Identity and Multilinguality The Case of India

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Identity and MultilingualityThe Case of India

• R. K. Agnihotri

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An Introduction

• Multilinguality constitutive of Human Existence
• Linguistic Identities more fundamental as they
  construct a greater part of most other identities
• Policy makers preference for homogeneity

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Objectives

• Comparison of Linguistic situation before and
  after independence
• Effect of hegemonious policies on the political
  situation especially highlighting the push
  towards homogeneity
• Rise of English

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Hindustani

• Language common to both Hindus and Muslims .It
  was written in both Devanagari and Perso-Arabic
  scripts.
• Today it has ceased to exist .Only small traces
  can be found here and there

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The Divide

• Establishment of Fort William College in Calcutta
  on May 4, 1800.
• James Gilchrist (17571842) its first Professor
  of Urdu
• Accentuating the minor differences

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• The college started publishing books in two
  different scripts with the
• Hindu India-Muslim Pakistan theory
• Lalluji Lal and Sadal Misra
• Haidar Baksh Haidari and Sher Ali Afsos

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• The Hindus are now very much up and are trying to
  eliminate all words of Persian or Arabic origin
  and our text book committee has got under the
  influence of the ultra-Hindu section and are
  writing primary text books in Sanskritized Hindi
  which the people cannot understand - Harcourt
  
• 
  Butler

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• The only constant was British political
  interest - Rahman(1996)
• A dichotomy was created not only between the
  Hindi and Urdu languages, but also between the
  Hindus and the Muslims.
• Hindustani subjected to linguistic engineering

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• Hindus and Muslims began to alienate themselves
  from each other on account of a few lexical items
  and script.
• Urdu became a symbol of Muslim imperialism
• Hindi became a symbol of protest

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The Constituent Assembly

• Established in 1946 for drafting the
  Constitution
• Included oligarchy as well as a representation of
  minorities
• On Language policy it was clearly divided

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The Debates

• The suitability of a language requires a large
  number of things. It requires great writers,
  great thinkers, great men, scientists,
  politicians, philosophers, litterateurs,
  dramatists and others. I believe without giving
  any offence, that Hindi is a language which is in
  a very rudimentary condition in this respect. -
  Ahmad
• Languages do not develop by putting limitations
  on the contrary, they develop by expansion and by
  borrowing words from every language. They are not
  imposed on people. They attain popularity by
  their mode of expansion. - Mohammad Hafizur
  Rahman

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• S.V. Krishnamoorthy Rao of Karnataka, an
  important member of the CA, argued that it was
  unfair to declare a language that was not even
  understood by one third of the country and still
  not standardized, as an official language

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• Sanskrit The champions of Hindi believed
  language development consisted of freeing it from
  foreign infuence.
• The mother of all languages Pandit Lakshmi
  Kant Maitra

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What they decided

• Hindi in the Devanagari script as the official
  language of the Union
• Autonomy to states on the matter of regional
  language
• Left the list of Languages in the VIIIth schedule
  open

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English

• Two points of view
• A marker of the British rule
• It was a world language

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• Nehru argued that it must become a language of
  the masses.
• The Constitution had English as an official
  language for 15 years after which the status
  would be reviewed
• But there were widespread riots in the South

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• English opening the doors to religious and
  cultural enlightenment, English as a tool of
  colonial exploitation and political
  consolidation, and English symbolizing the
  killer language for various languages and
  cultures. Kachru(2005)
• If one were to narrow down ones choice to a
  single issue that divides the rich and poor of
  South Asia, it would without doubt be English.

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What if..

• If Hindustani had been adopted as an official
  language in both scripts, the author remarks that
  it would have gone on to become a language of
  science and technology ,of mathematics and
  philosophy which both Hindi and Urdu have failed
  to accomplish

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Education

• CABE Central Advisory Board of Education
• the principle of mother-tongue instruction in
  primary schools, and official support for this,
  and for the use of mother-tongue instruction at
  higher levels

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• But the classroom is a multilingual environment.
  Espousing a monolingual policy can never work.
• CABE tried to make the mother tongue as the mode
  of instruction and hence tries to make a three
  language arrangement in the classroom
• But there were very divided results all over India

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• A national language policy will first have to be
  negotiated with a completely different view of
  language, a view which looks at language as
  constantly engaged in the process of creation and
  identity formation and not as a reified object.
  Pattnayak
• But our knowledge of the relationship between
  multilingualism and cognitive growth and
  scholastic achievement is vastly richer than it
  was then

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Recent Developments

• NCERT undertook the task of revising the current
  curriculum.
• Earlier approaches focused on Minimum Levels of
  Learning (MLL) which the author terms hilarious
  and with good reason

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Recommendations

• Multilingualism is a normal human state of
  affairs it is an asset it should be treated as
  a resource, a teaching strategy and as a goal.
• There is a strong positive correlation between
  multilingualism and cognitive growth, divergent
  thinking, scholastic achievement and levels of
  social tolerance.

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• It is imperative that children achieve high
  levels of proficiency in different languages.
  This is particularly true of languages that would
  be the media of instruction in content subjects.
• Mother tongues of children in a given classroom
  should constitute not only the medium, but often
  also the content of teaching and learning.

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• Language teaching should be sensitive to the
  relationship of language with thought, gender and
  social power.
• It is important to ensure that the language of
  each child be respected in the classroom.

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• Over 12 of children suffer severe learning
  disadvantages because they are denied access to
  primary education through their mother tongues -
  Jhingran
• Conversational English may be introduced at early
  stages of education, if adequate facilities are
  available

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Multilingualism in the Classroom

• In the case of language, all the language data a
  teacher might need is present in the classroom
  itself
• Teaching strategies
• Whole process rather than the product that is at
  the heart of this approach

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Conclusion

• The author has clearly succeeded in giving us the
  complete picture of the language situation in
  India using its history and gradual development
  through time.
• Through his many arguments he manages to show how
  the absence of the knowledge on multilingualism
  hyas affected us

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• The various effects of choosing language as an
  identity marker and how it can be manipulated
  have been clearly shown.
• He also goes on to show how this situation can be
  turned around by using this same language as a
  tool.
• In essence the paper just goes on to show how
  multilingualism and not monolingualism is a more
  integral part of identity

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Thank You