In Search of Indian English

History, Politics and Indigenisation

Ranjan Kumar Auddy

• Publisher: Routledge India
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781032176482
• eBook ISBN: 9781000708479
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

This book presents a historical account of the development of an acrolectal variety of the English language in colonial India. It highlights the phenomenon of Indianization of the English language and its significance in the articulation of the Indian identity in pre-Independence India.

This volume also discusses the sociocultural milieu in which English became the first choice for writers and political leaders. Using examples primarily from the writings of Rammohan Roy, Bankimchandra, Krupabai Satthianadhan, and Gandhi and from the speeches of Vivekananda, Tagore, and Subhas Bose, this book argues that prose written in English in the nineteenth and the early twentieth century scripted a nationalist discourse through its appropriation of the colonizer's language. It also examines how these works, which absorbed elements of Indian culture and languages, paved the path for the emergence of Indian English as a distinct dialect of the English language.

This book will be useful for teachers, scholars, and students of English literature, linguistics, and cultural studies. It will also be of use to general readers interested in the history of the English language and the history of modern India.

1
Introduction

In James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Stephen Dedalus, the protagonist of the novel, expressed the universal feeling of dissociation of the colonized from the language of the colonizer: ‘the language in which we are speaking is his before it is mine … My soul frets in the shadow of his language’.(146) For Ngugi, writing in English (or any other language of the colonizer, such as French) itself is a compromise with neocolonialism: ‘But by our continuing to write in foreign languages, paying homage to them, are we not on the cultural level continuing that neo-colonial slavish and cringing spirit?’ (26). But the foregoing observations do not constitute the entire history nor are they absolute truths as far as the relation between the colonized and the colonizer’s language is concerned. Dedalus himself ended up accepting his lot as an Irishman educated in the English language and justified his choice of English over Irish:

My ancestors threw off their language and took another … They allowed a handful of foreigners to subject them. Do you fancy I am going to pay in my own life and person debts they made?

(156)

Indians did not throw off their languages; neither did they discontinue using the English language ever since they began to use it. Rather their languages have cast a deep impact upon the English they use, resulting in the ‘Indianization’¹ of the English language and subsequently the emergence of a new variant of the English language. In fact, ‘Indianization’ of the English language is itself a process of decolonization, leading to the emergence of a distinct variant of the English language called Indian English. Voices associating the identity with the English language can also be heard: for example, the poet Kamala Das said,

It voices my joys, my longings, my

Hopes, and it is useful to me as cawing

Is to crows

(An Introduction, lines 16–18)

That which voices the poet’s longings and joys is not the English of the colonizer, but as the poet says, ‘It is half English, half Indian, funny perhaps, but it is honest/ It is as human as I am human’ (lines 13–14). This book is out to prove that Indian English is not just ‘funny’ but has a glorious legacy behind it. Its birth is associated with the rise of Indian nationalism.

Today English is as a part of the multilingual texture of Indian life as trousers and shirts are a part of Indian dress. In India, shirts and trousers are continuously being readjusted and refashioned to meet the demands of new taste and time. For example, the famous and revered artist Hemanta Mukhopadhyay (known as Hemant Kumar in Mumbai) wore throughout his life the particular variety of shirt which looked like a punjabi with a collar. This indigenized variety of garment was popular during the 1950s and 1960s, and it was basically a cross between a Western shirt and a punjabi as worn by Bengali gentlemen. Nowadays collarless shirts are a part of casual wear in India. Just as the Western garments are adapted and readjusted in accordance with Indian clime and culture, needs and fancies, and simultaneously redefining modern Indian identity, the English language has undergone a process of indigenization in India, leading to the emergence of a new variant of English called Indian English. This process of indigenization is guided by practical needs as well as the politics of identity. Colonization by the Anglican race has led to the emergence of varieties of English or ‘englishes’, such as Indian, Jamaican, Singaporean, and Malaysian (Ashcroft 8). All these varieties do not belong to the category of creole.² Indian English, unlike Jamaican patois, is not a creole but a second-language variant³ of the English language. In India pidgins ‘have not caught on’ (Kathau); rather Indian learners, especially the literate upper castes, having a rich tradition of written literature, were quick to acquire a fairly accurate knowledge of the English language. In a book published in 1990, David Crystal observed that there were more speakers of Indian English in the world than British English (English 10).

