The most common language spoken in the hostels of IIT Madras is neither Tamil nor Telugu nor English

by Guest Sun Feb 04, 2018 10:56 am

WHILE TEACHING at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras in 2009-2010, I noticed that the majority of my students were Telugu speakers, with Tamil and Malayalam coming in second and third. Yet when I asked them what the most common language spoken in the hostels was (with its mix of students from mostly the South but also the North, East and West), they routinely said, “Hindi”. This went against some of my assumptions about “the South”. While it was true that many students spoke English well if they weren’t speaking their mother tongue with their peers, it was still more natural for them to speak in Hindi rather than English. This cultural comfort with Hindi didn’t mean that their English wasn’t good enough, but it did reveal that English had a particular place in their lives. I also knew from having read their exam essays that their English-language comprehension and ability for written expression ranged wildly. They had come from different kinds of English-medium backgrounds and that, in combination with their family circumstances and their singular focus on scoring high on the math-oriented IIT entrance exam, led to very different abilities and levels of confidence in the English language. In informal discussions, some of my students said that part of the problem was that English was taught as a “subject” to them, but never as a “language”. This distinction supports the claim many education scholars make that while English-language instruction across India has increased, its quality has deteriorated. This bore out in different ways for different students, depending on where in the country they had grown up, what kind of school they had gone to, and which languages were spoken at home. As one student explained, English was associated with “all important things” and “all important people”. Another said, English is “a presence in your life from the beginning” in the form of “birth certificates and medical reports”.

Yet, English becomes a language of intimacy for very few, even among the pool of English-educated students who make it into the IIT system. One student whose mother tongue was Malayalam wrote poignantly in an assignment about his own linguistic background: “It was pretentious to be going on talking with my grandparents or parents in English. Besides, for a family like mine, English creates a kind of invisible barrier between relations. The love that rings in one word cannot be replaced by a whole paragraph in English.” Another wrote how English was “a common enemy for all of us”—with reference to his and his friends’ struggle with the language and the attendant pressure to perform in it. He concluded, “I learned that I have absolutely no command over English.” This desire for facility and joy in the language was common to many, and it was also sometimes painfully clear that some students had gained this facility, while others “had” English but had to struggle with their partial knowledge of it on a daily basis.

Teaching at IIT Delhi the following year, I discovered that the relationship of Hindi to English was a bit different. Hindi was much more prevalent but also to be expressly avoided in the classroom; it was not the language of performance. It was the mother tongue of the vast majority of students, and the language heard in hallways, canteens and hostels, and in lecture halls, just before the start of class. It was also the language that some students spoke to me in after class, if they had missed many lectures or turned in assignments late. Their heads would drop a little and their faces turn soft; they looked to me for sympathy and out came Hindi, often in a low, muffled voice. It was used to explain the real story, the backstory of their problems. When I told students who I knew were more comfortable in Hindi that they were welcome to make comments or ask questions in class in the language, they nodded but never did so. I soon realised that in the competitive atmosphere of the IITs, to do so would be to mark oneself in the classroom, even if everyone broke into Hindi the minute class was over. What I tried to impress upon my students was that they needed both English and Hindi to get ahead, and that to do so meant being truly bilingual, being able to speak, read and write well in both languages. Unlike people from monolingual societies, I told them, they were at a great advantage. But this—real bilingualism, let alone multilingualism—was something they were not given the time to practice or excel at in the space of their education, either before or during IIT. My own words seemed empty in the face of all they had to “mug up” to pass their exams.

What I saw at the IITs was the now age-old distinction between ‘vernacs’ and the English-educated elite, but also much more than that. And what was remarkable—whether in Chennai or Delhi—was to see the gradations of English knowledge. There are not simply two groups or kinds of students but, in my estimation, at least five or six. The ladder to success has many rungs.
As for Hinglish—the ‘natural’ or enforced peppering of Hindi with English—it can be read in at least two ways: Yes, as a way for the English-educated urbanite to bridge her worlds and create various forms of linguistic distinction with every Caesar salad ordered. But also, perhaps, as a kind of protest by the aspiring, for whom with every mobile recharge and Metro ride, English vocabulary is their right and provenance even as they are told they can’t speak it. Haan, they can.

http://www.caravanmagazine.in/reviews-essays/managing-hindi

by Kayalvizhi Mon Feb 05, 2018 11:12 am

It shows Tamil Nadsu is under Indian occupation.

People in Poland learned to read German after Nazi German forces occupied the country

The most common language spoken in the hostels of IIT Madras is neither Tamil nor Telugu nor English

The most common language spoken in the hostels of IIT Madras is neither Tamil nor Telugu nor English

Re: The most common language spoken in the hostels of IIT Madras is neither Tamil nor Telugu nor English