friend of the West. If he is not understood language through his novels and poems, 3 by modern India, this only shows the pure made sure that his most important works For Gandhi, and for Tagore, the foreign light of her own truth has been obscured for of non-fiction were available in English. language was a window into another cul- 3 the moment by the storm-clouds of passion. His major political testament, National- ture, another civilisation, another way (or Tagore’s letter to Andrews was released ism, was based on lectures he wrote and ways) of living in the world. For them, the to the press, and read by Gandhi. His delivered in English. His important and command of a language other than their a­nswer was to say that he did “not object still relevant essays on relations between own was a way of simultaneously making

Economic & Political Weekly EPW august 15, 2009 vol xliv no 33 37 perspective themselves less parochial and their work would, he thought, perhaps be played by also of sensibility. The writer, his work, more universal. Their readings and travels Russian or Chinese in the future. Lohia and his audience, all benefited from the fed back into their own writing, thus himself knew German (he had taken his fact that the person in question was in bringing the world to Bengal and Gujarat, PhD at the University of Berlin), while command of more than one linguistic or and (when they chose to wrote in the for- some of his finerst polemical essays cultural universe. Surely Bachchan’s Hindi eign language) Bengal and Gujarat to the against the use of English were written in verse must have at some level been influ- world. Bilingualism was here a vehicle or that language itself.9 enced by, or been a response to, his doct­ something larger and more enduring – So in fact Lohia was not an exception af- oral work at Cambridge on W B Yeats. By the namely, multiculturalism. ter all. Bilingualism and multiculturalism same token, his classroom teaching and In these respects Gandhi and Tagore came naturally to him, as it did to the other the occasional essays he wrote in English were wholly representative. Before them leaders of his generation. It also came nat- must certainly have been enriched by his there was Syed Ahmad Khan, who moved urally to the social scientists who were immersion in the world of Hindi letters. between Urdu and English as he strove their contemporaries. Of those active in the (Perhaps the most striking instance of simul­taneously to make the British more 1940s and 1950s, the anthropologists this bilingualism concerns the crafting of sensitive to Muslim interests and Muslims Nirmal Kumar Bose and Irawati Karve, the Premchand’s Godan. This work, published more willing to engage with modernity. economist D R Gadgil, and the sociologist in 1936, is considered the very archetype After them there was B R Ambedkar, who D P Mukerji – all made a name for them- of the modern Hindi novel, yet the author wrote in Marathi for a local constituency; selves for their work in English as well as first outlined the plot in English!) and in English for the rest of India and for for their writings in their mother tongue. the world. Ambedkar knew his T­ukaram, They tended to publish academic papers in Multilinguality in Mysore but also his John Stuart Mill. To take an- English, and more popular or literary essays In the inter-war period, no Indian town other example, C Rajagopalachari is still in Bengali or Marathi. Sometimes the work better expressed this multilinguality than admired for his English style; but few now in the local language was translated into the town where B S Kesavan spent some of know that he was a pioneering essayist English, and made a c­onsiderable­ impact his best years, Mysore. Among the town’s and short-story writer in Tamil.7 He knew (as for example with Karve’s re-rendition of residents then were the Kannada poet his Kural, but – as he once reminded an the Mahabharata, Yuganta). As with Gandhi K V Puttappa (Kuvempu), who wrote interviewer – he had also read Thoreau and Tagore, the process of enrichment was p­olitical essays in English; the English well before he met Mahatma Gandhi. two-sided – they themselves became less novelist R K Narayan, who was equally Raja­ji’s contemporary V D Savarkar also parochial, while through their writings they fluent in Tamil and Kannada; and the jour- wrote books in English, as well as plays allowed their parish to feel palpably part of nalist H Y Sharada Prasad, who thought and polemical tracts in Marathi. From the a wider world. and wrote in Kannada, but whose