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It was a view which gathered strength. As India approached independence in 1947, many nationalists regarded the English language as the central fact and symbol of oppression. They wanted to be rid of it and the end of the Raj was supposed tobring the slow death of English in India. The new constitution assumed that it would continue to be used as the official language only until 1965 and then it would be replaced entirely by Hindi.

It did not happen.

There are many reasons given for this. Non-Hindi speakers objected to the proposed primacy of Hindi. There were riots in the streets -- to reject Hindi and to retain English. And, pragmatically, the English language had dug deeply into systems of advancement and status. English gave access to the world; best seen in literature, where since independence, Indian novelists writing in English have made tremendous contribution and been celebrated not only in India and Britain but in America and throughout the old Commonwealth and been translated all over the world. . . . ~ Page 248

English absorbed much from India. But India absorbed the whole of English as another of its languages. Today it is spoken fluently by four or five percent of the population, all of whom speak at least one other language just as fluently and often flick from one to the other scarcely noticing the join. Four or five percent may seem a small proportion, but in a country of India’s size this means forty or fifty million people, what Lord Curzon, the viceroy, would have described as the better educated. Beyond, that it has been estimated that upwards of three hundred millions have some contact with it and some knowledge of it. ~ Page 249

2 years ago.

Dinesh ^club

2 years ago.

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