In order to understand the emergence of Indian English, one has to study the use of the English language during the rise of Indian nationalism. A huge body of literature written in English by Indians came to exist by the end of the colonial era in 1947, consisting of poems, novels, essays, public speeches, letters, diaries, and so forth. Besides the vernaculars, this body of literature is also an expression of the age of renaissance and the age of nationalism. Homi Bhabha discussed ‘strategies of selfhood’ in locating culture ‘beyond’ the cultural realm of what is called the first world (Bhabha, Location, 1). The Indian writings in English of pre-independent India document adoption of diverse ‘strategies of selfhood’ as well as nationhood which are interrelated with the emergence of Indian English. According to G.J.V. Prasad, writing in English is ‘a quest for a space which is created by translation and assimilation’ (42). I argue that such ‘quest’ for a linguistic space and ‘strategies of selfhood’ in Indian writing in English can be traced back to the nineteenth century.

Braj B. Kachru wrote extensively on the phenomenon of ‘Indianization’ of the English language. The phenomenon of ‘Indianization’ is explained by Kachru as ‘deviations’ (Indianization, 2), and as ‘acculturation of a western language in the linguistically and culturally pluralistic context of the sub-continent’ (Indianization, 1). Kachru used the term ‘nativization’ (Alchemy, 28) to generalize the phenomenon in all ‘non-native’ (Alchemy, 28) varieties of English. But ‘Indianization’ as a ‘strategy of selfhood’, as a means of asserting identity in the colonial period, has not been sufficiently explored. In 1975, Chinua Achebe spoke of ‘Africanization’ of the English language as an artistic necessity:

I feel that the English language will be able to carry the weight of my African experience. But it will have to be a new English, still in full communion with its ancestral home but altered to suit its new African surroundings.

(65)

Analogically ‘Indianization’ of the English language in literature can also be seen as artistic necessity. But the artistic necessity of nativizing the colonial ruler’s language in a colonial context inevitably gets tangled with problems of identity, with maintenance and defiance of the Standard norm, and then the issue becomes political. The term ‘linguistic innovations’ (Alchemy, 28) used by Kachru in the context of ‘nativization’ does indicate the context of artistic and linguistic skill of users but its relation with the politics of identity and with loyalty to the Standard norm begs to be analyzed. More importantly, much of the Indian writings in English of the colonial era were rich in ‘innovative’ use of language, and this area has not been sufficiently explored. Some of the reasons for ‘Indianization’ being confined to aesthetic and linguistic domains are the facts that the contribution of the Indian writings of the colonial era towards the emergence of Indian English and the interrelation of the use of the English language in the colonial era with the emergence of Indian nationalism have not been explored enough.

‘Indianization’ of the English language and the subsequent emergence of Indian English may be viewed from two perspectives: as a natural outcome of several centuries of coexistence of the English language with the Indian languages and as a postcolonial phenomenon which presupposes the emergence of a nationalistic discourse, strategies of resisting the colonial discourses and resisting the hegemony of Standard English. As far as the first perspective is concerned, it is difficult to ascertain the first interface of the Germanic languages with the Indian languages as ‘India had commercial relations with countries of the West from time immemorial’ (Majumdar, Raychaudhuri, & Dutta, 623), although a regular interface may be considered to have taken place since the seventeenth century, when the English merchants established factories in western India. My study is concerned with the second perspective, which, however, is not inseparable from the first one. The expression of selfhood, the assertion of a rediscovered Indianness, and the resistance and interrogation of the colonial discourses in the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries called for bold and strategic use of the colonizer’s tongue. This study aims to explore the ‘strategies of selfhood’ in a few specimens of the writings and speeches of Indians from Raja Rammohan Roy to Mahatma Gandhi.

