Is English killing other Indian languages?

During my childhood I often used to see how my Grandma’s friends were often jealous of her. No it was not because of the wealth, neither for the beautiful Italian vase she had, nor for her great cooking skills, but it was just for the ability that she could speak in English. All her friends, most of whom who had barely finished their 4^th grades, of course in the local medium, would always send her as their representative to the tehsildars place or the collectors office just for this fact that she English. This was a scene in an Industrial town of Northern Orissa, where most of my Grandpa’s friends were Engineers.

It was definitely an era when people wanted their children to go to Convent missionary schools, the era of the time when movies like Julie, Baton Baton Mein, were popular because of their kind-of-a-English predominance. The British rule in India, followed by the craze for the white collared government jobs, made everyone realize that the future would be in the hands of those who knew how to read and write in English.

There were many reasons for English to achieve such huge popularity within India. The major reason was the abundance of regional languages in India, all of which had a big history of its own. They had their proper grammar, grammarians, professors, etc. etc. and none of these languages could accept that some other language be the lingua-franca of the nation. The south Indian’s have never accepted Hindi as the national language; they always wanted their own regional language to be spoken by every other person in India. So as a midway path, English was chosen to solve this deadlock.

I was actually amazed to see an article ‘Is English killing other Indian languages?’ in Rediff where this guy, U R Ananthamurthy, a gyanpeeth award winner, the person responsible for changing the name of Bangalore to Bengaluru, is saying that "Globalisation is forcing us to become unilingual, and we are willfully following it without even realizing that we are losing a great deal in return". Okay this dude is a literature guy, his scope of knowledge is limited to this small scope that, due to English our native languages are loosing their shine.

Yes it is indeed true that nowadays none would ever talk to a person who has been studying in a local medium school. Except for the local politicians who would frequently change the names of cities, just to show to the local people that their language has not yet been westernized. But are there any of these politicians kids who have studied in local medium school, within India, not in some Harvard.

Okay the present scenario of India, the IT sector, is just due the fact that we Indians are quite proficient in English, and we can communicate with the world leaders. And they even know the fact that it is this advantage we are having above china, which can never beat us in this field. We will have to thank this language for its contribution to the Indian GDP.

I am not against any local language, but one should realize that unless a language creates enough job opportunities, helps in generating revenues. It would not become popular. Though the Germans, French, Japanese have succeeded so far in maintaining their language, but with the globalization even they are now changing their tunes. In a globalized world countries speak the language of the wealthiest country. If Germans would have wont the Second World War the scenario would have been completely different. The topic for this discussion would have been different, Is German killing other Indian languages.

It is also a fact that many of the Indian languages became popular just because some prosperous king in his era used to speak that language.

If some guy in Harvard or Massachusetts says that Sanskrit is the best language for computers, we in India feel proud, but has any Indian organization tried to cash on it. If the computing speed gets reduced by the use of this language then definitely Sanskrit would become the lingua franca for the globalized world. But alas it is almost a dead language now.

Being an Indian I would be very happy if Sanskrit does become popular, but none should point a finger on other languages if his or her language is not able to generate enough revenues. I do hope to see such a day before the end of the world.