A Hopeful Extinction of English in India

I deeply resent the fact that English as a language plays such a prominent role in India. It's not really the lingua franca, but it's the language of the elite in a sense. For example, in kerala, all of the signs are in English but hardly anyone feels comfortable to speak anything but Malayalam. It really just represents the sort of dependence we have on the anglosphere, it's the language of opportunity. India is still so poor that English is seen as a fast track ticket to stability. This sort of thinking still plagues many indians; poverty and desperate is still so part of our recent memory that we are just trying to trying to survive at this point.

English is the language of finance, but it's not the only language that represents a significant amount of global wealth. There is German, French, and Spanish, or Chinese. I realize we already had an English speaking class at the time of independence, but unfortunately that language has grown and grown since then.

Hindi is a language that is spoken by a large amount of people in India, and should at least replace English. All of the languages of India should be made the official language of India, and people should choose which languages to learn that will suit their economic needs. Ideally every Indian would be able to find employment in their own state, and wouldn't have to learn any other language other then their own. Unfortunately the Indian local economy is not so strong that people have this option, people move around to a handful of cities to gain employment both high skilled and low skilled.

In a sense this is one thing I admire about China, or really the rest of East Asia, like Korea or Japan. They all retained their own language and became prosperous.I think this has to mainly with having a strong economy based in manufacturing, as opposed to a services focused economy. Indian's have to learn English because they provide services to a largely English speaking clientele. Manufacturing things doesn't really drawn upon your communication skills. Also, since the factory workers were able eventually see a rise in their own income, they started to have disposable income which created a huge market around them. So a market that caters to this new class of consumers, their local language all of a sudden has importance. They are buying things on the market and obviously they will prefer the shops that speak their language. So by empowering and enriching the poor to become middle class consumers, you actually work to preserve the local language, and perhaps the local cultures as well.

In fact I admire the Muslims of India, because they have made Urdu their language. Even in Tamil Nadu I was able to speak in Hindi with a Muslim Cab driver.

I don't necessarily believe in imposing Hindi on anyone in India, but I'm not opposed to it being looked at as a unifying language. But it should fill the gap that English leaves behind. I'm a Malayalee but I may go to Kolkata for a Job, in which case it would behoove me to learn Bengali; I wouldn't necessarily have to learn Hindi. I don't understand why the debate around this is so fierce, as if their is a hatred for Hindi. However foreign Hindi may be foreign to a Tamilian, certainly English is even more so foreign. We Indians have a habit of tearing our each other first without even considering to tear down the foreigner.

My hope is that Indians become extremely literate in their own language first, speak read and write it with great proficiency. The problem that we are facing right now is that many Indians know 2 or 3 languages badly, especially in urban areas, and that is completely the fault of English. English is given such priority in India, but it's not a language that is native here, and you can feel it. It's not really our language, and therefor we can't really express all the colors and thoughts that India brings to mind. After all English originates from one of the most dreariest places on Earth, how could we ever expect it to adequately serve a place like India?

At the heart of all of our Languages is Sanskrit. I recognize many words in Hindi, because it shares many Sanskrit words in common with Malayalam. So Sanskrit may not become a spoken language, although it is spoken in pockets across the country, but it can serve to bridge the gap into other local languages.

Even though it's ironic that I'm writing this post in English, I wish English would go extinct in India. Modern India has a knack for making so many things go extinct, why can't English be one of them for a change?

New Hyderabad and Old Hyderabad

I visited Hyderabad a year or two ago, and it left am impression on me that I still remember. The Airport was nice, it was clean and pretty modern. I remember it being a little bit empty or unfinished, maybe a bit dusty. The ride from the airport was lined with landscaping, similar to what you'd see in California, in fact the air was like arid like California's and quite pleasant. It was something of a desert, the land look dry, parched, fried. It wasn't smooth sand dunes, it was rocky and with dried bush. It looked a bit like a drought scene, or a dust bowl. but it was empty, and of no real consequence because the road was paved nicely, and their was no traffic.

