Indian literacy and the renewed importance of vernaculars

For this entry I simply want to summarise and comment on an article by Samanth Subraiman for the New York Review of Books* earlier this month. It discusses the recent victory of Narendra Modi in the Indian elections and suggests that the country’s obsession with English may be weakening.

At independence in 1947, 1500 languages were spoken in India and a national language was needed to unite the new country. The first prime minister, Jwarharlal Nehru, had suggested Hindi, which was widely understood by both Hindus and Muslims in the north of the country. But many people in the south resisted Hindi because it is not related to most of the languages spoken there, such as Tamil and Kannada. The other choice was English, introduced by the British and spoken proficiently by a small but successful minority of people like Nehru himself, who was educated in the UK, and Gandhi, who had been a barrister. As well as linking the north and south, English offered a poor country access to advanced technology and information.

Over the last 60 years, there have been many attempts to promote Hindi, and also regional languages. But all this time English has continued as the language of the elite. It has been assumed that most people who are literate and economically successful know English. The country’s recent economic growth and its success in producing software engineers and running call centres have been closely connected to the abilities of the English-speaking elite.

According to Subraiman, the election of Modi suggests a change of direction. He is not from a wealthy background and had to work his way through university. Although he does speak English, he is much more comfortable in Hindi or his native Gujerati. Meanwhile India’s economic growth has helped to increase literacy. Only half the population could read and write in 1981. By 2001 this was up to 65% and now it is over 73%. This means that many more people in small towns and rural areas can read, and most of them prefer to do so in Hindi or in local languages. So there has been a huge growth in non-English newspapers. Their quality is getting better and they are writing about international issues and business and technology, not just local stories.

Subraiman is not saying that English is no longer important, but that to be successful in India you do not necessarily have to know English any more.

At first the article made me think of China. China’s economy has grown so fast and its population is so large that, like America, it can now maintain a strong economy even when there are economic problems in the rest of the world. And although millions of Chinese are learning English, I don’t think they need to know the language in order to become rich and successful. Could India be going in the same direction?

The article also made me wonder about other parts of Asia. I don’t think Malaysia or the Philippines are going to reject English in the near future. However, they may begin to think of it more as a foreign language and as a useful tool for international business, rather than as the main language of their own elites and the only path to success in their own countries.

*
http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2014/jun/09/india-newspapers-after-english/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=June%2010%202014&utm_content=June%2010%202014+CID_2e5778eea30b0b5cdd212d088a98bfda&utm_source=Email%20marketing%20software&utm_term=India%20After%20English

Pacific English

One of the reasons I haven’t added to this blog for some time is that I’ve been out of Asia. Now that I’m back I thought I would write an entry about English in the Pacific island nations of Fiji and Tonga. This is slightly off topic, but both have some interesting Asian connections.

Fiji was a British colony from 1874 to 1970. The Union Jack forms part of its flag and Queen Elizabeth appears on its banknotes. Perhaps it is not surprising that most people speak English - but as I have suggested before (e.g. in the April, 2009 entry on the ‘invasion’ of English), the connection between colonialism and language is rarely direct. In the case of Fiji there seem to be several reasons favouring English, some dating to colonial times and others more recent.

The first is that there are two distinct ethnic groups. Nearly 60% are Fijians, who started settling the islands more than 5000 years ago and seem to have come mainly from the Melanesian islands to the west, with others from Tonga and elsewhere in the Pacific. About 40% are Indo-Fijians, descended from Indians brought by the British in the 19th century to develop agriculture. Many Indo-Fijians speak some Fijian, a language sharing common origins with Malay based on the dialect of one of Fiji's smaller islands. But few Fijians speak Fiji-Hindi, the main language of the Indians. This means that English is an important bridge between the two groups.

English is also the main language of education. As in many multilingual developing countries, local languages (i.e. Fijian and Hindi) are limited mostly to the early years of elementary school. Although many secondary schools target different ethnic groups (partly because the Indians tend to be Hindu or Muslim whereas the Fijians are nearly all Christian), both teach mostly in English. It is the language of higher education, with many institutions supported by Australia and New Zealand. Some students go to those two countries to further their studies, and others go to the various campuses of the University of the South Pacific (USP), not only in Fiji but also in other Commonwealth nations in the region.