com- other end of the political spectrum, con- The bilingualism of the politicians and mand of English was later put to good sider the communist Hiren Mukherjee, scholars was matched by the writers and e­ffect in the very many speeches he who was a prolific writer and polemicist in critics. It was, I think, Harish Trivedi who ghosted for successive prime ministers of both Bengali and English.8 first noted that many of the finest creative India. A somewhat younger resident was writers of the middle decades of the 20th A K Ramanujan, who later recalled that, Lohia and Multilingualism century were professors of English, yet growing up in Mysore, he had necessarily A thinker-politician who, at first glance, wrote their poems and stories in other to b­ecome equally familiar with the may seem to have been an aberration is languages. His essay is not at hand as I l­anguage of the street (Kannada), the lan- Rammanohar Lohia. To be sure, Lohia write, but among the names Trivedi may guage of the kitchen (Tamil, spoken by his called for the abolition of English from have mentioned were the poet Gopal­ mother), and the language of the study educational institutions and in public life, krishna Adiga and the novelist U R Anantha upstairs (occupied by his father, who liked and, at the same time, for the countrywide Murty in Kannada; the poet Harivanshrai to converse in English). Ramanujan was promotion of Hindi. However, Lohia advo- Bachchan and the short story writer an accomplished poet in both Kannada cated not monolingualism but multi­ N­irmal Verma in Hindi; and the poet Firaq and English, and achieved undying fame lingualism. He asked for school instruc- Gorakhpuri in Urdu. All taught English for his translations into English of Kan­ tion to be provided in the mother tongue, l­iterature; some even had PhDs in the sub- nada and Tamil folklore and folk poetry- but insisted that children must, in addi- ject from the best British universities. work that was e­nabled, in the first in- tion, learn two other languages – Hindi, L­iterary historians could doubtless add stance, by his g­rowing up in the multilin- and e­ither a foreign language or another many other names to the list – of estab- gual intellectual universe of Mysore. I­ndian language. He saw the need for an lished writers in Assamese, Oriya, Bengali, Mysore was here representative of other international language, to be used in com- Tamil, Telugu, etc, who made their living towns in colonial India. The intellectual munications between nations, but was not teaching English yet wrote in the mother culture of Dharwad, Cochin, Allahabad, convinced that this had necessarily and tongue in order to live. etc, was likewise bilingual, with writers for all time to be English. The role had Here, too, facility with more than one and professors operating both in English been played by French in the past; and tongue was a matter not just of skill but and in the language of the locality or

38 august 15, 2009 vol xliv no 33 EPW Economic & Political Weekly perspective p­rovince. There was a cultural continuum very many intellectuals who are properly in the second, Hindi in the third) as well that ran between qasba and mahanagar, linguidextrous. Earlier this year, Ranajit as English. A fourth name might be that of between the smaller urban centres and Guha was awarded the prestigious Anan- the young historian Arupjyoti Saikia, who the great cities of the presidencies. da Puraskar for a book on Tagore in Ben- writes in both Assamese and English.12 The bilingualism I have described was gali. Coincidentally, his collected essa­ys In general, though, the gap between the a product of a particular historical in English were published in the same generations is telling. Consider thus the c­onjuncture – namely, the advent first of week. Ranajit Guha is of course a prabasi, career of Sadanand More, whose major colonialism, and later, of nationalism. The but of those still resident in Kolkata, works include a reception history of the British required some Indians to learn S­upriya Chaudhuri, Sukanta Chaudhuri, poet-saint Tukaram and a study of the English, to interpret between them and Partha Chatterjee, and Swapan Chakra- transition from Tilak to Gandhi in the poli­ their subjects, and to assist in governance varty are all world-renowned scholars for tics of western India. As I have discovered and administration (as well as in com- their writings in English – and they have on several visits to Puné, he is something merce and trade). However, over time the written first-rate essays and books in