From: mvishnu@morse.uwaterloo.ca (m vishnu)
Subject: Education in Mother tongue (repost)
Organization: University of Waterloo
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 1992 21:43:54 GMT


From: ssankara@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Sornam Sankara)
Subject: Education thro Indian languages
Date: Fri, 3 Jul 1992 22:52:44 GMT


The following clippings appeared in an e-mail digest INDIA-D.  I have just
reproduced without permission.  When IITs were asked by the government to give
their opinion about having the JEE examinations in all 15 Indian national
languages,  all IITs discussed among the faculties and came up with their
conclusion.  All IITs except IIT-Madras supported the move, though they
differed in their proposals about how many languages should be used,  how the
question papers should be set up and how tha answer papers should be evaluated
etc. etc.  IIT-M strongly objected to any move to use languages other than
English.  At last the Board of governors decided to use English and Hindi in
the question papers and the students can reply in any of the Indian languages
(Someone correct me in this if I am wrong).


"EntRu thaNiyum intha suthanthira thaham
 EntRu madiyum intha adimayin moham"



S. Sankarapandi
ssankara@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu


=======================================================================
     From INDIA-D
=====================================================================

Date: Sat, 27 Jun 92 14:08:08 JST
From: bhatia@arl.mech.tohoku.ac.jp (Praveen Bhatia)
Subject: JEE topper - Congrats !

     Wow ! So the JEE topper is a person who wrote the
exam in Oriya. When the scheme was introduced in India
I had welcomed it but I didn't expect it to prove itself
so quickly!!
     Well done India.
     I recall my batchmate who is now doing is Phd. in
Standford. Our whole class used to call him a maths genius
and very oddly indeed his english was extremely poor. His
main problem in JEE was not the mathematics and physics or
chemistry (that was very simple for him :) ) BUT the very
first problem of trying to understand the questions written
in English .... When he somehow used get past the language
barrier answers used to be no problem for him.
     I had always wondered then if amoung the 98 % of the
Indians who were being ignored because of the langauge barrier
of English, how many such talented people were lost to the
country ......
     Your's wonderingly
     Praveen



Date: Sat, 27 Jun 92 15:23:22 EDT
From: Nachiketa <NTIWARI@VTVM1>
Subject: Engliss-Plizz

There has been going a lot of talk about English and its role in India's
development. What follows is are two passages from the book: "The Images
of English - A Cultural History of the Language". The author is Richard W.
Bailey and the publisher is The University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor.

The First Excerpt: This is about the English bred BABU, and the views quoted
    by Bailey are from -'In Sociological Essays: Utilitarianism and
    Positivism in Bengal', Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, 1986, ed. and trans.
    S.N. Mukherjee and Marian Madden, Calcutta, Rddhi India.

       Vaisampayana said, O best of men, I will speak of those Babus variously
    talented, skilled in eating and sleeping, attend and listen. I extol the
    character of the Babu, spectacle-adorned, belly-minded, many-tongued and
    news-loving, attend and listen. O king, those who have patterned clothes,
    cane in hand, dyed hair and large boots, they are Babus. Those who are
    invincible in speech, adept in a foreign language and hostile to their
    mother tongue, they are Babus. Great King! in this way many Babus, endowed
    with their great intellect, will be born who will be incompetent in
    conversing in their own language. Those whose ten sense-organs are in a
    natural state, and hence impure, whose sense of tatse alone is purified
    by the spittle of foreigners, they are Babus... He whose deity is the
    Englishman, preceptor the Brahmo Samajist, Vedas the Bengali newspapers
    and place of pilgrimage the National Theatre, he is Babu. He who is a
    Christian with the missionaries, a Brahmo with Keshabchandra [ =
    Keshava Chandra Sen 1838-91], a Hindu with his father and an atheist
    with begging preists, he is a Babu. He who takes water in his own house,
    wine in his freind's house, insults at the prostitutes house and beatings
    at his English master's house, he is a Babu. He whose only enthusiasm is
    for clothes, whose only zeal is for soliciting a job, whose only devotion
    is for his wife or mistress, and whose only contempt is for good books,
    undoubtedly he is a Babu. (1986, 27-29)

The Second Excerpt: pp-144

     ..In 1908, Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869-1948) stated a view that he frequently
    rearticulated for the rest of his long and influential life.

    "To give millions a knowledge of English is to enslave them. The foundation
    that Macaulay laid of education has enslaved us. I do not say that he had
    any such intention, but that has been the result... Is it not painful thing
    that, if I want to go to a court of justice, I must employ the English
    language as a medium; that when I become a Barrister, I may not speak my
    mother-tongue, and that someone else should have to translate to me from
    my own language? Is not this absolutely absurd? Is is not a sign of
    slavery? AM I TO BLAME THE ENGLISH FOR IT OR MYSELF? IT IS WE THE ENGLISH
    KNOWING PEOPLE THAT HAVE ENSLAVED INDIA. (emphasis mine) The curse of the
    nation will rest not upon the nation but upon us. (Gandhi, 1958,5)

What do I think about all this?

1. Most of the Indians here have a poor knowledge and APPRECIATION of their
   mother tongues.

2. This lack of knowledge of our mother tongues is not because we are masters
   in English. How can you understand the phrase "Trozan Horse" unless you
   know the concept behind it?  Most of the ideoms and phrases are never fully
   appreciated by us since their is a lot of culture, history and geography
   embedded in them. Can you really master a foreign language?

3. All this has made us a sort of Trishanku, the guy who has been hanging
   between the earth and the heaven, since he ditched his guru.

4. This will lead us nowhere. Last 50 years has shown it. Do we need more
   time?

5. The Success Stories of Indians in USA, are aberrations. They can be counted
  on fingertips. Hard fact but true. How many Indians are really at the apex of
   important and prestigious companies? Where do we stand when we compare our-
   selves with the achievements with those of the Chinese. And by the way, the
   research notes of C.V. Raman were in Tamil, not English.

6. All this logic about English serving as a window to the West has been taken
   too far. Do not design a window to convert a gentle breeze from outside into
   a blizzard. China, Japan, Russia, France, Germany, Korea, etc. have not gone
   ahead due to English. One Sweden (it uses English) does not make a rule. Ten
   other nations may establish the co-relation. And what about entire Africa,
   Philippines, etc. who have been using foreign languages longer than us.

7. Blind following of English has hampered the growth of Indian languages. Why
   are the editors and newspersons of English (National ??) newspapers accorded
   more respect than those related to vernacular newspapers. Why does a
   Jnanpeeth Award winner not equated with R.K. Narayan or even Khuswant Singh?
   Why is a Hollywood massala movie (James Bond) not ridiculed to the same
   extent as a Bollywood massala  production? Is'nt James Bond in a different
   class altogether? How many of us really read literature thru Indian
   languages?

8. When Israel was created, the Jews adopted Hebrew as their national language.
   A language that had been dead since last 2000 years. They have been using
   such a language to study science since Day-1. I am sure that our Indian
   languages are much more developed.

How do the netters react?

And by the way, hail the Oriya guy, who topped IIT-JEE (probably without using
Agarwal and Brilliant Tutorials).

Nachiketa