-44_The Language Problem and India

The Language Problem and India

 

ENGLISH and French are the two languages that hold and express today the culture of humanity at its best and at its largest. They are the two international languages recognised as such and indispensable for all international dealings: and although to be internationally minded one would do better to possess both, still as it stands at present, they appeal to two different groups, each :in its own way and each has its hemisphere where it is prevalent, almost as a second mother tongue. Geographically, America and the British Commonwealth (including India) belong to the English sphere, while the European continent, South America and a good half of Canada are more at home in French. In Asia, the eastern part took more to English, while the western part (Turkey, Syria, even Persia and Afghanistan) seem to lean more towards French.

Almost till the end of the last century French was the language of culture all over Europe. It was taught there as part of liberal education in all the countries and a sojourn in France was considered necessary to complete the course. Those who were interested in human culture and wished to specialise in belles lettres had to cultivate more or less an intimate acquaintance with the Gallic Minerva. English has since risen to eminence, due to the far-flung political and commercial net that the nation has spread; it has become almost an indispensable instrument for communication between races that are non-English and far from England. Once upon a time it was said of a European that he had two countries, his own and France; today it can be said with equal or even more truth that a citizen of the modern world has two mother tongues, his own and English.

Even then, even though French has been ousted from the 

market-place, it holds still a place of honour in the cultural world, among the elite and the intelligentsia. I have said French rules the continent of Europe. Indeed even now an intellectual on the ,continent feels more at ease in French and would prefer to have the French version of a theme or work rather than the English. Indeed we may say in fact that the two languages appeal to two types of mentality, each expressing a characteristically different version of the same original truth or fact or statement. If you wish to have your ideas on a subject clear, rational and unambiguous, you must go to French. French is the language par excellence of law and logic. Mental presentation, as neat and transparent as possibly can be is the special aid French language brings to you. But precisely because it is intellectually so clear, and neat, it has often to avoid or leave out certain shades and nuances or even themes which do not go easily into its logical frame. English is marvellous in this respect, that being an illogical language it is more supple and pliant and rich and through its structural ambiguities can catch and reflect or indicate ideas and realities, rhythms and tones that are supra-rational. French, as it has been pointed out by French writers themselves, is less rich in synonyms than English. There each word has a very definite and limited (or limiting) connotation, and words cannot be readily interchanged. English, on the other hand, has a richer, almost a luxuriant vocabulary, not only in respect of the number of words, but also in the matter of variation in the meaning a given word conveys. Of course, double entendre or suggestiveness is a quality or capacity that all languages that claim a status must possess; it is necessary to express something of the human consciousness. Still, in French that quality has a limited, if judicious and artistic application; in English it is a wild growth.

French expresses better human psychology, while meta-physical realities find a more congenial home in the English language. This is not to say that the English are born meta-physicians and that the French are in the same manner natural psychologists. This is merely to indicate a general trait or possible capacity of the respective languages. The English or the English language can hold no candle to the German race or the German language in the matter of metaphysical abstruseness.

German is rigid, ponderous, if recondite. English is more flexible and has been used and can be used with great felicity by the mystic and the metaphysician. The insular English with regard to his language and letters have been more open to external influences; they have benefited by their wide contact with other peoples and races and cultures.

The stamp of mental clarity and neat psychological or introspective analysis in the French language has been its asset and a characteristic capacity from the time of Descartes - through Malebranche and Voltaire and the Encyclopaedists - right down to Bergson. The English are not by nature meta-physicians, in spite of the Metaphysicals: but greatness has been thrust upon them. The strain of Celtic mysticism and contact with Indian spiritual lore have given the language a higher tension, a deeper and longer breath, a greater expressive capacity in that direction.

But French seems to have made ample amends for this deficiency (in the matter of variety of experiences especially in the supra-rational religions) by developing a quality which is peculiar to its turn of psychological curiosity and secular understanding - a refined sensibility, a subtle sensitiveness, an alert and vibrant perception that puts it in contact with the in­ner (even though not so much the higher) almost the hidden and occult movements of life. That is how mysticism-fa mystique - comes by a back door as it were into the French language.