Ben- of a cult figure in Maharashtra, because of language of the rulers also became a vehi- gali as well. These scholars are all the his books and his columns in newspapers. cle to demand equal rights from them. wrong side of 50, but there are, I am relia- Had he written in English, he might have Thus, from being an accessory in the pro­ bly told, some Bengali men and women now been considered the Partha Chatterjee of cess of conquest and control, English be- in their 30s and 40s who likewise move ef- Maharashtra – he is comparable in the came an ally in the process of protest and fortlessly between the language of the range of his interests and the originality of profanation. It was the language in which world and the language of the locality. his mind. I base this judgment in part on Indian nationalists chasisted the British In a life lived in-between the interstices several long conversations with Sadanand for not living up to their own best tradi- of the academy and the press, I have had More, and in part on having read the first tions. Simultaneously, it also became the the privilege of knowing and befriending half of an English translation of one of his language in which intellectually or politi- many linguidextrous intellectuals. Some books, which is being undertaken – as a cally minded Indians could communicate are prabasi Bengalis, such as those labour of love and disinterested scholar- across the different linguistic zones of the r­emarkable couples Tanika and Sumit ship – by one of the last properly bilingual Empire. Notably, even as they acquired a Sarkar, Kalpana and Pranab Bardhan, and intellectuals in Maharashtra, the septu- working knowledge of English (or better), Meenakshi and Sujit Mukherjee. Others generian poet-editor Dilip Chitre. these reform-minded Indians continued to have come from more subaltern linguistic operate in their mother tongue. The latter zones, for example, Kumar Ketkar, Madhav Intellectually and Emotionally served best for creative literary expression, Gadgil and Rajendra Vora (Marathi), Bilingual and when focusing on the abolition of re- S­hahid Amin (Hindi), Girish Karnad and A distinction must be made here b­etween actionary social practices; the former was D R Nagaraj (Kannada), C V Subba Rao reading a language and knowing it necessary for nurturing or deepening cross- (Telugu), Jatin Kumar Nayak (Oriya), and through and through. There are those provincial networks of political action. N S Jagannathan (Tamil). Like me, all who are functionally bilingual; and yet these writers have written a great deal in others who are intellectually and emotion- 4 English; unlike me, they have published ally bilingual. I use letters and news Between (roughly) the 1920s and 1970s, important work in their other language r­eports written in Hindi for my research, the intellectual universe in India was – to too. In countless conversations down the raiding them for facts and opinions. But coin a word – “linguidextrous”. With few decades, I have been to them what the I do not read Hindi for pleasure, nor could exceptions, the major political thinkers, readers of Gandhi and Tagore were to I think of writing an essay in Hindi in a scholars and creative writers – and many those great Indians – namely, a grateful quality journal. In this I believe I speak for of the minor ones too – thought and acted recipient of knowledge and understanding many other social scientists of my age or and wrote with equal facility in English derived from languages that I do not younger. These too may be able to use an and at least one other language. It appears m­yself speak or read.10 Indian language as source m­aterial, but – that this is no longer the case. The intel- Notably, the individuals mentioned in unlike their predecessors N K Bose and lectual and creative world in India is in- the preceding paragraph are over 50 years Irawati Karve – cannot see themselves as creasingly becoming polarised – between of age.11 Speaking of the younger genera- contributing to literary or academic debate those who think and act and write in Eng- tion, linguidextrous intellectuals run more in that language. They, and I, are admittedly lish alone, and those who think and write thinly on the ground – at least outside of cosmopolitan, but in a somewhat shallow and act in their mother tongue alone. Bengal. Of scholars in their 40s, I can sense, knowing the world well without think easily of only three who would qual- knowing the locality­ much – or at all. West Bengal an Exception ify – A R Venkatachalapathy, Tridip At the same time, at the other end of the The state of West Bengal appears to have Suhrud, and Yogendra Yadav. All have linguistic spectrum, many – perhaps most held out best (and longest) against this considerable and independently won rep- – of the best poets and novelists in Tamil, separation of literary and intellectual dis- utations for their writings in their Kannada, Hindi, Oriya, Gujarati, etc, are courses. At least in Kolkata, there are still l­anguage (Tamil in the one case, Gujarati likewise completely comfortable in one

