Amit Shah is Home Minister. I wish he had been minister for foreign affairs and made that statement on “English Shame”. Before making that statement, even as home minister he should have asked his son Jay Shah to resign from the chairmanship of International Cricket Council (ICC) and said so. All cricket council meetings take place in English, in India and abroad. Isn’t Amit Shah ashamed of having a son who only speaks in English in all meetings in India or outside?
Why did Amit Shah, a mother tongue nationalist, put his son in an English medium school? The internet source informs that he studied in English medium school and later in Nirma University in Ahmedabad. In which language his professors taught him? In which language did he write his graduation examination? Naturally in English. Was Shah not ashamed of putting his own son right from LKG in the English medium school?
Top Baniya industrialists of Gujarat like Mukhesh and Anil Ambani not only studied in top class private English medium schools, but ran the most expensive private English medium, Dhirubhai Ambani International school in Mumbai. Though Gautham Adani was a school drop out, his children studied in high end English medium schools. Adani Group runs a most expensive English medium school. Do all the young school going children, studying in those schools, speak in English or in Gujarati or Marati in schools with their teachers? Can Amit Shah convert all those private schools into Gujarati medium or Marati medium?
He should have asked the Mukesh Amabani’s family to convert the Dhirubhai Ambani International English medium school, into Marati medium. So also Adani’s International English medium school, Ahamedabad, into Gujarati medium. He should have sent a notice to Ashoka University, Haryana and other private universities to teach multi-regional languages based on the student’s mother tongue, who takes admission, not even in Hindi for everyone, because Hindi is not a mother tongue of every child born in India nor it is friendly language of all Indians as he is repeatedly propagating. Amit Shah out of total ignorance of languages keeps saying that the history of India remains enfolded in regional languages or in Hindi. Absolutely false. Peoples’ and nations’ history remains in the productive knowledge systems. English as a richest language of the world could grasp Indian history much better than in Hindi or in regional languages
HYPOCRISY IS NOT NATIONALISM
The RSS/BJP hypocrites are trying to destroy the future of the younger generation of Shudra/OBC/Dalit/Adivasis by promoting the private sector to use English language in every sphere, and forcing the Government sector systematically to remain in regional languages. Of course the Congress after Independence initiated the English medium in the private sector system and the State Governments were asked to the Government schools in their respectives regional languages. That restricted the regional youth mobility. The Shudra leaders including Sardar Vallbai Patel did not realize its implications to the future Shudra/Dalit/Adivasis rural agrarian masses.
The Bengali and Tamil Brahmins understood the future of English more than any other regional upper castes immediately after Independence. They captured the academic and bureaucratic power from the Nehruvian days because of English. Gita Ramaswamy, a Tamil Brahmin, who later became communist revolutionary wrote in her book Land, Guns, Caste, Woman that in the 1960s her conservative Brahmin parents put all five girl children in Christian English medium schools and used to hate Christianity at home. At the same time they used to buy a lot of English novels for children to read so that the girls could learn good English; allowed them to see English cinemas. She later became an English and Telugu book publisher.
This could be true of Bengali nationalist and communist Brahmins. But nobody from that background wrote an honest autobiography as Gita did. Hypocrisy is the inner essence of Brahmanism. Amit Shah wants to spread this hypocrisy as the Indian Hindutva nationalist ideology. All this is to keep the Dalit/Shudra/Adivasis forces as slaves in the globalized world. Even earlier the Brahminic intellectuals preached this kind of mother tongue theory to the productive masses, while educating their own children in Christian missionary schools. After the pro-Hindutva private English medium schools grew the present RSS/BJP regime is starving the Christian English mediums schools so they could be closed down.
The Western India Gujarati and Marati Brahmin/Baniyas understood the importance of English slightly later and captured the industrial power through the English language itself. Narendra Modi and Amit Shah are their representatives at Delhi. Their only problem is they cannot speak in English. There is no conscious intellectual force among Shudra/OBC/Dalit/Adivasis within the RSS/BJP structures to check this hypocritic propaganda within those organizations. Even in their own organizations English educated Brahmin/Baniya/Kayastha/Khatri/Ksatriya intellectuals deal with global issues. The Shudra/OBC/SC/STs are confined to rural organizational work.
Outside BJP only Rahul Gandhi and Mallikarju Kharge are fighting on an everyday basis even on the question of English and regional language status as well. Now they are saying all children must learn English and regional language. Rahul Gandhi’s consistent fight for equality in all spheres is changing the political scenario.
The Congress party must formulate its long term ideological position about public private English and regional language education. No power on earth can eliminate the English language from India. The RSS/BJP know that well. Their own financers, national and international, do not accept their children getting pushed into the regional language school education. Now the RSS/BJP need an internationally operative intellectual class. If that is not so, why did they choose only English speaking members of parliament across the world for global outreach after the India-Pak recent war? What is the other qualification of Shashi Tharoor except English communication skills?
SENTIMENTALIZING LANGUAGE ISSUE
The Modi Government and the RSS keep telling the innocent masses that they should not send their children to English medium schools by sentimentalizing that English is a foreign language. But for the Brahmin/Baniya middle class and upper middle class it is a mother tongue. What is the mother tongue of the India air-travel class? Is it not English?
The propaganda of English Shame is actually schemed one against the interests of the vast rural agrarian and artisanal masses who are slowly moving into English medium education. In Andhra Pradesh and Telangana after English medium Government school education is made on par with private sector English medium schools the NDA the rich forces of Andhra Pradesh started saying “If the poor study in English medium who will work in our agrarian fields?”. That is the real fear. Amit Shah is trying to protect that class interest by forcing the rural working class children to the regional languages.
In the recent past the nation noticed that some of the poorest family youth could manage to crack IAS and IPS competitive exams because of their English. This is because they too are accessing the English language and managing to acquire a grip on global knowledge. They cannot compete with the English educated rich if they too acquire skills in English language.
In states like Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, where Government schools were converted to English medium teaching and learning with the help of bilingual (mirror nor image) books, a new paradigm of education started emerging in the rural areas. Furthermore, with the availability of AI tools to learn English in any place a lot of rural children from working class families are changing the course of the rural education system. Spreading English among Dalits, Adivasis and OBCs is really scary for the RSS/BJP Brahmin Baniya forces who earlier controlled English as their preserve after Independence.
Amit Shah’s attack on Ambedkar in the parliament a few months back and making the most obnoxious statement against English language, while promoting private sector English medium education, in the private sector as a preserve of their own. Once the rural poor are educated in English medium they too become entrepreneurs. This is the real fear of Amit Shah and his class.
Rahul Gandhi’s stand that English should be learnt by all class youth along with their own regional language has thrown up a challenge to the RSS/BJP Government at Delhi. The RSS/BJP forces are anti-poor by their very operations. They want to permanently distance the productive masses from English education as their ancestors did with regard to Sanskrit. Their gaze now turned to SC/ST/OBCs as they thought they won over Muslims. Amit Shah is only an open voice. They want to smuggle the SC/ST/OBC future by keeping the English language away from them.
Unfortunately the regional parties and the communists, while ruling a state like Kerala have no clear stand on this decisive language issue. It is time that the OBC/SC/STs must turn against them also.
Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd is a political theorist, social activist and author. His latest book is The Shudra Rebellion.
Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd 