COUNTERING THE WESTERN INFLUENCE : Part 1

OBSESSION WITH THE WEST

India a country which has its own indigenous identity till 100 years ago. This indigenous identity included the languages spoken, style of dressing, moral and values. But today's India is heading towards a totally different direction. We are not behaving like Indians,we are not speaking like Indians we are speaking some other tongue called as English, we are not dressing like Indians we wear jeans and t-shirt as if its our national dress code, we are being someone that we are not in an attempt to look modern and western.

Let me explain my point. Consider we have a time machine and we go 1500 years back somewhere near Sindh river in the Sapt Sindh region. What is the thing we would observe? we would see men in dhoti or lungi with angvastram and women in saree. Everybody would be polite, calm and respectful. All the conversations would be happening in Sanskrit. There would be peace and order in the society. Now let us come back to the present. What would you see in today's India. Youngsters in jeans and t-shirt speaking English than no other reason than to be "cool". You will find some people speaking in loud voice and disrespectfully. I know things do change with time but do we have to change to that extent that we forget our own identity and our way of living.

Indians have a all time obsession with English language. Most of the parents want their children to study in English medium school. why? because they think that it would be a matter of shame if their child does not know English. I won't completely blame those parents because in a country like India English is everywhere right from number plates to job interviews. India is the second largest English speaking country in the world with nearly 13 million speakers! People give preference to English over their mother tongue.

BEWARE! The tree of English is growing rapidly and strengthening its roots in the soil of India. Since I was two and half years old I was taught to think in English, speak in English, write, read and understand English. As I grew up I learned in school about the glorious history of our country and such a prosperous country it was. Whenever there were history classes about British in India it was very difficult for me to be at peace. As I read those chapters there would be a surge of anger, pain and complete agony. Britishers not only looted our wealth but they robbed us of our culture, morals values and ethics, our languages, our dressing style. They completely broke down the way of life and injected poverty from which we are suffering till now. Now after independence instead of abolishing and abandoning their way of and their language we embraced it.Even the first speech given by first PM of India was in English! "On the stroke of midnight hour ......". Whenever I hear people making their day-to-day conversation in English I feel very pained. 


When we have our own regional language then why do we have to go for English? Problem is there are so many regional languages but no all approved common language. To understand this let us have a quick peek at the history of India after independence. It was decided that within 15 years of amendment of constitution English would be replaced by Hindi as official language of India. But this decision was opposed by some politicians of Tamil Nadu. They did not wanted Hindi to be official language of India instead they supported English to be continued as the official language of India. If they had not opposed this there could had been a complete full stop to English at least in our political system. I can understand that every Indian would want his/her mother tongue to be promoted as the official language of  India. Nobody can tolerate the dominance of other language. But supporting English was worse that opposing Hindi. Because at the end of the English is an outsider's language while Hindi is our language. This glued English to the system.

This was all about my general observations I make around and hope that one day will come when I would get to experience India of my dreams.

Note: The above would come as an act of hypocrisy as I am being critical of western influence in India still writing the text in English. I accept this hypocrisy. But as the famous Hindi idiom goes  "लोहा लोहे को काटता है"  

that is "Iron cuts Iron"

 Same way we will cut English out of this country through English.