Angrezi mai boliye! Hindi, English and India's linguistic puzzle

Simon Harding

10th December 2009

'Main Simon hun', I said, struggling with the deep nasal sounds, which are so common in Hindi, 'main UK se hun'. A smile spread across my teacher's face, 'bahut achchaa', she said, 'very good'. My delight at actually saying something comprehensible in this hitherto mysterious puzzle of a language took me back to my first encounters with German and French in a secondary school classroom many years ago and many miles away. This was only my second Hindi lesson with Neelam, whose patience, clear methodical approach and light-hearted tolerance of mangled Hindi has been perfected during thirty years of teaching, and already I found myself able to eavesdrop a few words and phrases from conversations in the office.

Why bother to learn Hindi? After all, India is an English speaking country! Indian authors write beautifully crafted novels in the language, whilst journalists at The Hindu and The Times of India churn out news and op-eds in high-quality English. For the middle and upper classes, English is not merely a second language for official business or studies. They speak to each other in English at home, amongst friends, at parties. They flit between English and Hindi effortlessly, sometimes two or three times in the same sentence, showing staggering fluency in both mother tongues.

English is also the language of the government and of higher education because it act as a compromise between the largely Hindi speaking north and the large number of Tamil, Bengali, Malayalam and Kannada speakers, to name just a few of India's many languages, who view Hindi as a Northern imposition. English works as a compromise because it does not belong to any one regional group (at least one that's still in the country!). If a Tamil executive and a Hindi-speaking businessman meet in the lobby of a Mumbai hotel, they may well gravitate towards English as a common language; as neutral territory. Anyone who's been to university - a large swath of the middle class - will have a decent level of English, a contributing factor in India's growth as an ICT superpower and call centre hub.

However, venture out of the office or the hotel lobby and onto the streets and life becomes harder for the English speaker. Most working class Delhites have a basic English vocabulary: Every number between 1-100 is completely different in Hindi, so most Indians use a lot of English numbers because they're easier. Conversations are also peppered with familiar words: 'mobile number', 'Agra train', 'favourite', 'research' and 'office meeting' are all lifted unchanged. But try and strike up a conversation with a man on the street and you'll be met with smiles and uncomprehending chuckles. Of course you're funny! You're trying to speak a foreign language in the middle of north India's 500-600 million strong Hindi belt: a vast area which stretches from Rajasthan in the West across Delhi, UP and Madhura Pradesh to Bihar in the East. In comparison, India's 55 million English speakers are a mere postage stamp (one which no longer bears the Queen's head).

Head into rural areas and, in the words of David Graddol, a British linguist who recently completed a report on the state of Indian English for the British Council in Delhi, and the English language falls off a cliff. In his report, English Next, Graddol claims that although India's elites have a profound command of the language, English does not extend very far down the social hierarchy. English, says Graddol, is a victim of the wider education system, which fails in numerous departments, not just English. Poor teaching in schools and universities has meant that a generation of people have studied the language for years, yet are still unable to communicate effectively. This much is uncontroversial. Standards of English vary greatly across the country and the education system is in bad shape in many areas. The failure to spread English outside the elite, Graddol continues, means that India may soon lose one of its key advantages over it's massive north-eastern neighbour. China is pumping out 20 million new English speakers a year and may now have more English speakers than India, claims the report, giving Beijing a firmer foothold in a global economy in which English is fast becoming the de facto language of business.

However, China’s claims are disputed by experts who argue that China’s Industrial teaching methods and rote learning combine to churn out poor speakers of English. Others note that the backpacker only has to venture a few miles out into the Chinese countryside and the English suffers a similar nose-dive. Those Indians involved in international business are most likely already perfectly fluent in English and may have even grown up speaking it around the family home. The advantages of learning English are most marked in the lower middle classes.

A few days ago I bumped into Suresh in the local market. He spoke softly, calmly and with all the precision of someone who knows his adverbs from his subjunctives. Despite a modest background and having no university degree, he was making a comfortable living working for a call centre in Gurgaon, one of Delhi’s satellite towns. He’d studied hard at school and taken some English courses, perfecting the language skills which would land him a far better job than many of his peers. English enabled Suresh to tap into the global economy and capture a few of the benefits for himself. But it is not just the global economy which chatters away in English.

Rakesh, a middle-aged auto driver, used to work for a pharmaceutical company in his native Uttar Pradesh. He studied to the 12th grade, which is a relatively high level for an auto driver, but after two years he was compelled to give up the job because he could not speak the flowing English required to sell medical products to highly educated doctors and health professionals. He blames his state’s ramshackle education system for the loss of his job and his consequent move to the capital to do menial jobs, despite his otherwise decent education. For Rakesh, English has little to do with the global economy and competition with China. His lack of English meant that he could not deal with India’s business elite, stifling his earning potential. Similarly, poor English mean that many of Rakesh’s colleagues can’t read the police fines issued to them. More sinister still, they cannot understand the contracts they’ve signed with auto financiers who lend them money to buy their vehicles, often with extortionate interest rates and outrageously harsh penalty clauses.

English is important to India. Whilst its business elites are multi-lingual, multi-cultural chameleons already well-versed in Shakespeare, its aspiring lower middle classes can use English as a step up the social-economic hierarchy. Fluency in English opens up jobs in call centres and tourism, but more importantly, it allows them to communicate and work with wealthy India on equal terms: to sell to them, to understand their contracts and to shatter the elite’s hold on a key language of the state bureaucracy.
A knowledge of English is important for the man walking down the street, not because he has a pressing need to do business with the UK or EU, but rather as it will help him get a good job in India and better understand the workings of the Indian state. English may help him even if he never meets a foreign businessman or tourist.