From a linguistic perspective, my study deals with the acrolectal⁴ variety of the English language as used by Indians since the early nineteenth century. The mesolectal and basilectal varieties must have had their share of contributions to the emergence of Indian English. However, in India, the dominant variant has always been the acrolect and its influence (in the colonial era) on setting the trends of language use has been decisive. Strangely enough, this area has been ignored by scholars and researchers who worked on Indian English. Prof. P.E. Dustoor, teacher and mentor of Braj. B. Kachru, ‘considered the English of Tagore, Sarojini Naidu and Manmohan Ghose “the better, not the worse, for bearing the stamp of national temperament”’ (qtd in Kachru, Indianization, 3). But neither Kachru nor the subsequent generation of linguists who worked on Indian English has shown much interest in the language of Indian writing in English of the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. I would like to quote from Kachru and Probal Dasgupta, two major linguists who have worked on Indian English, to prove my point:

Before 1947 English had a precarious position in South Asia. On one hand it was considered a symbol of British power and what is worse a politically superimposed language. On the other hand the regional varieties of English were considered, by the English themselves, ‘substandard’ and were often characterized as Babu English or Cheechee English, or simply labelled Indian or Lankan English in a derogatory sense.

(Kachru, Indianization, 17)

If English as it is spoken in India is a natural language, then normal linguistics, examining it, is bound to arrive at Kachru’s conclusion that there is an Indian English, an independent object of description that comes into its own after the political ties with England are severed in 1947. Since that year, the speakers of English in India have been on their own in their use and reproduction of the language: they are a bona fide speech community.

(Dasgupta, P., 118)

I think a few questions need to be raised regarding the foregoing observations. If English had a precarious existence before 1947, how do we account for the use of the English language by the galaxy of Indian writers and speakers from Rammohan Roy to Mahatma Gandhi? Further, according to Kachru, the emergence of the Indianized variant of English was preceded by two types of uses of the English language: as a politically superimposed language and as ‘Babu English’.⁵ Hence a few more questions inevitably rise: were ‘Babu English’ and ‘Cheechee English’ the precursors of Indian English? Was ‘Indianization’ of the English language an outcome of political superim-position of the English language on the Indians? Was English rescued from its ‘precarious’ existence as a superimposed language and placed on a secure platform – almost miraculously – by writers and speakers of English in India after 1947? Ironically, some of the novelists whose texts Kachru referred to began their literary career before 1947. And finally, did Indian English have to wait for the political ties to be severed formally before it could ‘come into its own’? Returning to Kachru’s statement once again, although his declared aim in Indianization of English Language was ‘to capture the processes and devices of the Indianness of this nativized variety of English which has been used by Indians to serve the typically Indian needs in distinct Indian contexts for almost two hundred years’ (2), the foregoing observation regarding the state of English in the colonial era (‘Before 1947’) makes his declaration contradictory. Moreover, his focus had been the use of the English language by Indians in the twentieth century, and hence the nineteenth century had to be dismissed with such terms as ‘precarious’ and ‘babu English’. However, in The Alchemy of English (1986), Kachru located the earliest example of ‘Indianization’ in Soshee Chunder Dutt and Lal Behari Day: ‘A few years after [S.C.] Dutt, another Bengali, Lal Behari Day, excelled his predecessor in Indianizing the English in his novels’ (47). Yet Kachru did not provide a thorough investigation of ‘Indianization’ in nineteenth-century Indian writing in English. Moreover, although he mentioned the relation between ‘the political writing’ (47) and ‘national awakening’ (47) in the colonial era, he did not relate non-fictional writings with the phenomenon of ‘Indianization’. Kachru pointed out that Indians’ English in the colonial era was ‘characterized’ and ‘labelled’ (Kachru, Indianization, 17) as babu English or Indian English in a derogatory sense. But he made no effort in examining those labels. My study shows in every chapter the fragility of such labels. In fact, all the examples of babu English given by Kachru (‘English’, 510–511) are in the form of letters. Binoo K. John also provided an important instance of babu English (John, 99), again in the form of a letter. I doubt if ever any book or article or pamphlet was written in babu or ‘Cheechee English’. Altogether, the crux of the problem lay in the fact that the significance of much of the Indian prose writings of the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries in the history of the ‘Indianization’ of the English language (and the subsequent emergence of Indian English) was ignored by Kachru and it has been largely ignored till today.

