Pragmatism needed on language issue.

Sahib Singh Verma, the education minister of the state of Delhi, learnt what it is to be an enormously piqued politician only after his unexpected linguistic chauvinism came in for the kind of flak be had never anticipated in his wildest dreams.
He had, and as quoted recently in the national newspapers, said without any preamble that the Delhi Government would “scrap English upto class V”. The intellectual of this city and school, children, parents teachers, educationists went up in flames. They, of all language of commerce indeed of any kind of global discourse economic, social or political and that there was no reason why a generation of school children should have to suffer from truanted careers just because some ultra nationalist decided that English was colonialism’s living ghost.
Talking to this reporter, however, he maintained a bit vaguely that the ‘medium of instruction should always be the language, of natural communication”. All very well from a supra-nationalist point of view, “ catch the kids at their most vulnerable age and stuff them up with linguistic chauvinism posing as national pride”.
“But,” argues SP Bakshi principal of New Delhi’s Modern School, “Can we do that to all the regions in our country? If yes, will such students be companies and the rising private sectors?” Yet the education minister asserts.
“It is a severe offence against a child to impose upon him a medium of instruction which he does not know.
Verma is up against an army of obdurate school children to whom fluency in English is a passport to a class VI in a government school in RK Puram, “Hindi, in any case, is our mother tongue and we learn it automatically. But English is an important language and should be taught sooner rather than later.” Adds Ranjan Chakraborty, the father of a student, Aditya Ranjan, from Delhi Public School (DPS) in Vasant Vihar, “My son is remarkably fluent in three languages Bengali Hindi and English.
Says the headmasters of one of the city’s DPS, “If in a scientific manner there languages on a child are no burdenm,” Feels Chakraborty, “Every child should be given basis education in English because ultimately when the child grows up, he has to learn English, as the system demands, in the private sector and otherwise,” the reason for putting his child is DPS, even tough his wife teacher in a Kendriya Vidyalaya in Shalima Bagh, was, “the condition of primary classes, where the medium of instruction is Hindi, is pathetic”.
Dr Amrik Singh, an eminent educationist, holds firmly that government and municipal corporation school are “slums”, where every language, not merely English, puts on the clownish garb of pidgin. In almost al competitive events, it falls to pass muster. Says Usha Dalwani, principal of a government school is South Delhi, “Here in government schools, we really fell the dearth of English as a medium mostly when cultural and quiz competitions and compete with pubic schools. They always return defected and with the hangover of an inferiority complex.
This is despite the fact that as a matter of policy, every government school has one English medium section in each class in the secondary classes. “Every parent wants their child to be admitted preferably in the English section of the class, “Unfortunately, most children who take admission in government schools are products of corporation (NDMC) schools, and have only a pathetic amatterign of English. Therefore, “We should introduce English in the primary sections in Hindi medium schools, so that children who suddenly start learning English in he secondary classes learn in more confidently and foster,” says Mrs. Prakash Bahal, vice-principal of government secondary school.
Neena Sehgal, the headlines of DPS Vasant Vihar, however, feels, “the mother tongue can be used as the language of oral communicating. Two much rigidity on the medium of instruction, say English, on nursery children and preparatory classes makes them apprehensive. It because difficult for them to express concepts properly”.
English has never been much of a problem in the south and tracts south of the Vidhyas ad to the east and west of it, use English as and language of common discourse. But the militant discourse with its dependence has found it perennially difficult to learn and regurgitate a language that the only five vowels and a meager total of 26 alphabets ad is still the most complicated and malleable language in the world.
The end of feudalism came late of North India and so it was but natural that English come to be seen as the language of the bigwigs and the bane of rural folk.
More to the point, English is the language that holds together a national state that is one of the biggest democracies in the history of nations. Without such a link language, the country would most likely have disintegrated into a Tower of Babel decades ago. “English provides us a way out of our political inability to merge into one nation,: says Kanchan Sayal of Modern School,. “Like Japan, China and other European countries, we do not have a single independent language. Therefore, we are bound to use English since this is the only language that is nationally and internationally accepted.”
Singh, however, is sticking to his guns.  “I cannot,” he sys, “imagine this country, after 100 years, becoming anything of value using a foreign language.”
Even though England continues to hold out truculently against the concept of an unified Europe, the European Community’s official language is English. Of course there is French. This is not appeasement, it is pragmatism.
The proponents of Hindi national link langue have only themselves to blame for the near-fascist linguistic battle that triggers of across India at the drop of a syllable. Says Mrs Sehgal, “Hindi has been greatly damaged by those who have made is more pristine pure and incomprehensibly sanskritised. Which is sad because the primary function of a language is communication. If it does not communicate, it ceases to perform its function.”
So, when Delhi’s chief minister, Madan Lal Khurana, virtually ridiculed one of his most trusted lieutenants for unthinkingly unripping his lip on a subject that the governments, beset with other problems, would rather avoid or leave for a later, more conducive date, he declared explicitly that English will remain the “lingua franca” of national and international transactions. And Verma is now busy said what he has been quoted as having said.