Economic & Political Weekly EPW august 15, 2009 vol xliv no 33 39 perspective language only. They may occasionally case, whether intellectual or not, original social bases of the intellectual class. Litera- read a novel or tract in English, but most or not, they operate in English alone.) ture and scholarship across India were once of their reading – and all their writing – is dominated by brahmins, Banias, Kayasths, confined to a single language, their own. 5 and well-born Muslims. But from the No Kannada novelist of the younger gen- There is still a certain amount of fun­ 1950s, very many dalits and members of eration has anything like the acquaintance ctional bilinguality among India’s intelle­ the Other Backward Classes (OBCs) began with western literature and social theory ctual class; but emotional or intellectual entering schools and colleges. Some went once commanded by U R Anantha Murty. bilinguality, once ubiquitous, is now on to become professors and writers, tak- The Hindi writers I meet are all deeply present only in pockets, these too of chief- ing to jobs and careers that would have rooted in their environment, yet few ly older women and men. What are the been closed to men and women of their f­ollow Nirmal Verma in his curiosity reasons for this? A key reason, in retro- background half a century previously. about, or knowledge of, the wider world. spect, was the creation and consolidation My evidence is somewhat anecdotal, of linguistic states after 1956. I have ar- Removal of English but I believe most observers will agree gued elsewhere that linguistic states have In most states, however, instruction in with the thrust of my conclusions – name- helped save the unity of India. Had we not government schools was conducted in the ly, that there has been a decline in the allowed states to be constituted around official language of the state alone. There number and visibility of scholars and writ- language, and had we instead imposed was little room for English – sometimes, ers who are properly linguidextrous. The Hindi on the whole country, we might no room at all. English was removed from third class of bilingual thinkers, the politi- have gone the way of a now divided Paki- Gujarati schools in the 1950s and from cians, is wholly depopulated now. In my stan and a w­artorn Sri Lanka.13 schools in West Bengal in the 1970s – each view, the last active politician to have any I believe that on balance, linguistic states time, at the instance of men (Morarji serious claims to intellectual originality were indeed a good thing. Even in the par- D­esai in the first case, Jyoti Basu and was Jayaprakash Narayan, who, of course, ticular context of intellectual work, they Ashok Mitra in the second case) who were wrote and thought and argued in both have had good as well as bad effects. The themselves superbly fluent in English. It Hindi and English. (Critics with more lax expansion of the school network, and the has been claimed – not altogether implau- standards may offer the names of Mani entry into the political system of previously sibly – that the parochialism and xeno­ Shankar Aiyar and Arun Shourie. In any excluded groups, has greatly deepened the phobia that underlies the rise of a certain

40 august 15, 2009 vol xliv no 33 EPW Economic & Political Weekly perspective G­ujarati politician is not unrelated to the This separation of discourses is reflected sphere, millions of Indians in other jobs, banning of the one language which, to in the growing distance – cultural as much trades, and professions are acquiring pro- quote that other and more broad-minded as geographical – that now exists between ficiency in tongues other than their own. Gujarati politician, would have best the qasba and the mahanagar. Smaller a­llowed the cultures of other lands to be towns tend to produce thinkers and writers 6 blown freely around and about the west who operate in the local language alone, In those essays of 1921, Gandhi had hedged coast of India. Similarly, the decline of whereas professors and students in the