Bilingual textbooks could help a large section of the country’s population gain an entry into realms of science and technology

Diglossia is a kind of bilingualism where two or more languages do not duplicate each other, but play very different roles. There is a “high” language, for important things, and a “low” language for speaking to children, the poor and about things closer to the ground. You might do Maths and Science in English, but speak to grandparents, or poor people, in Hindi, or use it for inconsequential conversation. That means that someone who knows Hindi and English is not really bilingual, as there is not too much overlap between what they do in the two languages, and this makes it difficult to translate from one to the other. Instead, the two languages together make up a single competence, so much so that it is often difficult to stay in just one. Technical discussion in Hindi quickly strays into English, and as we relax our guard, our English discourse starts including bits of Hindi, words, as well as phrases.

Being invited to close the gap by giving more technical talks in an Indian language is exciting, as it reduces the need for English while, paradoxically, allowing into our languages new words from English for things they were not previously talking about. We have seen this sort of moment before. The last time was in the twelfth century, an age when large parts of the Subcontinent were ruled by elites who spoke Prakrit and patronised literature in Sanskrit. All this time, closer to the ground, local languages were absorbing words from the Prakrits, the languages of power, while the Prakrits themselves stayed within the ruling class — a source of vocabulary but not really available to ordinary people. Then, as the Prakrit kingdoms fell, and the modern North Indian languages emerged into the sunlight, the Prakrits themselves went extinct.

This was a Golden Age, because new people stepped up as thinkers and inventors, ordinary people we had not been hearing from before. This was the start of written evidence of new languages, languages which might have been in gestation for a long time, messages from people whose thoughts had thus far been beyond our reach. It was by no means an egalitarian society, but something had undeniably opened. And the new languages that sprang up all over the north of the Subcontinent were a symbol of that change.

Is there a way for us to seize this moment and bring in another Golden Age? I think there is. And the place to do this is in the schooling system. Many government schools in Delhi now offer English medium teaching in their A-sections. But all this really means is that teachers ask children to stand up, one by one, and read out a paragraph from the textbook in English. And then sit down. No discussion, because the teacher is not totally certain that she has understood all the fine points of the lesson, and she does not want to embarrass herself. So this exposure to English does not lead to real understanding, for teachers or for students.
What would set this right is bilingual textbooks, where everything is recapped in a language the teacher and the children know well. Once they know what it is about, they can easily discuss the lesson and clear doubts: In the home language, in English, or in a mix of both. In fact, with bilingual textbooks, things could take their own time, with technical terms slipping from English into local languages, and English becoming just a language, and not a test of everyone’s self-worth. More importantly, many more children will join the conversation, children who, just from their sheer numbers, would have to include some outstanding minds.

It may come as a surprise to people nowadays to learn that one person who thought Indian “boys” should be educated in the home language until Class 8 was Macaulay. The only disruptive part of his plan was his belief that Indian “boys” wanting to go into science should transition to English-medium schooling at that point. That may have been so in the 1830s, when the British Raj wanted Indian “boys” to implement textbook formulas and build infrastructure and help govern the Empire. But, in today’s India, where we are meant to do more than “implement”, English-medium teaching is not essential even after Class 8. China, Japan, Korea and other modern countries manage very well with English as just another “subject”, useful for when they engage with the outside world. Their schools do teach English, but not in English medium. English isn’t their entry point into science.
Why am I so obsessed with using local languages, at least in primary school? It goes back to my initial point about us not “firing on all cylinders”. A huge proportion of our population simply does not get to enter the modern world of science and technology. We have placed all our bets on a small elite class more interested in holding on to the status quo and accessing existing “answers” than in taking leaps and thinking laterally about a different future. We are again at an inflection point in our history when a tired “Prakrit” is holding our imagination captive, while a hinterland is sitting up, curious and getting ready to play. Things will, of course, take their own course. But it is a good idea to see it all in a different light, and be ready to ride the wave when it crests behind us.

The writer has taught Linguistics at Howard University, JNU and Ashoka University. She is the author, most recently, of Father Tongue, Motherland: The Birth of Languages in South Asia