How Trains, Venn Diagrams, K.L. Rahul and Kneecap Can Help Us Understand Shah’s Anti-English Remark

When one has a fundamentally divisive mind, it tends to perceive the world in separate circles, each distinct from the other. A shining example of this is Amit Shah’s circular saffron mind.

Speaking at a book launch in New Delhi, he said: “In our lifetime, we will see a society in which those speaking English will feel ashamed, that day is not far. I believe that the languages of our country are the ornaments of our culture. Without them, we would not have been Bhartiya. Our country, its history, its culture, our dharma – if these have to be understood, it cannot be done in foreign languages.”

Getting back to circles, there’s another way of looking at them – the Venn diagram. Here, the circles of language overlap and are not mutually exclusive. This is not a matter of some great civilisational achievement, mastered with great difficulty, but a fact of Indian linguistic necessity. Taking my own example, in my school-leaving exams I scored 92 in both English and Hindi. Before that, from classes five to eight, I was a consistent topper in Sanskrit. I don’t remember anything now, except a shloka or two.

Combining both sides of my family, it has produced writers in Hindi, English and Gujarati, as well as translators. At home in Vile Parle, Bombay, my mother spoke Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati, Vaghri and English. Plenty of Venn diagrams here.

I grew up in Allahabad, the Hindi heartland. In my ICSE school, no one – except the teachers – spoke in English, not even Hinglish. It was Hindi through and through. It was only when I arrived at St Stephen’s in Delhi that I began conversing in English; the college had students from all over: from the Northeast and Bhutan to the southern states, not to mention South Delhi where Hindi, for some odd reason, is considered a language for domestic help. The linguistic transition happened organically and naturally; nothing was forced. One just responded to the verbal reality of what was around.

Moving away from me and my family, Dinesh Karthik made a pertinent observation about K.L. Rahul’s linguistic dexterity, while commentating on the recently-concluded Test match between India and England. Rahul spoke to different batting partners in different languages: Rishab Pant in Hindi, Karun Nair in Kannada and Sai Sudharshan in Tamil. He ended the day talking to Sky Sports in English. That would make for the mother of all Venn diagrams.

Also read: English and a Translator’s Shame

The problem with Amit Shah is that he is a person who doesn’t read and write, who wants to tell those that do read and write, how to go about the business of, well, reading and writing. His designation is that of home minister but what he would really like to be is Minister of Education and Culture. Now, if he was Railways minister, I could provide him with a different, equally useful analogy, which does the same job as the analogy by Venn diagram.

Languages are like railway tracks; the Indian is the train on the tracks. At times, the tracks diverge, then they join up again. Along the way, the train, at times, runs along junctions, at others on single-track. The train at no point gets derailed. When Shah hints at the erasure of English, what he doesn’t realise is that the train is already too far down the railroad to turn back.

When it comes to English, Shah would do well to set the Hindutva house in order first. Hindu Right intellectuals writing revisionist history and biographies of ‘overlooked’ figures like Savarkar, are all writing in English. A new English-language publishing ecosystem has come into being for Hindutva intellectuals. By Shah’s logic, this should then be nipped in the bud, and the PM should stop doing photo-ops with these authors with immediate effect. Bhartiyata, like charity, begins at home.

Let me bring into the argument the Irish-English rap act called Kneecap. The Belfast trio are hugely popular now, not just in Northern Ireland but around the world; one of their key founding principles is promotion of the Irish language. Their acclaimed self-titled film, a semi-fictionalised origin story of the band, directed by Michael Fassbender, was mostly in Irish.

Writes Elena Cavender on Mashable: “Often repeated in the film is the line, ‘Every word of Irish spoken is a bullet for Irish freedom.’ The movie takes place in 2019 in West Belfast, during the height of advocacy for recognition of the Irish language in the United Kingdom. In 2022, the country's Identity and Language Act passed, granting Irish an equal status to English. It established the Irish language commissioner to develop Irish in Northern Ireland, repealed the ban of Irish in Northern Ireland courts, and allowed members of the Northern Ireland Assembly to speak Irish. The reality of the band's formation in 2017 was just as closely tied with the moment.”

On the surface, Kneecap’s backing of Irish and Shah’s backing of Indian vernaculars seem to have a lot in common. Scratch the surface and a different reality emerges. In Northern Ireland, approximately 43,500 people or 2.43% of the people speak Irish daily. The 2021 census showed that 0.3% of the population aged 3 and up claimed Irish as their main home language. It’s a language on the verge of extinction that needs propping up.

Indian languages are not endangered. Nor do they require official legitimisation. We speak in our various tongues everyday; they are embedded in a thriving culture: cinema, OTT, books and music. Also, in Northern Ireland, the debate is between two languages - Irish and English. In India, we have dozens of languages, which complicates matters significantly. Besides, Kneecap is not anti-English. It’s the language they themselves use to communicate with us – the rest of the world, and, I reckon, with each other. It’s very much part of their songs.

And what should one make of Shah’s remark, that “we will see a society in which those speaking English will feel ashamed, that day is not far.” Let me put it this way: We English speakers are already deeply ashamed of our English. Forget about the day being far, it’s already here. We make a thousand errors when speaking and writing English because we are like that only. It’s there to hear and read in our media, even the books published by our publishing houses.

It took me two long days to write and edit this piece; someone whose first language is English would have written it in half an hour. I’m sure the piece still contains errors. I’m deeply ashamed.

Palash Krishna Mehrotra is the author of The Butterfly Generation: A Personal Journey into the Passions and Follies of India’s Technicolor Youth, and the editor of Recess: The Penguin Book of Schooldays.

This piece was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire & Galileo Ideas – and has been updated and republished here. To subscribe to The India Cable, click here.

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