Indians have been forced slaves to the queen's language since the British East India company conquered India. The freedom movement saw us throw off the yoke of British Imperialism-physically at least.
Mentally we remain slaves. I, for one, can think and write in English with greater ease than in my mother tongue.Our generation was exposed to the spoken language since we grew up in a state that did not teach my mother tongue. Today's generation of parents have taken slavery one step further.
As I travelled to Hyderabad with a young couple and their 4 year old kid the appalling state of our slavery could be seen in the way the couple spoke only in English to the kid. Right! Mr. Technocrat your kid stammers and stutters through English. You want him to 'whine' and 'dine' in English,but I shudder to think of the scene 10years hence.
Now the conversation went as follows:
'Oh! mommy I am bored.'
'Look there is an engine is that Thomas?' (Thomas being the name of some engine in a story book.'
'Can I have some shoup?'
'Not shoup its soup.'
'shoup' went the kid. Mommy started feeding the child some soup.
'Its hot.'
'Is it hot or spicy?' Mommy was quick to put in a lesson on the difference in meaning between the two words.
The parents spoke to each other in Telugu but always in English to the kid. The kid also had a first name, second name and surname pattern which is very alien to us Indians. They probably wanted to jettison the kid straight from the creche to the' land of opportunity.'
I wonder what happens when the peer pressure sets in and the talk becomes 'Hiya Machaan'
'Whathcha doin'
I felt sad that the kid was being cut off from his roots. Can a tree blossom and bloom without roots? Something to ponder about. In another few generations our rich culture and heritage will be lost forever to the world if we stick to English and forget our mother tongue.Indian children being brought up in other parts of the world are taught their mother tongue along with English. My brother and my sis-in-law, who were bringing up their children in the USA made a conscientious effort to speak to their children only in Tamil[being the father's spoken language],
and Bengali[being the mother tongue] and the children automatically learnt English. Hats off to such thinkers who plan well for a problem free tomorrow.
The point to ponder about is whether we are missing the forest while concentrating on the trees.
Let us not deprive our children of their rich heritage and make them, 'Dhobi ka kutta, Na ghar ka na ghat ka.' Learning to speak only English from birth does not make one a Britisher.