his opposition to English with a series of West Bengal as a centre of science and elite colleges of the metropolis are often caveats. “I am opposed to make a fetish of scholarship is not unconnected to the comfortable only in English. In a cultural English education, I don’t hate English equally misguided decision to ban and linguistic sense, Karnatak College, e­ducation”, he said. “I know what treasures E­nglish-teaching in the state-run schools Dharwar, is worlds removed from Christ I have lost not knowing Hindustani and of the province. College, Bangalore; DAV College, D­ehradun, Sanskrit”, he continued. We may endorse In the 1960s and 1970s, at the same time from St Stephen’s College, Delhi. these sentiments while recognising, 60 as the subaltern classes were producing Notably, the decline of intellectual years after Gandhi’s death, that an equal their first major crop of scholars and writ- b­ilingualism has been accompanied by a danger lies in making a fetish of the oppo- ers, the elites were choosing to patronise rise of functional bilingualism among the sition to English. Those who banned Eng- English-language schools alone. In the population at large. Many more Indians lish in West Bengal deprived millions of north Indian public school I studied in, now speak more than one language than schoolchildren of a wider education. Now, Hindi was verboten – the boy most badly they ever did in the past. The universe of to those Kannada writers who ask for in- ragged in my time spoke ungrammatical the farm and village is classicaly mono­ struction in the mother tongue alone, the English with a Hindi accent. The experi- lingual, whereas the universe of the office dalits answer – first you did not allow us ence was representative – in other towns and factory emphatically is not. Thus, in- to learn Sanskrit, now you want to deny us and cities across India, upper caste chil- dustrialisation and urbanisation have access to English. dren whose fathers may have, in colonial brought together millions of people speak- The decline of the bilingual intellectual times, studied in government schools ing different languages at home. Migrants in contemporary India is thus a product of where both Sanskrit and the local lan- to cities and towns find that the lingua a combination of many factors: public guage had an important place, were sent franca of their workplace is, as often as p­olicy – which emphasised the mother to “convent” or public schools where Eng- not, something other than their mother tongue alone; elite preference – which lish was the preferred language of com- tongue. Bihari labourers in the informal d­enied or diminished the mother tongue munication, with Hindi (or its equivalent) sector in Kolkata have perforce to speak altogether; social change – as in new pat- allotted a minor, residual and contempti- Bengali, while Malayalam workers in pub- terns of marriage; and economic change – ble place in the curriculum. lic sector units in Bangalore have neces- as in the material gains to be had from a sarily to learn some Kannada. command of English. Role of Inter-Community Meanwhile, Hindi and English have Marriages emerged as pan-Indian languages of com- Opposite Trend in Europe English in post-colonial India was the lan- munication and conversation. Where offi- The temporal sphere of my arguments is guage of status and prestige. With the cial attempts to promote Hindi in southern restricted to the 20 century; the spatial opening of the economy after 1991 it also and eastern India conspicuously failed, sphere, to my country alone. Those who became the language of economic and the language has nonetheless spread know the history of precolonial India may material advancement. The spread of through the more informal, and hence have interesting and important things to E­nglish was further helped along by the more acceptable, medium of television say about the multilingual nature of intel- growing number of inter-caste and inter- and film. In cities like Bangalore and lectual discourse in past times.14 Mean- community marriages in urban India. If, H­yderabad, in Mumbai, and now even in while, as someone who has a casual ac- for example, a Tamil-speaking girl met a Kolkata, Hindi is widely used as the de- quaintance with contemporary Europe, let Bengali-speaking boy in an office which fault language of conversation between me suggest that the intellectuals in that functioned in English, and the two fell in t wo Indians reared to speak other tongues. continent have gone in exactly the reverse love and later married, the chances