The tragedy of education in India

[Dinner]

English was chose for that because if the new state was seen as favoring one group then it likely would have broken down into several waring states. The Sikhs would have gone for sure and numerous other minority groups would have been pissed off claiming the new state didn't represent their interests and just had Hindis replacing the British as colonial masters. Instead of Raj India breaking down into three seporate states we'd see four or five at least in their place today. Likely the Chinese would have grabbed more land too as India would have been even weaker and less capable of defending itself. English was chosen because it was needed to keep the state from breaking up still further.

[aneeshm]

I don't support the imposition of one language on the entire populate, like the state tried with Hindi. I'd rather we retain the national language as English, but that the state be accessible to a person from each state in his own language.

On the other side, I support the voluntary organisations who are trying to make Sanskrit into a pan-Indian elite language, without resorting to state coercion.

In the ideal case, we would have a system whereby each person was trilingual, at least until self-sufficiency is attained - English for the sciences, Sanskrit for inter-regional or pan-Indian communication, and the regional language for all regional work.

[aneeshm]

Actually, the north had no problem with the imposition of Hindi. It was the south, specially the Tamils, who objected most vociferously. And I must thank them for it.

[Bosh]

I support the voluntary organisations who are trying to make Sanskrit into a pan-Indian elite language

Good luck with that. That's about as likely as Latin becomming the official language of the EU...

[aneeshm]

Originally posted by Bosh

Good luck with that. That's about as likely as Latin becomming the official language of the EU...

India and the EU are very different.

[aneeshm]

And yes, it is difficult, as you say, but we have done more difficult things.

[Nikolai]

EDIT: Wrong thread.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by aneeshm
On the other side, I support the voluntary organisations who are trying to make Sanskrit into a pan-Indian elite language, without resorting to state coercion.

Er, why? I thought you didn't want India to stay backwards

[aneeshm]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker


Er, why? I thought you didn't want India to stay backwards

What does turning Sanskrit into a pan-Indian language by non-coercive means have to do with backwardness? If anything, I'd say it would be a force to combat the backwardness already extant.

[Dr Strangelove]

Don't Hindi and the Dravidian languages like Tamil belong to seperate language groups? It's my impression that Sanskrit is the distant progenitor to Hindi, in the same sense that Latin is the progenitor of French, Italian and Spanish. Sanskrit isn't the progenitor of Tamil or the other Dravician languages. Also is there a spoken version of Sanskrit? I thought that the spoken langiage of Sanskrit had long died out. Since Sanskrit is an ancient language in order to make it work for modern India it would necessarily have to incorporate many of the words and perhaps even some of the grammer of more modern languages.

You didn't answer my question about what portion of the population of India speaks Hindi. My ex-sister-in-law used to claim that better than 80% of the population of India spoke Hindi or a dialect of Hindi. She considered Urdu, Bengali, and a number of other of the native languages to be mere dialects of Hindi. I'd also like to know about the state of public education in India.

[SlowwHand]

English as the language isn't the problem. The caste system is the problem, and is directly responsible for "the English language problem" and most other problems.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by aneeshm
What does turning Sanskrit into a pan-Indian language by non-coercive means have to do with backwardness? If anything, I'd say it would be a force to combat the backwardness already extant.

Because India would be better off if you all just dropped everything but English.

[aneeshm]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker

Because India would be better off if you all just dropped everything but English.

What makes you say that?

And have you read the article?

[SlowwHand]

I worked as a tutor for English As A Second Language.
Multi-cultural "at risk" kids being helped to read, write and SPEAK English. I have a West Texas drawl. Although I was fairly popular with the school, students and parents, I've always pictured them going home and their family asking "WTF?".
I could do the same thing for your people.

[aneeshm]

@ Dr.

Around 337 million people have Hindi as their mother tongue in India.