English is fine. But don’t forget the vernacular
At a conference last week, the dean of social sciences at one of the country's premier of universities noted with regret that when the University of Chicago was looking for a professor in Bengali, it found not a single Indian scholar up to the mark and had to settle for a Frenchman instead. It's tempting to write this off as an exception and maybe even cook up some conspiracy theories about race but consider this: The editor of the Murty Classical library, a mega literary project that seeks to make classical Indian literature accessible to the contemporary public, is a white man by the name of Sheldon Pollock. Of the five volumes (translated from Pali, Persian, Punjabi, Hindi and Telugu) that were recently launched by the library, not one has been edited or translated by an Indian scholar.
It is no secret that some of the best scholars of Indian languages today are neither in India nor of Indian heritage. There are several reasons for this, from the dismal state of liberal arts education in general to a lack of interest in vernacular languages. And the problem in academia is merely an extension of a larger social issue — it is now oddly fashionable among much of India's aspirational classes, to claim incompetence in one's mother tongue while displaying a faux fluency in English. Especially among the younger generations, there is a general disdain for the mother tongue. The International Mother language Day, celebrated on February 21 every year, came and went without much fanfare in India. The Central Board of Secondary Education sought to do its bit by urging all its affiliated schools to mark the day with activities in mother languages but it seems like school authorities were more concerned about pending examinations.
The importance of learning one's mother language cannot be under-estimated. Scientific studies have now conclusively proven that those schooled in the mother tongue tend to perform better than those taught in a foreign language such as English. This is not to say that students should not be taught English or that English-medium schools are a problem. Instead, the point to be made is that the step-motherly treatment that the study of Indian languages receives, usually from students, parents and even teachers, needs to change.
There is a popular misconception that fluency in the mother-tongue may hamper a child's ability to speak or learn in English. This needs to be countered. Parents and teachers must be made aware that children who speak multiple languages have been found to have better memories and sharper minds. At the social level, fluency in the mother language is often key to building connections with the extended family and one's ethnic community at large. It is also necessary to access one's own literature, culture and traditions, all of which are inter-linked and play an important role in shaping one's identity. This in turn contributes to the shaping of the nation's identity.