Getting into the city, it looked like how I would imagine Israel to look; white washed building with rooftop terraces. We saw a strange glass fish of a building. The city didn't look particularly amazing, but it looked pretty clean. We didn't even see much of any slums, which is very suspicious for a major Indian city.

Our hotel was quite nice, for what it was. We stayed at the Taj Vivanta. The interior design was interesting and modern, the staff was fresh faced, well kempt, very hospitable. I guess by western standards it could be considered a luxurious 5-star hotel, but these are not things that stir my soul. There was a plush lobby lounge where they served us nice juices, and teas. Main dining hall had people to wait on you very attentively, and there was a nice spread of Indian and Western fair. The place reeked of orange plugin spray. There were many more amenities that we didn't really check out. WiFi was our number one concern at the moment. Nothing special about our room, the view was to the back of another tall building. I could see someone feeding birds. 

I didn't see that many birds though. We had just arrived from Kerala, so I was adjusting from the sudden decline of all life forms around me. 

We stepped out to get some food. We wanted to try the best biriyani in town, and we were pointed to some nearby place. I got a glimpse of the people, trickle of niqab-clad women here and there ride on that back of there husbands motor cycle. The people here looked more dry here. There faces were matte, a little fairer, less mustaches. Aside from an occasional burqa, or hijab the dress was pretty suburban U.S. I was told the food was good, I don't eat meat, so I think the rest of my family enjoyed the food more than I did. I had a peanut kabob.

I went with my cousin to the Old City. As we neared the area, the architecture started to change, I saw my pointed arches, and pointed domes big and small. The burqas started becoming more numerous, so too the men in white cropped pants. It became dense with people; we had arrive in the middle of a bazaar. 

This was a completely different city.
 

This placed was markedly Islamic. There were people selling everything in all directions, traffic was trying to push through a crowd. I don't think I saw a single woman's face there, but I saw many burqas. The area had many large civic and religious building built by the erstwhile Nizams. The Charminar, a large Mosque, a hospital with domes and arches.The place had a distinct style, a flavor, and it wasn't bland like the city of my hotel. The Sign were in Urdu, they had a painted/calligraphic look to is. There was no nature here, none that I can recall. The Azaan played in all directions on loud speakers, but no one stopped to pray. It had a North Indian Islamic feel to it, like what I would see in Hindi films. I could tell who was Shia by the hat they were wearing. It was sensory overload, in typical Indian fashion. I think we felt panicked at times. I think someone tried to hit me with their motorcycle when I tried to cross the road. 

There was something haunting about it, there was some social tension in the air. But I think I liked it, better than modern Hyderabad. The Tehzeeb was there. Where was the Hindu Hyderabad? Hindu-ness was much less overt in Hyderabad, and I felt sad about that. The rest of Hyderabad seemed to be sanitized with secularism. But this area was poorer than the rest of the city. It seemed like people here didn't really have the aspirations of the New India, they were content with selling something on the street and living self-ghettoized. 

Off to one side of the main drag, there was a walled Palace and Garden. Here there was order; a large rectangular water body with fountains, surrounded on all side with an arcade of cusped arches. This Palace was a little less exquisite compared to the Mughal forts of the North, at least on the exterior. Simple plaster moldings along the arches made for design. Some of the buildings had a European style. The Chowmallah was sumptuous; large archways, Chandeliers everywhere, Marble and intricate designs. You could tell they spent their money here. This place too felt steeped in history, in nobility,  and gentility. It was Islamic in a very light sense, it wasn't as heady as the city outside. It hearkened back to a time when perhaps Islam was westward looking. But it wasn't bland, it had a sweet cream taste with cardamom like Ras Malai. 

The rest of the City was more or less aspiration Pan-India. I didn't really get the feeling I was in a Telegu place, there was nothing really specific about it. It had all the trappings India's modern cities like Bangalore, Gurgaon or Bombay. It was modern in parts, but I didn't get a sense of history there, I guess I could compare it to Dubai. It was still India in it's India way, but a bit tamed. It was a bit unsettling. I shouldn't feel that way in a country that has 7000 years or more of history. 

