Nationality ; Indian. Caste : English Medium

I have long felt that in India , the ability to speak and communicate in English is not just another skill; it is also the membership to a caste. And then I saw an article in a newspaper a few months back that confirmed my thinking. It said that a sociological survey in Mumbai found that the percentage of intercaste marriages where both partners spoke English was three times that of intercaste marriages where only one partner spoke English. So here is a ray of hope that the caste system is not as immutable as it previously was and can indeed be overcome.

As kids , one of the way we described students from many other schools was” HMT”… which was not an abbreviation for the HMT watches already a household name in the 60’s and 70’s. HMT stood for “Hindi Medium Types”, a kind of a dismissive description for children who went to schools that were not ‘English medium”. This was the beginning of a brand new modern post-independence caste, but we had yet to see its full might. In subsequent years we have all seen innumerable and sometimes funny matrimonial advertisements for “convent educated” brides, (sometimes “convented” is the word used) . So here the new caste was invading matrimonial boundaries. We also saw new schools claiming to be “100 percent English medium”. This is rather like the Gurukuls of the olden days where admission was reserved only for Brahmins.

And now the sociological study from Mumbai; to me it confirms that the “English Medium” caste has arrived and is firmly in place.

While, for an Indian, being able to communicate in English is undoubtedly of tremendously great advantage, I have a feeling its not a completely unmixed blessing. To my mind, the English speaking Indians need to be aware of the following:

• We should not be dismissive of those Indians who cannot speak English. This is one reason why the English speaking Indian middle class can never understand the power of leaders like Lalu Prasad Yadav , Mayawati or Karunanidhi. Remember that in India the number of people who speak English is still less than 200 million. The remaining 800 million plus Indians speak a language other than English.
• The dominance of world politics for the last 200 or so years, first by great Britain and now by the USA, has made our own views too anglo-centric and narrow. We think the French and Italians are funny, because the English and Americans have told us that they are funny. We need to step out of this blind-spot and absorb good ideas and wisdom from other cultures.

Endpiece: have you noticed that a fairly noticeable number of profiles on networking/ friendship sites place a premium on “command over English” as a desirable quality for potential friends/ mates . So I asked some of my friends: would you like to make friends with a very nice man ..educated, good-looking, courteous, but one who did not know any English ? The answers varied from long hmmms and haws to a clear NO !!

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