Amit Ranjan ENGLISH IN THE DALIT CONTEXT Edited by A. Uma , S. Rani and D.M. Manohar Orient BlackSwan, 2014, pp. 192, Rs. 695.00 VOLUME XXXIX NUMBER 9 September 2015 Is it my need, or my wish,
To learn that lock-opener
That language called English?
There is centuries of anger to unleash,
And a journey from the dregs to niche.
That roughly is the sentiment that the
book in question, English in the Dalit
Context, rallies around English as a
tool of empowerment for the dalit community.
The book, edited by Alladi Uma,
Suneetha Rani and D.M. Manohar, is a collection
of 14 essays that emerged out of a
national seminar on ‘English in the Dalit
Context’ organized by the University of
Hyderabad in 2013.
Apart from essays by eminent dalit intellectuals,
the blurb of the book says that
‘there are essays by non-dalit scholars as well,
dealing with the idea of colonial modernity’
vis-à-vis the dalit situation. One wonders
why the blurb of the book would mention
this—perhaps because identity discourses
have a strong debate between authentic lived
experiences and an outsider’s view. Given this
lead, one gave some thought to the matter,
and sensed that while the former have activists’
zeal in promoting the cause of English,
the latter throw a word of caution—that language
may be an important tool, but romanticizing
the idea too much would become a
defeating exercise as language alone cannot
lead to amelioration.
V. Raghavan in his essay, ‘On Worshipping
English, the Dalit Goddess: Manu,
Missionary, Macaulay and the Market,’ says
that ‘… such an outright rejection of native
tongues leaves out any scope for appropriation
of those tongues, which could have been
more meaningful and revolutionary. In this
respect, this particular Dalit movement
suffers from a lack of radicalism. By rejecting
the mother tongues, this movement is
heading towards a kind of lingocide’
(p. 137).
This view is countered by other essays
earlier in the book by Sabur Ali citing the
case of Tamil Nadu, or T. Bharathi’s essay,
‘Dalits’ Rendezvous with English: An Exodus
from Bondage’ where the argument is
that there is nothing in Tamil or Telugu or
other languages for dalits—the abuses in most vernacular languages is loaded against
women and dalits, that the myths are loaded
against them, that it is not a cultural repository
for them. Given that English is alien,
caste-neutral and an opportunity to the wide
world, it is preferable to education in the
mother tongue. The angst obviously arises
from the fact that the ‘savarnas’ have had access
to English education, ... Table of Contents >> |