(Mani Shankar Aiyar is a Congress MP in the Rajya Sabha)After I joined the Indian Foreign Service in 1963, I was sent to the Free University of Brussels to learn my "compulsory foreign language" - French. It so happened that my class were the guinea pigs for the first audio-visual teaching course. A linguistic psychologist was, therefore, attached to the class to see how different nationalities - Syrian, Turkish, German, Italian, Peruvian, Cuban, Japanese, American - who were all thrown together with an exclusively French-speaking teacher to swim or sink were picking up the language. It quickly became evident that the two Indians - KP Balakrishnan and I - were top of the class, picking up the rudiments of the language within a few weeks. I asked the psychologist how this was happening - was it because we were brighter than the rest or was there something in our background that made it easier for us than the others to learn a foreign language. She said our racing ahead of the rest of the class had a simple explanation. Linguistic psychology had long established that anyone who could speak two languages would in adulthood (the cut-off age was 35) easily acquire much more fluency in a third language than someone who had reached adulthood with only one language. My batch-mate, Balakrishnan's mother tongue was Malayalam and mine was Tamil; we both also had a fairly firm grasp of Hindi, and, of course, both of us knew English; so, French was our fourth language, which accounted for us being so far ahead of everyone else, particularly the Americans (who did not even know proper English, they having been brought up on a ghastly nasal dialect called 'American'!)
All those who make it to the IFS have to learn enough of their compulsory foreign language to pass an oral and written exam before they can be confirmed in the Service. Even before leaving the first phase of our training in Mussoorie, we also had to compulsorily pass written and oral tests in Hindi. So, even though all of us had passed the Civil Services exam in English, before we really embarked on our careers post-confirmation, we had to have a fair command of at least three languages - English, Hindi and a foreign language. Moreover, although it is now nearly 40 years since I had the opportunity of speaking and listening to French on a daily basis, when I am interviewed in French or meet a French-speaking person, I am amazed at how smoothly my French returns to my tongue.
Similarly, our IAS colleagues had to pass the compulsory Hindi exam and if they were posted outside their home State (as nearly two-thirds of IAS officers are) they had to learn the language of their State of posting before being confirmed. When I think that two of the most successful Chief Secretaries of Uttar Pradesh that I have known are Kalyanakrishnan and TSR Subramaniam, it is clear that learning a State language is the sine qua non for the advancement of one's career as a civil servant. Certainly, of the numerous SDMs and Collectors I have encountered in my Tamil Nadu constituency, several from Hindi-speaking states had passable or even commendable Tamil (an extraordinarily difficult language for most Indians to learn because, unlike other Indian languages, Tamil has evolved without any Sanskrit roots and little Sanskrit influence).
It seems to me that here we have the seeds of a formula to deal with the CSAT problem from practical experience. Why should the aptitude test be conducted in English only? If we prescribe that the aptitude test will test linguistic skills in any two Indian languages (of which English might be one) and the 200 CSAT marks are evenly divided between comprehension in each of these languages, it would be a common platform for testing all students, whatever their language. Clearly all would be fluent in one of these two languages and somewhat less so in the second language. So, no one would be particularly advantaged in testing linguistic skills. And if the two languages could exclude English, then too there would be a level playing field because every candidate would have language proficiency, and, therefore, language-learning skills, in at least two languages, neither of which need necessarily be English. This would, in fact, encourage Hindi speakers to attempt Tamil or Malayalam, or Bengali or Odiya, or Mizo or Assamese, thus deepening national integration. In an earlier blog, I had quoted a great Tamil parliamentarian, Era Sezhiyan, responding to Atal Behari Vajpayee who had said there was a Hindi Prachar Sabha in every southern state by asking: "And how many Tamil Prachar Sabhas do you have in UP? How many Malayalam Prachar Sabhas in Madhya Pradesh?" If the CSAT aptitude test required some proficiency in a second modern Indian language, not necessarily in English, those who regard English as an Imperialist language would be free to learn any other modern Indian language - Telugu, perhaps, Konkani, Kannad, Urdu?