I want India to be rich, but not lose itself in the process. It seems we're throwing away our past to look to the future. We want to be compared with Europe or USA on equal footing, which comes from a place of deep insecurity, an insecurity that I too am guilty of. But anyways, money is money, people want to make money. I guess making money is the mode we are in now, and that doesn't really require culture. 

There is something about being able to say that you're doing what your father is doing, and his father before his, until you have whole neighborhood that are like that. You can't manufacture that, and that is what I see a lot of in the U.S. People are trying to cook food the old way, or dress in vintage, recreate it's past. But in someways you can't. Once you break with tradition, it's gone forever. The India I connect with the most are the people who uphold all our traditions, of all our convoluted practices. It's not a job for them, it's their duty. It's one thing to start a fire, it's altogether a very different thing to keep that fire burning for millennia. 

Smart Cities

Firstly, a smart city should be built on mutual transactions, mutual consent. So you need 100% consent and agreement from the farmers for the land you want to buy. If you say only 70% of the farmers need to agree, then you are stealing from the other 30%. A system of land acquisition is fascism, it's tyranny, it's a system of violence, and coercion which is fundamentally evil. You are cutting off your arm to sell and buy a diamond ring for your other hand.

In theory, when a developer wants to buy land from a farmer to build whatever he wants, the transaction is such that a rich man is coming to a poor man to make an exchange. To the rich man, the land is more valuable to him than the cash he has on hand, because he sees the future potential of that land. To the farmer, he also sees value in the land but may be willing to give up the land if he is given enough money to buy the same amount of land elsewhere, and of similar quality. For example, land in Bengal produces more crops on 1 acre than 1 acre in Rajasthan. So both sides are trying to get emerge from the exchange in a better position than where they were previously.

Ultimately the developer will have to fork over a good sum of money, and quilt together farmlands that he is able to come to an agreement on. And that is good, because suddenly these farmers who were poor, will now become richer on their own terms.

If you simply snatch the land from farmers and then "compensate" them, you actually run the risk of impoverishing the poor and making the developers rich off what is essentially theft. And once you legalize theft, you will have an efficient machine built to thieve everyone in India, which I believe will inevitably lead to Civil War.

Smart cities are these fortified enclaves that seeks to create a sanitized space for itself. It's a planned community, and in reality it's a governance structure where the government is a private. It's a voluntary autocracy, or dictatorship. In other words, if the dictatorship becomes too oppressive for your liking, you can simply leave, there is no Berlin Wall. Because of that, it is forced to attract people, and ensure a degree of freedom so people don't feel as though they are in a state of consensual oppression. People do want orderliness, and the want the ability to create a series of rules and regulations that everyone agrees to before they move in.

There a vibrancy though in unregulated Indian villages, slums, and cities, and indeed an efficiency that I don't believe you can recreate in a planned society. I think people living in these sanitized communities will realize they want this vibrancy, and will want to imitate it, but it could never truly match the real thing. Eventually the cost will be so high to maintain these communities, that it won't be able to accommodate everyone, only those people who are rich enough to afford it.

Even in the most anarchic of Indian cities, there is an efficiency that can out-compete any kind planned city. Slums are the most extreme example of that. What makes it unappealing is that they are lacking in resources. But they are hives of all kinds of different activities, they are an organic unit. Gradually as their wealth increases little by little, so will their surroundings, and their vibrancy will remain. All these picturesque European towns that people vacation in started out that way. It takes time to culture, to mature, to ripen, like any fine wine.

In a sense planned cities could be a good idea if they were self sustaining, so all of the waste products need to be contained on site and reused so that the system is circular. That means all the poop, the pee, the paper, the food waste, need to be re-used for something within the society. It can't all just be dumped outside of the gated grounds.