Let me give a chapter form my own experience Up to
the age of 12 all the knowledge I gained was through Gujarati, my mother tongue.
I knew then something of Arithmetic, History and Geography. Then I entered a
High School, For the Fist three years the mother tongue was still the medium.
But the school master's business was to drive English into the pupil's head.
Therefore, more than half of our time was given to learning English, and
mastering its arbitrary spelling and pronunciation. It was a painful discovery
to have written. It was a strange experience to have to learn the spelling by
heart. But that is by the way, and irrelevant to my argument. However, for the
first three years it was comparatively plain sailing.
The pillory began with the fourth year. Every
thing had to be learnt through English - Geometry, Algebra, Chemistry,
Astronomy, History, Geography. The tyranny of English was so great that even
Sanskrit or Persian had to be learnt through English, not through the mother
tongue. If any boy spoke in the class in Gujarati which he understood, he was
punished. It did not matter to the teacher if a boy spoke bad English which he
could neither pronounce correctly nor understand fully. Why should the teacher
worry? His own English was by no means without blemish. It could not be
otherwise. English was as much a foreign language to him as to his pupils. The
result was chaos. We the boy had to learn many things by heart, though we could
not understand them fully and often not at all. My head used to reel as the
teacher was struggling to make his exposition on Geometry understood by us. I
could make neither head nor tail of Geometry till we reached the 13th Theorem of
the first book of Euclid. And let me confess to the reader that in spite of all
my love for the mother tongue, I do not to this day know the Gujarati
equivalents of the technical terms of Geometry, Algebra and the like. I know now
that what I took four years to learn of Arithmetic, Geometry, Algebra, Chemistry
and Astronomy, I should have learnt easily in one year, if I had not to learn
through English but Gujarati. My grasp of the subjects would have been easier
and clearer. My Gujarati vocabulary would have been richer. I would have made
use of such knowledge in my own home. This English medium created an impassable
barrier between me and the members of my family, who had not gone through
English schools. My father knew nothing of what I was doing. I could not, even
If I had wished it, interest my father in what I was learning. For though he had
ample intelligence, he knew not a word of English. I was fast becoming a
superior person. Even my dress began to undergo imperceptible changes. What
happened to me was not an uncommon experience. It was common to the majority.
The first three years in the High School made
little addition to my stock of general knowledge. They were a preparation for
fitting the boys for teaching them every thin thing through English. High
Schools were schools for cultural conquest by the English. The knowledge gained
by the three hundred boys of my High School became a circumscribed possession.
It was not for transmission to the masses.
A word about literature. We had to learn several
books of English prose and English poetry. No doubt all this was nice. But the
Knowledge has been of no use to me in serving or bringing me in touch with the
masses. I am unable to say that if I had not learnt what I did of English prose
and poetry, I should have misses. I am unable to say that if I had not learnt
what I did of English prose and poetry, I should have missed a rare treasure. If
I had, instead, passed those precious seven years in mastering Gujarati and have
learnt Mathematics, Sciences, and Sanskrit and other subjects through Gujarati,
I could easily have shared the knowledge so gained with my habit of application
and my inordinate love for the country and the mother tongue, made a richer and
greater contribution to the service of the masses?
I must not be understood to decry English or its
noble literature. The columns of the Harijan are sufficient evidence of my love
of English. But the nobility of tits literature cannot avail the Indian nation
any more than the temperate climate or the scenery of England can avail her.
India has to flourish in her won climate, and scenery, and her own literature,
even though all the three may be inferior to the English climate, scenery and
literature. We and our children must build on our own heritage. If we borrow
another we impoverish our own. We can never grow on foreign victuals. I want the
nation to have the treasures contained in that language, and for that matter the
other languages of the world, through its own vernaculars. I do not need to
learn Bengali in order to know the beauties of Rabindranath's matchless
productions. I get them through good translation. Gujarati boys and girls do not
need to learn Russian to appreciate Tolstoy's short stories. They learn them
through good translations. It is the boast of Englishmen that the best of the
world's literacy output is in the hands of that nation in simple English inside
of a week of its publication. Why need I learn English to get at the best of
what Shakespeare and Milton thought and wrote?
It would be good economy to set apart a class of
students whose business would be to learn the best of what is to be learnt in
the different languages of the world and give the translation in the
vernaculars. Our masters chose the wrong way for us, and habit has made the
wrong appear as right.
I find daily proof of the Increasing and
continuing wrong being done to the millions by our false de-Indianizing
education. These graduates who are my valued associates themselves flounder when
they have to give expressions to their innermost thoughts. They are strangers in
their own homes. Their vocabulary in the mother tongue is so limited that they
cannot always finish their speech without having recourse to English words and
even sentences. Nor can they exist without English books. They often write to
one another in English. I cite the case of my companions to show how deep the
evil has gone. For we have made a conscious effort to mend ourselves.
It has been argued that the wastage that occurs in
our colleges need not worry us if, out of the collegians, one Jagdish Bose can
be produced by them. I should freely subscribe to the argument, if the wastage
was unavoidable. I hope I have shown that it was and is even now avoidable.
Moreover, the creation of a Bose does not help the argument. For Bose was not a
product of the present education. He rose in spite of the terrible handicaps
under which he had to labour. And his knowledge became almost intransmissible to
the masses. We seem to have come to think that no one can hope to be like a Bose
unless he knows English. I cannot conceive a grosser superstition than this. No
Japanese feels so helpless as we seem to do.
The medium of instruction should be altered at
once and at any cost, the provincial language being given their rightful place.
I would prefer temporary chaos in higher education to the criminal waste that is
daily accumulating.
In order to enhance the status and market-value of
ht provincial languages, I would have the language of the law courts to be
language of the province where the court is situated. The proceedings of the
provincial legislature must be in the language, or even the languages of the
province where a province has more than one language within its borders. I
suggest to the legislators that they could, by enough application, inside of a
month, understand the languages of their provinces. There is nothing to prevent
a Tamilian from easily learning the simple grammar and a few hundred words of
Telugu, Malayalam, and Kanarese all allied to a Tamil. At the centre Hindustani
must rule supreme.
In my opinion this is not question to be decided
by academicians. They cannot decide through what language the boys and girls of
a place are to be educated. That question is already decided for them in every
free country. Nor can they decide the subjects to be taught. That depends upon
the wants of the country to which they belong. Theirs is a privilege of
enforcing the nation's will in the best manner possible. When this country
becomes really free, the question of medium will be settled only one way. The
academicians will frame the products of the education of a free India will
answer the requirement of the country as today they answer those of the foreign
ruler. So long as we the educated classes play with this question, I very much
fear we shall not produce the free and healthy India of our dream. We have to
grow by strenuous effort out of our bondage, whether it is educational,
economical, social or political. The effort itself is three-fourths of the
battle.
Harijan, 9-7-'38