It seems natural for the English language to dwell on such heights of spiritual or metaphysical experience as A.E. gives us:

 

A spirit of unfettered will

Through light and darkness moving still

Within the All to find its own,

To be immortal and alone.¹

 

It can dare even such mystic summits which Sri Aurobindo discloses:

 

Earth is now girdled with trance and Heaven is put round

her for vesture.

Wings that are brilliant with fate sleep at Eternity's gate. 

 

¹ "Endurance". 

Time waits, vacant, the Lightning that kindles, the Word that transfigures:

Space is a stillness of God building his earthly abode. ¹

 

But French too in her own inimitable way gives us glimpsesof a beyond and otherwhere, as in these well-known lines of Baudelaire:

 

II est des parfums frais comme des chairs d' enfants,

Doux comme les hautbois, verts comme les prairies,

- Et d'autres, corrompus, riches et triomphants,

Ayant l'expansion des chases infinies,¹

 

or this exquisite passage reverberating with the sense of awe and intimacy in the presence of the infinite unknown:

 

O Conscience immobile et sereine, Tu veilles aux confins du monde comme un sphinx d' éternité. Et pourtant à certains Tu livres Ton secret. lIs peuvent devenir Ton vouloir souverain, qui choisit sans préférer, execute sans désirer.³

 

In other words, we can say in a somewhat crudely general manner, in grosso modo, that if English soars high, French dives within; if English is capable of scaling the heavens of the spirit, French enters as easily into the intimacies of the soul (lime). It is these intimacies or soul touches that form as it were the inner lining to the mental clarities that give French its external structure; while in English as a counterpart to its spiritual attitudes we meet on the hither side a luxuriant objectivity of sense perception. Thus the two languages are in a way strangely complementary, and in a perfect human culture both have to be equally attended to, given equal importance if completeness or integrality is our aim.

 

¹ "Trance of Waiting", Collected Poems and Plays, Vol. II, p. 363.

² "Correspondances".

"There are perfumes fresh like the flesh of children, sweet like the haut-boy,

green like the prairies Others there are corrupt, rich and triumphant

possessing the expansion of things infinite."

³ La Mere, Prieres et Meditations, 10 November 1914.

"O serene and immobile Consciousness, Thou watchest on the boundaries of the world like a sphinx of eternity. And yet to some Thou givest out Thy secret. They can become Thy sovereign will which chooses without preference and executes without desire." 

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II

 

French and English being given the place of honour, now the question is with regard to the vernacular of those who do not speak either of these languages. We have to distinguish two categories of languages: national and international. French and English being considered international languages par excellence, the others remain as national languages, but their importance need not be minimised thereby. First of all, along with the two major international languages, there may be a few others that can be called secondary or subsidiary international languages according as they grow and acquire a higher status. Thus Russian, or an Asiatic, even an Indian language may attain that position, because of wide extension or inherent value of popularity or for some other reason. Indeed, a national language cultivated and enriched by its nationals can force itself on the world's attention and fairly become a world language. Tagore was able to give that kind of world importance to the Bengali language.

It may be questioned whether too many languages are not imposed on us in this way and whether it will not mean in the end a Babel and inefficiency. It need not be so and it is not going to be so. We must remember the age we are in, its composite structure, its polyphonic nature. In the ancient and mediaeval ages, the ages of separatism and exclusiveness of clans and tribes and regions, even in the later age of the states and nations, the individual group-consciousness was strong and sedulously fostered. Languages and literature grew and developed more or less independently and with equal vigour, although always through some kind of give and take. But the modern world has been made so inextricably one, ease of communication and free interchange have obliterated the separating boundaries, not only geographical but psychological. The modern consciousness has so developed and is so circumstanced that one can very easily be bi-lingual or even trilingual: indeed one has to be so, speaking and writing with equal felicity not only one's mother tongue but one or more adopted tongues. Modern culture means that.

