Asian Englishes: Beyond the Canon

3. South Asian schizophrenia

3 South Asian schizophrenia Introduction The history of English in South Asia is one of prolonged heated debates and controversies. The controversy about the legacy of English and desirability of its continued location in language policies and its cultural associations is the major pastime of politicians, academics and the media. However, the political map of South Asia is completely altered now from the way it was when the English language was originally introduced to the subcontinent over two centuries ago. The profile of English in the subcontinent is also different from that in 1947 when the colonial period came to an end and the country was divided into India and Pakistan. One task of the two new governments was to determine the role of almost 560 sovereign states which were ruled by maharajas, nawabs and lesser luminaries depending on the status and revenue of each state. In 1972, an independent nation, Bangladesh, was carved out of Pakistan after considerable hostility and bloodshed. When we refer to contemporary South Asia, we are talking of the following seven sovereign states: India (pop. 1,014,003,817), Pakistan (pop. 141,553,775), Bangladesh (pop. 129,194,224), Sri Lanka (pop. 19,238,575), Nepal (pop. 24,702,119), Bhutan (pop. 2,005,222) and Maldives (pop. 301,475) (Source: CIA World fact book online ). These political divisions, though meaningful at one level, are somewhat misleading at another level. This vast region gives an impression of immense diversity, linguistic and otherwise. However, there are many underlying shared linguistic, literary and sociolinguistic characteristics that are shared by the South Asian states as I have briefly indicated in Chapter 2. In linguistic terms there are four major language families: Indo-Aryan, used by the majority of the population, Dravidian, Tibeto-Burman, and Munda (see Table 3.1). 30 Asian Englishes: Beyond the canon It is not only that the language families are shared across the continent; there is also considerable linguistic convergence due to areal proximity and contact between typologically distinct languages, such as Dravidian and Indo-Aryan (Sprachbund). This convergence is additionally the result of shared cultural and political history, shared literary and folk traditions, and all-pervasive substrata of Sanskrit, Persian and English, in that chronological order (Hock 1986: 494– 512). All the major South Asian countries have a long tradition of societal multilingualism, and several language areas include DIGLOSSIC SITUATIONS: using a learned variety of language in formal contexts and its colloquial variety in non-formal contexts (e.g. Tamil in Sri Lanka and India, Bengali in Bangladesh and India, Telugu in India, Nepali in Nepal and India). It is for these reasons that South Asia has been considered a LINGUISTIC AREA (Emeneau, 1955, 1956; Masica, 1976) and a SOCIOLINGUISTIC AREA (Pandit, 1972; D’souza, 1987). A number of these shared linguistic characteristics are transferred to South Asian English (hereafter SAE) and result in the South Asianness in this variety of English. The South Asian linguistic repertoire and English The formal introduction of English in South Asia has passed through several stages. What started as an educational debate in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries culminated in Lord Macaulay’s much maligned Minute of 2 February 1835, which initiated planned activity for introducing the English language into South Asian education. Earlier, each Indian state had its own agenda for language in education and the political divisions did not foster a national language policy. In India, the largest country in the region, at least four languages had roles as languages of wider communication, or as bazaar languages: Hindi-Urdu (or varieties of Hindi and Hindustani), Sanskrit and Persian. Hindus generally sent their Table 3.1 The main languages of South Asia Bangladesh Bhutan India Maldives Nepal Pakistan Sri Lanka Indo- Tibeto- Indo- Tibeto- Indo- Indo- Tibeto- Indo- Indo- IndoAryan Burman Dravidian Aryan Burman Munda Aryan Aryan Burman Dravidian Aryan Iranian Dravidian Aryan Bengali Dzongkha Tamil Assamese Bodo Mundari Divehi Nepli Newari Brahui Gujarati Baluchi Tamil Sinhala Tulu Bengali Naga Santhali Punjabi Pushto Telugu Gujarati Sindhi Malayalam Hindi Urdu Kannada Kashmiri Marathi Oriya Punjabi Sindhi Urdu 32 Asian Englishes: Beyond the canon denominational schools (vidyalaya ) provided liberal arts curricula in Sanskrit, Persian, Hindi, Arabic or in the dominant language of the region. The policy for determining language in education, if there was one (see B. Kachru, 1982e: 60–85), was primarily an ‘inward’ policy; this education was secular only in a marginal sense...