Regarding the first of my queries posited on the statement of Kachru, I would like to point out that in the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries, from the time period of Rammohan to that of Mahatma Gandhi, India witnessed quite a few international figures who shaped modern India by their thoughts and actions and also shaped, I argue, the English language by their use of English. In other words, they contributed to the nationalization of the English language and paved the path for the emergence of Indian English. The contribution of the Indian writers of English fiction in the nineteenth century has also not been properly evaluated. The idea of ‘precarious existence’ had taken root, I think, because the contributions of these writers have largely been ignored. These writers do not figure in Kachru’s arguments on ‘Indianization’ of English; Krishnaswamy and Burde (1998), for example, made no mention of the rich treasure house of English prose in the nineteenth century. Quoting a few formal letters of the nineteenth century, they pointed out the ‘bureaucratic register and officialese and the formulaic use of English’ (Krishnaswamy & Burde, 96), which had little scope or space for the creative use of language. Krishna Sen, in collaboration with Ramkrishna Bhattacharya, compiled and edited a collection of nineteenth-century English prose and significantly named it Inscribing Identity (2009). But we need to analyze and understand how identity was inscribed in the Indians’ use of the English language.

It is also worthwhile to ponder how ‘Indianness’ of Indians’ use of English can be measured. Traditionally, deviations from the Standard variety have been generally termed as ‘mistakes’, although linguists regard this attitude of considering Standard British English as the only ‘correct’ form of the English language as a ‘relic … instilled by the administrators and educators of the British Raj’ (Dixon, 437). In the course of time, some of these ‘mistakes’ and oddities have become part of Indian English, as we find in the analysis of Indian English of the postcolonial times in the works of Gumperz, Aulakh and Kaltman (1985), R.M.W. Dixon (1991), and Sethi (2011). But this is not the total picture of the phenomenon of indigenization or ‘Indianization’ because, in the case of acrolect the writer or speaker consciously adopts, to borrow the phrase from Bhabha, ‘strategies of self-hood’ (1994), ways of ‘inscribing’ the identity – singular or communal – seeking to form a native discourse. This also results in an ‘Indianized’ form of the English language. From this perspective a study of the pre-independent English writings, both fictional and non-fictional, is highly interesting. We find here an interface between Indian nationalism and ‘Indianization’ of the English language.

The question of English as a ‘superimposed’ colonial language is a controversial one as the matter is involved with the history of colonization and the history of the colonized people’s reaction to the colonial system. Gauri Viswanathan (1989), citing various historical documents, exposed the imperial motives behind the sponsorship of English-language education in the nineteenth century. On the other hand, contrary to the notion that English was ‘imposed’ upon the Indians, some Indian historians have argued that English had a public demand since the late eighteenth century (Sinha, 22). R.C. Majumdar claimed that English was introduced not by the British but ‘in spite of them’ (Renascent, 33–39). He narrated the history of Brahmins led by Baidyanath Mukherjee, who petitioned before Sir Hyde East, the then judge of Supreme Court, for a college for imparting the Western mode of education for the Hindus, which ultimately led to the establishment of the Hindu College in 1817. In The History of British India published in 1858, Horace Hayman Wilson narrated the apprehension of the Hindus about religious conversion, which often deterred them from sending their young ones to missionary schools. In order to remove this source of apprehension ‘they [the wealt...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• CONTENTS
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 A historical background
• 3 Articles, letters, and a diary
• 4 Four works of fiction
• 5 Speeches philosophical
• 6 Speeches political
• 7 Two letters and a manifesto
• 8 Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index