were, The spread of English owes itself to more direction to ours. Once, they operated and are, that the home language would, instrumental factors – the fact that it is the mainly or even exclusively in the language by default, be English, this becoming, in language of the international market- that defined their nation – the French in time, the first, preferred and perhaps also place, and of the larger companies and French, the Spanish in Spanish, etc. Now, sole language of the children of the union. firms that operate in it. Since the best-­ with the emergence of the European U­nion Cases like these must, by now, number in paying and often most prestigious jobs and the growth of English as a g­lobal the hundreds of thousands. And it is from d­emand a knowledge of English, there is a l­anguage, these French and Spanish and professional unions such as these that huge incentive to acquire it. German thinkers have abandoned their some of India’s most prominent scholars And so, while intellectuals tend increas- o­pposition to the foreign tongue without and writers have been and will be born. ingly to operate in a single linguistic disavowing their own. The best (or at rate

Economic & Political Weekly EPW august 15, 2009 vol xliv no 33 41 perspective most successful) French thinkers now are heard him speak in either Hindi or Eng- that year, from the IIC bar. And, so, in this linguidextrous, writing essays and books in lish, among them the very many students manner, works originally composed in San- their own language as well as in English. he trained and inspired at the universities skrit, then rendered in Tamil and still later Scholars in other European nations have of Rajasthan, Delhi, Hyderabad and Santi­ translated into Hindi, were to fuel the belly gone even further. Thus, the distinguished niketan. After he quit academic life, Ramu and the mind of the most brilliant man to ecological thinker J Martinez-Alier writes Gandhi’s main theatre of operation was have walked the lawns or entered the bar in English for a global audience, in Spanish the India International Centre (IIC), where or spoken in the auditorium­ of the IIC. for his compatriots, and in Catalan for the he would lecture occasionally in the audi- The story may be apocryphal, but it de­ ­ people of his own province. torium, and more informally – if to equal serves to be true. For it illustrates like noth- I shall end this essay with two stories effect – in the lounge or the bar. ing else the beauty and potency of intellec- which illustrate the sometimes unantici- Ramu Gandhi was the son of Mahatma tual and literary bilingualism – practised, in pated glories of the best kind of linguid­ Gandhi’s youngest son, whereas his mother this case, across three successive generations extrousness. When H Y Sharada Prasad was the daughter of C Rajagopalachari. In – father, daughter and grandson. died last year, a letter-writer in Outlook the mid-1950s, when Ramu was entering magazine complained that in all his years university, Rajaji took an extended holiday Notes in New Delhi, serving prime ministers and from politics to write modern renditions of 1 “An Unmitigated Evil”, Young India, 13 April 1921. earning their trust and respect, Sharada the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. He 2 “English Education”, Young India, 27 April 1921. 3 Rabindranath Tagore, Letters to a Friend: Edited Prasad had never lifted a finger for a s­ingle wrote them first in his native Tamil, and with Two Introductory Essays by C F Andrews Kannadiga. The parochialism was charac- then translated them into English. (­London: George Allen and Unwin, 1928), p 165. 4 “English Learning”, Young India, 1 June 1921. teristic of our times. For what the letter- 5 Cf Sunil Khilnani, “Gandhi and Nehru: The Uses writer did not recognise is that by trans- Lakshmi Devadas Gandhi of English” in Arvind Krishna Mehrotra (ed.), The Illustrated History of Indian Literature in English lating the novels of Shivarama Karanth These modern versions of the epics proved (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2003). into English, Sharada Prasad had done a so popular that a demand arose for trans- 6 See Michael Ermarth, ed. Kurt Wolff: A Portrait in Essays and Letters (Chicago: The University of far greater service to the Kannada lan- lations into other languages. Rajaji’s Chicago Press, 1991 – translated by Deborah guage, and to Kannadigas, than had he daughter, Lakshmi Devadas Gandhi, vol- L­ucas Schneider from a German text published in 1966), pp 116ff. got some of them 10 minutes with Indira unteered to do them in Hindi, a language 7 A state of affairs (or of ignorance) that can now Gandhi or an out-of-turn gas connection. she knew well in part due to long resi- be redeemed by Vasanthi Srinivasan’s fine book, Gandhi’s Conscience-Keeper: The Political Sharada Prasad spoke Kannada, Tamil, dence in New Delhi. The Hindi versions P­hilosophy of C Rajagolalachari (Ranikhet: Telugu, and English very well – and knew sold briskly and continuously – they were P­ermanent Black, 2009). 