The Adventure of English (32 page)

This judicious mixture of respect, longing and a transparent intention to compete, written in a style of English which would have delighted English purists in London, was followed by disillusion. “We now find that the Government are establishing a Sangscrit school under Hindoo Pundits to impart such knowledge as is clearly current in India.”

But there are strands here worth noting. One is that then and since, despite often savage opposition, there has been and remains an influential group of Indians who seized on English as a language which could be very useful to them. They wanted the knowledge and the access it would make them heir to. They were prepared to study and to learn it and they did. It is also implied that while the British wanted English to be imposed, it was more for rule than for liberation; it was to pull the Indians into line and not let them loose on the treasures of the Enlightenment. This became the primary battlefield for English in India: would it be an instrument of empire or the window to a desirable intellectual world? Who would own the language when the smoke cleared?

In 1835, Thomas Babington Macaulay, writer, historian and member of the Supreme Court in Calcutta, wrote his Minute, which became notorious. It laid out why English needed to be taught. It became a landmark document. Edited paragraphs include:

To Macaulay, the pre-eminence of English made Britain's world imperial role possible. They conscripted Indian clerks or writers, as they were called, to serve the empire's purposes. An English-speaking class of junior officials was needed and in Calcutta a colossal Writers' Building was constructed to house them. English was often eagerly sought by Indians and yet it was also forced on them; it added to the repertoire of Indian languages which then and now multiply seemingly effortlessly on the tongues of educated Indians; and yet it had a special place, it was the language of prestige and preferment and as only a minority of Indians received a formal education in English, it was inevitably elitist and divisive. But without this English-speaking Indian bureaucracy there could have been no Raj, a paradox not lost on Indian intellectuals.

English itself began to frolic on the new continent. What was called “Butler English” soon sprang up, very similar to the frontier English in America, as in “long time no see.” It also had similarities with the pidgins in America and the Caribbean. One example is: “Tea, I making water. Is boiled water. Want anybody want mixed tea, boil the water, then I put tea leaves, then I pour the milk and put sugar.”

There was also a variety called Babu English. Babu was originally a Bengali word for gentleman, but it came to be used of an excessively ornate variety of English which was a product both of social deference (deeply traditional in India and adopted by the English for the first hundred fifty years) and an education system in which English was often taught by Indians to Indians. So turns of phrase which bore relevance only to a textbook were not weeded out. As in this letter:

“The inferior sort of John Bull” would often mock this and it would be po-faced not to find that irresistible. But in 1903, the viceroy Lord Curzon got as near as it was then possible to comprehend its context and yet have his fun:

Of Babu English he also wrote that “it often reveals a sense of humour on the part of the writers that is both quaint and refreshing.” If his admiration is rather surprising in such an English nabob for its fulsomeness, his patronising references are also surprising in their gentility.

Babu could be extreme, comparing favourably with any weird or demotic use of English in the English-speaking world. This is part of a speech by a Hindu pleader in a court at Barise:

Slang and word-play became endemic among British officials to such an extent that one newly arrived governor-general complained he couldn't understand the reports written by his staff. The attractions between English and particularly Hindi grew stronger.

The British army relished picking up Indian words. They prided themselves on being able to “bolo the bat a tora” — meaning to speak the local language a little; if they were “banged up” — high on bhang — they might be summoned by the “amen-wallah” — the chaplain — or face “tori peachy” — delayed repatriation. But a lot of the local lingo did not travel well back to Blighty. Pukka shots in India were blanks in Britain. No one else knew that “chota hazry” was breakfast, a scoundrel was “badmash,” “durzee” was a tailor or a “burra-peg” was a double whisky, that “gubbrow,” “lugow,” “foozilow,” “dumbcow,” “puckerrow” and “bunow” meant respectively to bully, to moor a boat, to flatter, to browbeat, to lay hold and to fabricate. Yet they wallowed in it to such an extent that in 1886 a great glossary of Anglo-Indian words was published, almost nine hundred pages, called
Hobson-Jobson.

