Opinion In a multilingual nation, how do we determine which language is a worthy medium of instruction?

At the government school in T Shettigeri, Kannada is the medium of instruction. Its students include Kodava-speaking children belonging to the Kodava, Malaya and Panika communities; children of Yerava-speaking labourers belonging to the Yerava tribe, whose socio-economic conditions are close to slavery; Kannada-, Tulu-, Tamil- and Malayalam-speaking children, whose parents are migrant labourers or in low-paid work, go to this government school. All these children belong to marginalised castes and tribes.

What then is the local language in these schools? Kannada is the state’s official language and medium of instruction. Even for a child who speaks Kannada at home, the Kannada of textbooks is too standardised/formalised. One can only imagine how effective learning would be for a child who speaks a language other than Kannada. At Roots, the private school where most children are Kodava speakers, the medium of instruction is English and Kannada is taught as a language. These children who go to Roots, with relatively better resources at home, invariably do better, although no one has made it to the university where I teach.

This scenario, I am sure, is similar to Kasaragod, Bidar, Belgaum, Adilabad, Visakhapatnam, Idukki, Nilgiri Hills and every other place in India. It is also true of urban spaces because no city in India is monolingual. How then do we understand local language and how do we determine the language in which students should gain “knowledge” that is considered worthy?

Situation Two: The University of Hyderabad where I teach is a central university and we get students from all across India. This means we have speakers of Sumi, Ao and Chakhesang from Nagaland; Kashmiri and Balti from Kashmir; Telugu, Malayalam, Tamil, Bangla, Odia, Mizo and many more. Most of our students can speak, read, write in two or more languages — mostly in their home language and in English. Why should we think of teaching and researching anew in one language when there are so many languages that enrich our classrooms?

As I have written in this newspaper before (‘The Hindi scare’, IE, September 20, 2019), the “one language-one nation” syndrome is a colonial, western idea that erased many languages of Europe. It should not be surprising that the idea of mother tongue is also a Western, Christian one. Ivan Illich in Vernacular Values notes that the word mother tongue came to India only in the 18th century via English and as an idea, mother tongue emerged as a territorial claim of the Abbey of Gorze (now in France) in the 11th century and is inseparable from the ideas of motherland, Mother Church and Mother Mary.

Why then do we wish to imitate the West’s notion of one nation-one language, one nation-one culture, one nation-one law, one nation-one religion and so on? How have we — prior to the British, during the nationalist movement, and after Independence — communicated, worked, and succeeded with the many language systems we have inhabited? Was there any single language that helped us unify against the British? Robert B Le Page, commenting on the imposition of Malay, the dominant language of Malaysia, says: “Although ostensibly the objective is the unification of the state, and of a diverse population, through a common education and a common medium of education, in practice it seems to many non-Malays (in Malaysia) that the objective is to establish the native speakers of Malay in a privileged position, to redeem their economic situation and to entrench their political power.” This rings true in our current context. Imagine a Yerava, Kodava, Ao, Garo, Sindhi or Bhojpuri speaker writing the UPSC and other exams in Hindi and a Hindi speaker doing the same. How convenient it is to have your home language as the language of mobility and power!

Instead, maybe we can think of creating a sense of belonging and self-worth through teaching/learning Yerava, Kodava, Tulu, Yerukala, Bheel, Oraon, Toda, etc. in a single classroom and with English as medium of instruction?

The urge of people in power to homogenise stems from viewing people thinking and behaving differently as being illegitimate and posing a threat. This desire to homogenise stems from the thought that Sanskritised, standardised Hindi can make us more “cultured” (this is what the British thought when they wanted to “civilise” us with English education). When difference is too chaotic and needs to be controlled; when difference makes it difficult for power to reinforce itself, power seeks to homogenise and cannot see difference as a resource.

This puffed-up machismo of the written/dominant language-cultures is one version of aggressive nationalism that strives for a thin homogeneity. Thin, because it desires subservience to the culture and politics of the powerful minuscule. Thin, because it does not address structural challenges and hierarchies of our people. Thin, because it cannot understand what goes on with the students, their struggles, their desires — in T Shettigeri, the University of Hyderabad and elsewhere.

The writer is professor, Centre for Comparative Literature, University of Hyderabad