The Karnataka Government's decision to shut English-medium schools in the state if they do not switch to Kannada at the primary school level has predictably created a controversy. The policy was framed in 1994, but had been gathering dust hitherto. The state government’s decision to revive the policy has affected at least 2,000 schools.
The regional language issue has been a bane of independent India and at various points of time has gripped one part of the country or another. The latest is the Kannada controversy, which has reared its head while the nation is in the process of getting integrated with the world primarily on the strength of the English language. For months now, schools in the four Naga-dominated districts of Manipur — Ukhrul, Chandel, Senapati and Tamenglong — are being pressured into adopting the text-book and syllabi of the Nagaland Board of Secondary Education and eventually to affiliate with the Nagaland Board. This, obviously, is a precursor to the demand that the districts should eventually become part of the greater Nagaland.
Whatever the motive or rationale behind such demands, it cannot be denied there are also genuine fears of cultural extinction that fuel such local insistences. One of the dangers of One-India or One-World phenomena is the great insecurity that it creates in minority groups as cultures and languages get swallowed up and there is a struggle for minorities to keep their identities alive. There is a report from Peru’s Summer Institute of Linguistics that 30 of the 100 basic languages in Peru have disappeared in the last few decades and another 12 or so are about to disappear. As monolithic cultures take shape and global languages like English become even more popular, the smaller and less spoken languages will gradually disappear or fall into disuse.
Different communities are reacting to the need to preserve their identity in different ways. Countries like Australia have recently decided that even within the English-speaking world, they need to preserve their own Australian culture and norms and have recently decided that to become a citizen of Australia, it will no longer be enough to just be a speaker of English – one will need to know, according to the Prime Minister, John Howard, “a good deal more about Australia and about Australian customs and the Australian way of life.”
It is important in a diverse country like India to preserve the delicate balance of culture and not allow the hegemony of one culture or language. Many of our tribes are struggling to keep afloat and maintain their identity. It is so easy for them to be swamped completely and be obliterated out of the anthropological map. The people of Karnataka are not a minority and therefore they can express their views, but by fighting for the English language they are teaching us that fighting for language rights and cultural identities can become a tool not of emancipation but of chauvinism.
The regional language issue has been a bane of independent India and at various points of time has gripped one part of the country or another. The latest is the Kannada controversy, which has reared its head while the nation is in the process of getting integrated with the world primarily on the strength of the English language. For months now, schools in the four Naga-dominated districts of Manipur — Ukhrul, Chandel, Senapati and Tamenglong — are being pressured into adopting the text-book and syllabi of the Nagaland Board of Secondary Education and eventually to affiliate with the Nagaland Board. This, obviously, is a precursor to the demand that the districts should eventually become part of the greater Nagaland.
Whatever the motive or rationale behind such demands, it cannot be denied there are also genuine fears of cultural extinction that fuel such local insistences. One of the dangers of One-India or One-World phenomena is the great insecurity that it creates in minority groups as cultures and languages get swallowed up and there is a struggle for minorities to keep their identities alive. There is a report from Peru’s Summer Institute of Linguistics that 30 of the 100 basic languages in Peru have disappeared in the last few decades and another 12 or so are about to disappear. As monolithic cultures take shape and global languages like English become even more popular, the smaller and less spoken languages will gradually disappear or fall into disuse.
Different communities are reacting to the need to preserve their identity in different ways. Countries like Australia have recently decided that even within the English-speaking world, they need to preserve their own Australian culture and norms and have recently decided that to become a citizen of Australia, it will no longer be enough to just be a speaker of English – one will need to know, according to the Prime Minister, John Howard, “a good deal more about Australia and about Australian customs and the Australian way of life.”
It is important in a diverse country like India to preserve the delicate balance of culture and not allow the hegemony of one culture or language. Many of our tribes are struggling to keep afloat and maintain their identity. It is so easy for them to be swamped completely and be obliterated out of the anthropological map. The people of Karnataka are not a minority and therefore they can express their views, but by fighting for the English language they are teaching us that fighting for language rights and cultural identities can become a tool not of emancipation but of chauvinism.
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