Naturally I am referring to the educated or cultured stratum 

of humanity, the élite. This restriction, however, does not vitiate or nullify our position. The major part of humanity is bound and confined to the soil where they are born and brought up. Their needs do not go beyond the assistance of their vernacular. A liberal education, extending even to the masses, may and does include acquaintance with one or two foreign languages, especially in these days, but in fact it turns out to be only a nodding acquaintance, a secondary and marginal acquisition. When Latin was the lingua franca in Europe or Sanskrit in India, it was the élite, the intelligentsia, the Brahmin, the clerc, who were the trustees and guardians of the language. That position has virtually been taken in modern times, as I have said, by English and French.

The cultivation of a world language need not mean a neglect or discouragement of the national or regional language. Between the two instead of there being a relation of competition there can be a relation of mutual aid and helpfulness. The world language can influence the local language in the way of its growth and development and can itself be influenced and enriched in the process. The history of the relation of English and the Indian languages, especially Bengali, is an instance in point.

A question has been raised with regard to the extent of that influence, involving a very crucial problem: the problem of Indian writers in English. It is said Indians have become clever writers in English because of English domination. Now that India is free and that domination gone, the need of English will be felt less and less and finally it may even totally disappear from the Indian field. What has become of the Persian language in India? There were any numbers of Indian writers in Persian but with the disappearance of the Muslim rule the supremacy, even the influence of that imperial language has disappeared. At the most English may remain as the necessary medium for international affairs, cultivated, that is to say, just learnt by a comparatively few for the minimum business transaction. The heart of the country cannot express itself in that foreign tongue and no literature of the Indo-Anglian type can grow permanently here.

But this is judging the present or the future by the past. Mankind is no longer exclusively or even mainly national in 

its outlook; it cannot remain so if it is to progress, to take the next step in evolution. We say if mankind overpasses the nationalistic stage and attains something of the international consciousness and disposition, it would be possible and even natural for a few at least among the educated to express themselves in and through the wider world language, not merely as an instrument of business deal, but as a vehicle of literary and aesthetic creation.

There are certain external -social and political -circumstances in existence today and will be more and more in evidence perhaps with the lapse of time which tend to corroborate and strengthen that possibility. A language learnt for commercial or diplomatic transaction cannot remain limited to that function. Those who intend merely to learn may end very probably by cultivating it. And then it has been suggested that in the march of evolution towards world unity, there is likely to be an intermediate stage or rung where nations with special affinities or common interests will group together forming larger collectivities: there will be free associations of free nations, the Commonwealth as it has been termed. If India is to link herself specially to the English-speaking group, the English language will not cease to be an acquaintance but continue to be or develop into a very good friend.

It may be argued that a foreign language, in order that it may be the medium of literary expression even for the few, must have some living contact with the many, the people themselves. Some kind of atmosphere is needed where the few can breathe and live the language they adopt. Even for an individual when he takes to a foreign tongue, it is necessary in order to be perfectly at home and master in that language that he should live sometime (seven years is the minimum given by a French critic) in the country of the language adopted. In India, now that the British are gone, how can that atmosphere or influence be maintained? English letters may yet flourish here for a few years, because of the atmosphere created in the past but they are sure to dwindle and fade away like flowers on a plant without any roots in a sustaining soil. Indeed English was never a flowering from the mother soil, it was something imposed from above, at best grafted from outside. Circumstances have changed and we cannot hope to eternalise it. 

We repeat what we have suggested, a national language flowers in one way, an international language flowers in another way. The atmosphere if not the soil, will be, in the new international consciousness, the inner life of mankind. That will become a more and more vivid, living and concrete reality. And minds open to it, soaked in it will find it quite natural to express themselves in a language that embodies that spirit. In this way, even though English might have lost a good deal of its external dominion in India, can still retain psychologically its living reality there, in minds that form as it were the vanguard of a new international age, with just the minimum amount of support needed from external circumstances and these are and may be available. And it would not be surprising, if not only English but French too in a similar way finds her votaries from among the international set in our country.

All this, we repeat again, need not be and will not be at the cost of the national language or languages, rather the contrary. 

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