8 Possible exceptions to this trend are M A Jinnah, some Sanskrit and Hindi too. The other still selling in the 1960s, and well into the Jawaharlal Nehru, and Subhas Bose, who were Indian of my acquaintance who comes 1970s. Sometimes towards the end of that also all thinker-politicians, albeit of a mono­ lingual variety. Jinnah, as is well known, was not closest to this multilingual dextrousness is decade Lakshmi Devadas Gandhi decided exactly fluent in Urdu. Nehru could give a public the current governor of West Bengal, to make a will. However, as the daughter lecture in Hindustani and Bose in Bengali; h­owever, their major writings, like Jinnah’s, are Gopalkrishna Gandhi. Literary critics and daughter-in-law of ascetic and incor- all in English. know Gopal Gandhi as the translator into ruptible politicians, she had no worldly 9 See the writings and speeches collected in Ram- manohar Lohia, Language (first edition, 1956: Hindi of Vikram Seth’s novel A Suitable possessions to speak of. r­evised and expanded edition, Hyderabad: Ram- Boy. He has also written his own books, in Except, of course, for the royalties from manohar Lohia Samata Vidyalaya Nyas, 1986). 10 This list, based on personal experience, is merely English. However, these are only two of those translations. Who then to will them illustrative. the languages this good man can fluently too? Lakshmi Devadas Gandhi had three 11 The youngest is Jatin Nayak, who is 54. D R Nagaraj and C V Subba Rao would also have read, write, and speak. I recently discov- sons. The first, Rajmohan was a journalist been in their mid-50s were they alive. Their ered that his first literary production was and author of popular works of biography deaths were a deep personal loss to this writer, and a greater collective loss for intellectual life in undertaken as a boy of 17, when he trans- and history – surely the Fourth Estate and general. What they would have accomplished had lated the memoirs of Manu Gandhi from his publishers would take care of him were they lived another 10 or 20 years beggars the im- agination. Subba Rao died in 1994, Nagaraj in Gujarati into English. He speaks Tamil, he ever in distress. The youngest son, 1996 – I miss them still. which was the language of his mother, Gopal, was a member of the Indian Ad- 12 Also just short of 50 is Sanjay Subrahmanyam, whose other main scholarly languages are Portu- quite beautifully. More recently, he has ac- ministrative Service – he would, in time, guese and French, in both of which he writes and quired an adequate knowledge of Bengali. get a sarkari pension linked to the cost-of- lectures. He also knows Dutch and Italian, and grew up speaking Tamil and Hindi. Had he cho- For all his achievements, among Indian living index. That left the middle son, the sen to focus to more narrowly on Indian history intellectuals at any rate, Gopal Gandhi dreamy philosopher who had left six jobs rather than on wider issues of global and compar- ative history, he might now be writing in Tamil can only be known as the younger brother and declined to accept six others. (or Hindi) apart from English. of the philosopher Ramchandra (Ramu) So it was to Ramu Gandhi that the royal- 13 See Ramachandra Guha, India after Gandhi: The History of the World’s Largest Democracy (Delhi: Gandhi. Although he wrote several impor- ties were willed, and to him, after his moth- Picador India, 2007), Chapter IX and epilogue. tant books, Ramu Gandhi was at his best er’s death in 1983, that they came. Every 14 Cf Sheldon Pollock, The Language of the Gods in the World of Men: Sanskrit, Culture, and Power in at the lectern. I have never heard a more year, without fail, Ramu would get a cheque Premodern India (New Delhi: Permanent Black, brilliant lecturer – a judgment that would, for several thousand rupees, that would 2007). Also Sheldon Pollock, editor, Literary Cul- tures in History (New Delhi: Oxford University I think, be endorsed by most people who comfortably cover the cumulative bills, for Press, 2004).

42 august 15, 2009 vol xliv no 33 EPW Economic & Political Weekly