Alongside sugar, Fiji’s most important industry is tourism, with most visitors coming from Australia and New Zealand. Culturally too, with a national obsession with rugby, the country is closely linked to these countries, and thus to their language.

My main interest in visiting Fiji was to look at the legal system. Given the importance of English in other areas, I was not surprised to find the courts using that language for proceedings. Interestingly, every court had a clerk who was fluent not only in English but also in Fijian and often in Hindi too. I never heard a judge speak any language other than English, and the court clerks were kept busy translating for people who did not understand the language so well.

Tonga has just 100,000 people, making it 10% the size of Fiji, and all of them speak Tongan. Although part of the Commonwealth, it was never formally colonised by Britain and has its own royal family. I therefore expected Tongan, which is the national language, to be more important than English.

In general that is probably true. When I went to the Magistrates Court, for example, proceedings were entirely in Tongan. There are now has many Chinese inhabitants (in a scheme to earn foreign currency, over 4000 have been granted citizenship in the last ten years), and two of the cases I saw involved burglaries on Chinese shops. I was expecting the Chinese witnesses to speak Mandarin or English and was surprised that they spoke quite fluently in Tongan.

I also learned that all laws are published in Tongan (as well as English), and that the national language must be used for debate in parliament. However, as in Fiji, English is very important in education. Many schools are run by international Christian organisations and teach in it. Although the University of the Pacific has a local campus, many people seeking a degree have to go overseas. Most lawyers, for example, study at the USP campus in Vanuatu, while others go to Auckland and Sydney.

Despite the use of Tongan in the lower courts, in the higher courts everything is in English. As far as I could tell, everyone in the courtroom except myself and the judge was from Tonga. But if defendants or witnesses spoke in Tongan, it was translated into English. (On the other hand, not everything spoken in English was translated for their benefit into Tongan.) I was given two reasons. First, every Tongan lawyer and judge has trained in English, so it is considered the language of law, except for the simple cases heard in the lower courts. Indeed the barristers look just like their counterparts in London, with wigs and black gowns – except that they wear sarongs and sandals. The second reason is that nearly all the judges are from Australia or New Zealand. I was told this was to prevent corruption: with only 100,000 people, most locals seem to know each other, and so it might be difficult to ensure impartial decisions without using outsiders.

When I looked at some laws written in Tongan I was impressed by how many local words exist for legal and business terms. On closer reading I noticed that many have been adapted from English to the sounds of Tongan. Examples include: Ateni Seniale (Attorney General), komisiona (commissioner), konisitutone (constitution), holoseila (wholesale), lesisita (registration), laiseni (licensing), peilifi (bailiff) and pisinisi (business).

Bangladesh

In many of the countries frequently mentioned in this blog, English is a practical tool of communication for people with different language backgrounds. India, for example, has hundreds of languages, thirty of them spoken by communities of more than a million people. Although Hindi is widely understood in the north, it is less well-known – and less loved – in the south. English is often the choice for inter-regional communication, and is also favoured by the educated elite. In neighbouring Bangladesh, however, the picture is quite different. Except in a few remote areas, virtually all of its 160 million people speak Bangla/Bengali.

Indeed Bangla, which is also spoken in India and ranks sixth among the world’s languages, was a major reason for the creation of the country. Formed originally into East Pakistan when India was divided into Muslim and Hindu territories at independence in 1947, the Bengali people came to feel isolated and disadvantaged by policies made in more powerful – but less populous – West Pakistan that favoured the Urdu language. Reinforced by economic problems, linguistic nationalism led to a war with the West resulting in the foundation of Bangladesh in 1971. Bengalis remain proud of their language and less than 3% of them speak English. Rabindranath Tagore, who was from over the border in Calcutta but owned land in what is now Bangladesh, was the first Asian to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. Although educated in London, he wrote mostly in Bangla.




Despite all this, English has a prominent position in Bangladesh. It is used widely in higher education and law – indeed it is the only language of the higher courts, and lawyers who are poor in English cannot expect to get well-paid work. It is also considered the key to business success. The streets of Dhaka are full of advertisements for English courses.


Why should English be so important even in a country where most people speak the same language and are proud of doing so? Perhaps it is partly because of economics. While conditions have improved greatly in recent years, Bangladesh remains one of the world’s poorest countries. Trading, working and studying overseas are seen as crucial to economic improvement.