Chapter III: English Is a Language like Any Other Language
‘Bhaiya B-30 kaha Parega (Where is B-30)?’ Three years ago three young boys, about 19-20 asked me in Hindi when I was carrying two heavy bags to my residence after alighting from the metro at Khan Market Metro Station.
I told the direction to the youngsters. I did not mind, though I am not 100% sure, if my ego was not hurt, when they addressed me as ‘Bhaiya’, a derogatory address for a well-educated person like me. However, ‘bahiya’ is also used to address elder brother. In this particular case, they did not address me as their elder brother as in reality, I may be older than their parents. But I was not angry with them; rather, I was amused that they might have thought me as a labourer. Oh do not tell me that they thought me little older than them (Should I not be happy!).
Though, I was new to that place, I had already noticed, that normally, there are very few pedestrians on the streets except daily wage earners, CPWD’s manual workers, students and family members of the Servant quarters. Therefore, their address to me as Bhaiya, not as uncle or something else, might be perfectly justified. As, in India, Dignity of Labour is the first causality in the public places!
But what followed had disturbed me a lot more. All three boys appeared to be from good family background and that was really worrisome. They were walking about five feet ahead of me and thinking (probably) I am illiterate, they freely, with pretty loud voices, were discussing about a common friend, using the dreaded four letter(F…) word quite frequently, ignoring very existence of an old( or young) fellow like me. There may be two reasons of ignoring me, one, they might have the perception, that I am an illiterate person or, two, they don’t bother, very existence of any other fellow, irrespective of his age, background etc. The second perception is probably more dangerous.
That reminded me an old incident involving one of my school teachers, Late Chota Mian Sir, who taught us English in class VIII. He was an extremely simple, but very learned man and on principle, he never used to wear any shoe or chappal on his feet and always clad in Dhoti and Kurta.
The rail way line connecting Tezpur (Rangapara) and Jonai (North Lakhimpur) is crossing a village named as ‘Ghahi Gaon’ in Sootea Subdivision of Sonitpur District of Assam. Sir used to take a short cut to school which was along the train line.
One fine morning, he saw a crowd on the train line. When he approached the place where the crowd had been gathered, he saw a tom- tom car with two railway officials on it. They were inspecting the track. But reaching the place, he was feeling very bad as the two officials were talking in English and criticizing the crowd in the most derogatory manner. After listening to them for a few minutes, in chaste English, he asked the officials, should he translate to the villagers what they were saying about them (villagers).
For a moment, they were shell shocked and in the following moments, with folded hands, they apologized for their words and requested Sir, not to translate what they were saying. Sir did not translate those sentences, only advised them not to repeat the same mistake in future.
I am sure, they never did any such type of mistakes in the rest of their lives. I told this story many a times to my children, so that, they do not underestimate any person for his dress, background, colour or any other reasons.
Let me come to the original point. If the present generation develops a feeling that, anything can be spoken in public by using English language, we, as guardians have the bounden duty to impress upon our wards to see the reason, for not doing that again!
However, in India, unfortunately intelligence of a person is judged by English speaking capacity. It is nothing but a colonial mentally inherited from the British Raj in India. I am blessed to visit few non-English speaking country where progress in industrial sectors and other scientific sectors far ahead of India or any other South Asian countries where English is spoken amongst the elites. We normally conveniently forget that English is nothing but a language to communicate our minds to another person like any other language. However, I agree that English is a lingua franca for most of the countries in the world; but it is also equally important to remember that English is not the most spoken language in the world!