On English from India: Prepositions to Post-Positions

This essay argues that English in India has been many things to those who know and teach it at advanced levels. As India has not yet debated and agreed on a national policy to accommodate English among its many languages, teachers of English seem to have difficulty in getting it into a manageable curricular focus. Largely modelled on Anglo-American syllabuses, English seems to be carving out 'another India' within a country which all Indians instinctively recognise as theirs. The discomfort this creates, and the divisiveness of English, are as much the result of its colonial history as of the die-hard position-mongers among those who teach and promote English in India. This essay offers some suggestions for studying the 'social life' of English, and for teaching it alongside Indian languages, with at least the awareness of its being an integral part of India's cultural scene that ought to go with its teaching.