But what, it may be asked, would we do about a Tamil who chose Malayalam as his second language for CSAT? Who outside Tamil Nadu and Kerala speaks these languages? How would he or she communicate with their northern, eastern, western and north-eastern colleagues? The answer is simple. For being confirmed in the Service, that candidate would have to pass the compulsory Hindi exam and, if he gets posted to, say, Maharashtra or Gujarat would have to have a duly tested working knowledge of Marathi or Gujarati, as the case may be.
Linguistic ability fitted to the administrative task is an indispensable requirement for an administrator. It is no use his knowing his TS Eliot if he has to work in Arunachal Pradesh. This is not a question of Hindi and English. If it were, we could get rid of English. But those who do not speak Hindi as their mother tongue are apprehensive that if some 42 per cent Indians who speak Hindi as their mother tongue are advantaged over 58 per cent of Indians for whom Hindi is not a mother tongue but a "learned" language, then permanent linguistic dominance will be established by the Hindi speaker over the non-Hindi speaker - and we would be put in the position of pre-1971 Pakistan where the Urdu-speaking minority tried to establish linguistic dominance over the Bengali-speaking majority. That is why the non-Hindi states prefer the equal disadvantage of English over the built-in disadvantage they would suffer if the mother tongue of the minority is made the sole official language for the non-Hindi speaking majority.
Similar equality through inequality might be achieved by allowing the CSAT aptitude test to be conducted, if the candidate so desires, in any two modern Indian languages to the exclusion of English as compulsorily the second. Any attempt to overthrow the Angrezi-bhashi by making Hindi or even the recognized scheduled languages as the only qualifying language would be firmly resisted in the North- East hill states (e.g. English is the state language in Nagaland, which otherwise has 16 tribal dialects) and by many others who would insist that an India with Nobel and Man-Booker prizes in English literature has Indianized English, whatever the place of origin of the language. Indian English is as much a language native to India as American is the US version of British English. (Indeed, even in the UK, English is murdered in a hundred different ways - "Oh! why can't the English teach their children how to speak": Prof Higgins in My Fair Lady - and anti-English linguistic patriotism lies at the bottom of the Scottish and Welsh movements for independence - in the 21st century!)
For the rest, let us please note that ALL the other papers (the only ones whose marks count towards the final result) can be written in English, Hindi or any of our scheduled languages. In any case, even if we remove the "compulsory" aptitude test for English, we will be benefiting candidates by only 70 marks out of 200 because anyone who scores 70 out of 200 is eligible to appear in the mains where no knowledge of English is required. But if even 70 marks sticks in the throats of students who neither know nor wish to know any English, then let the 70 marks go, but, remember, before they are confirmed, they will have to learn at least two more languages if they are Hindi-speakers and, if they are non-Hindi speakers, three more languages (English, Hindi and the state or foreign language). Yet, if that is all it takes to end the despair of the students on strike in Mukherji Nagar, so be it. But if Modi sticks to his campaign promise of Hindi-izing everything, this country will disintegrate on his watch. This time round he looks stymied. If he thinks he can break the impasse by giving in to linguistic chauvinism, it will be, as the Old Testament says, "No more water/ The Fire Next Time".
Modiji, once upon a time, there was a Gujarati who said: "English is the language of international commerce; it is the language of diplomacy, and it contains many a rich literary treasure, it gives us an introduction to Western thought and culture. For a few of us, therefore, a knowledge of English is necessary".
That Gujarati was called Mahatma Gandhi. He was quite right in saying that "for a few" - but only a few - a knowledge of English is necessary. For it is those very few who are precisely the ones in the higher civil services. The rest have no need of knowing English and no one will begrudge them their right to refuse to learn that language or be tested in its skills. Gandhiji added that "to get rid of the infatuation for English is one of the essentials of Swaraj." We have achieved that in the Civil Services exams by providing for the papers on which marks are taken into account for determining ranking to be in English or Hindi or any one of our scheduled languages. It is only for 70 marks that thus far English is indispensable. Let us get rid of that but not of the need for civil servants to have language skills by insisting that some competence, amounting to 70 marks in any two modern Indian languages, would suffice for passing the first Part of the exam (prelims) - but insist that linguistic capacity in English, Hindi and a third language is indispensible for confirmation before being put to the hard and demanding work of a Class I or Class II government officer. That is the real challenge, and the one way of sorting out the present UPSC-CSAT imbroglio.
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