Speculations on English Studies in India in the Twenty-first Century

In modern, historically complex open societies, it is difficult to define boundaries of any particular social group and the linguistic and cultural identities of its members. In the twenty-first century, open societies in the developed countries and the cosmopolitan upper middle class in the so-called developing countries will probably identify with more or less similar common cultural practices, given the pace at which technology and information transfer are expected to take place amongst the countries of the world. However, we cannot deny the fact that isolated, homogeneous communities do exist in many parts of the world and will continue to do so. The very fact that they are isolated could bring to light the fact that they, probably, are locked in mutually unintelligible language communities. The twenty-first century will see more and more of these urban upper middle class societies belonging to minority cultures identify with dominant cultures, creating in the process, an international community which shares many common ideologies, social behavioural patterns and common goals, being influenced by and influencing each other in significant ways. Although, this society is bound to be infotech savvy, their very knowledge of infotech will depend heavily upon the Esparanto or common standard that most personal computers use vis-à-vis English. The development of the Internet will be one more fillip to the development of English as a global language. Soon, English is going to acquire a unique status of being a language spoken by more people as a second language than as a first. I would like to examine the effect of this situation on English Studies in the twenty-first century.

In the Daily Telegraph of December 21, 2000, there was a report which was titled "Blimey, what became of the Queen's English?" In this report, the author says that the all pervasive influence of the cockney accent has penetrated the Buckingham Palace, according to a study of the Queen's Christmas Day broadcasts over the past 40 years. He goes on to say that in the fifties, the Queen's short vowels were similar to each other, in fact, rather identical while pronouncing words like 'Hid', 'Head', 'Had', etc, but today the sounds are distinct. Linguists say that the royal accent has shifted from the clipped Queen's English of the forties to pronunciation more in common with the speech patterns of those lower down in social order. Dr Harrington of Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, who carried out his research on the Queen's accent change over the past forty years, said that the Queen's accent reflected a broader change in Received Pronunciation that might be a reaction to the erosion of class hierarchies since the fifties. The most dramatic changes in the Queen's pronunciation took place in the fifties and sixties, a time when the rigid class hierarchies of pre-war Britain were being worn down. If this could happen in one of the most class-conscious societies like Britain, the day is not far off when we will be confronted with a new form of English as 'World Standard Spoken English' as hinted at by David Crystal in his book titled English as a Global Language.

In fact, a foundation for such a development is already being laid all around us. 'World Standard Spoken English' is rather in its infancy. Most people in the world, it is speculated, will be enjoying the privilege of being able to communicate effectively in English as well as their mother tongues. It doesn't stop with just that. The international players will be able to speak intelligibly in English as spoken globally and in English as spoken in their own particular countries or regions. Given this scenario, the only possible notion of English studies one can have is of a course which is going to be greater than the sum of its parts.

I would like to quote the Indian author Raja Rao here. According to Raja Rao, "English is not really an alien language to us. It is the language of our intellectual make-up-like Sanskrit and Persian was before-but not of our emotional make-up... We cannot write like the English. We should not. Nor can we write only as Indians. We have grown to look at the large world as part of us. Our method of expression has to be a dialect which will someday prove to be as distinctive and colourful as the Irish or the American." This gives us a feeling that every English-using country will and should evolve its own variety depending upon the way the local lingua franca shapes the English of that region.

If we attempt to examine the scenario in India, what immediately strikes us is the impossibility of making generalisations. Nearly fifty per cent of India's population is illiterate, yet it has the distinction of having educated the world's second largest pool of scientists and engineers. "India," to quote Shashi Tharoor, "is a pluralistic state, its pluralism emerging from its geography, reaffirmed by its history and confirmed by its ethnography." Under the circumstances, any general prescription for a malady in India tends to become unviable at some stages-this includes a common prescription for issues related to education. Identifying a text which bears common socio-cultural specificity to students from Shillong and students from Madurai is even more difficult than zeroing in on the right text for a cosmopolitan upper middle class Indian student and an American student. Even within our country, there is a vast difference in the encoding of experiences of students from far-flung areas from geographically distant locations. What I would like to emphasise upon here is that while it is true that no two cultures and languages are ever sufficiently similar to represent the same social reality, it is also true that social realities based on human nature have an underlying commonality.

Literature presents to us in one sense 'imaginary' but in another sense very 'real' particular cases of men and women displaying their human nature in thought, feeling and action. In the greatest of literary works, our understanding of human nature is extended and deepened, though not necessarily in ways we can put into explicit words. To pick an obvious example, consider the plays of Shakespeare, of course, with the help of perceptive interpreters. Human nature, as a phenomenon, crosses all boundaries across the world. When we look around us, even today, social and political problems cry out for better understanding of human nature. By and large, social issues almost always revolve around equality of rights, uplifting the underprivileged, poverty or affluence and sometimes the conflicts that arise between the two. Political issues revolve around territorial conflicts, resource sharing and power. Literature from any part of the world deals with one or more of these social or political issues. The themes, in seventy-five to eighty per cent of the cases are universal. The socio-cultural specificity of the text stops with the setting, locale and incidents that the theme is made to revolve around. If it be so, why should a student of literature in India be denied the pleasure of a psychological exploration of characters with Lawrence or sail along with Woolf in a stream of consciousness? At the end of the day, aren't there interpreters all along in the form of lecturers and professors? However, there is one point which has to be very clearly understood while deciding the contents of English studies. Many lecturers and professors from certain colleges complain that their students can hardly communicate in English. If this is true, on what assumptions of previous knowledge does a curriculum-framing body decide on the contents of the undergraduate course material? Should English be taught to the students before English literature? Or maybe, literature of two kinds could be chosen-one to teach language and one to develop literary appreciation. Whatever may be the case-the bottom line is that there has never been a language so widely spread or spoken by so many people as English. There are, therefore, no precedents to help us see what happens to a language when it achieves genuine world status. It is difficult to make predictions, but, no one can stop us from making speculations. One is that people from different parts of the world are going to use English in whichever form they feel comfortable. And, there is bound to be an international variety. If the same course cannot cater to both kinds of users, at some point of time, maybe in this century, there will be a specific course for international level users which might involve the electronic medium in a big way and yet another course for regional users. Yes, I'm only speculating.

Presented by Uma Mani at the ELT Conference 2000, Calcutta University

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