Hobson-Jobson is an army term, a corruption of a phrase shouted by Muslims in a procession. The words were “Ya Hassan, Ya Hassayn.” This became “Hosseen Gosseen,” “Hossy Gossy,” “Hossen Jossen,” “Jackson Backson” and finally “Hobson Jobson.” It is now a term in linguistics used for that kind of corruption of words from one language by speakers from another. “Khakee” was one of the more famous words included. It is taken from the Hindi for “dust-coloured,” meaning a light drab cloth. The first
Hobson-Jobson
dictionary notes that “it is said it is about to be introduced into the army generally.”

There are thousands of other examples: “chapatti” entered the English language as “chowpatty,” with perhaps a push from “cowpat”; the Indian plant “kawanch” became “cowage”; the fish “kakap” became “cock-up”; “basi khana,” stale food or yesterday's dinner warmed up, became “brass knocker”; “bringal” — aubergine — became “brown jolly” and “cholera morbus” in Anglo-Indian became “Corporal Forbes.”

Hobson-Jobsonisms take us back to the “new” words that English captured in India. An alphabetical sampling could read: “amok,” “ashram,” “avatar,” “bandanna,” “bangle,” “caddy,” “calico,” “candy,” “cashmere,” “cheetah,” “coolie,” “cowrie,” “cushy,” “dinghy,” “doolally,” “guru,” “Himalayan,” “juggernaut,” “ jungle,” “karma,” “khaki,” “lilac,” “mantra,” “mongoose,” “panda,” “pariah,” “purdah,” “rattan,” “sacred cow,” “seersucker,” “Sherpa,” “Tantra,” “thug,” “yoga.” Even such a limited and arbitrary selection shows English on its relentless hunt for new words to describe new things, new experiences, new ideas, new shades of meaning, forever swelling the Anglo-Saxon word-hoard, quarrying all the languages it encountered as it moved across oceans and continents. And it was here that the British were introduced to some of what became their favourite foods: curry, it was recently reported, is Britain's most popular dish.

Rudyard Kipling, whose greatness as an author has been shadowed by the strength of his passion for empire and for imperial British supremacy, is the writer above all others who brought the life and plight of the British soldier and the mystery and fabulous difference of India to a wide public. His work is well known. There were innumerable others whose passion for India and for the English in India is also difficult to celebrate naïvely given the darker side of the imperial project.

But this book is to do with the language, and here is part of just one of the many tributes which could still, despite the imperial burden, be called warm-hearted and affectionate. The lines are from E. F. Atkinson's verses “Curry and Rice.”

It would be romantic and ironic if it could be proved that English alone, or in some great measure, gave many intelligent Indians direct access to the ideas of democracy and independence which were to wrench back India from its latest rulers. But I suspect that a resolution for independence is not confined to one language or one culture.

Yet there are those who do believe that it was the English language and the ideas it carried that created a revolution against the British. Just as English made it possible for Indians to administer the Raj on behalf of the British Empire, so English may have been a factor in enabling Indians to rise up against it.

Macaulay's Minute and the education policy had brought the English language to the Indian people, and through the language Rudyard Kipling among others saw a nationalist movement developing. English, he feared, gave it credibility. Kipling observed what he called “a strong belief among many natives that they were capable of administering the country themselves,” and he also observed that many Englishmen shared that belief because, as he wrote, “the theory is stated in beautiful English with all the latest political colours.”

Kipling of course dismissed Indian independence as no more than a pretty idea. But it was more than that. It was persistent. It met in the houses of wealthy and titled liberals and found voices among the newly enfranchised.

In 1903, Lord Curzon choreographed a spectacular durbar to celebrate the accession of Edward VII. India had never seemed more safely and some self-deludingly thought more happily in British hands. Five years later, a lawyer called Gandhi wrote a pamphlet which was to be the first significant pebble beginning an avalanche. It is fascinating for our story because he concentrates not on the law, not on the military or commercial control, but on the English language. English was the prime and essential target of his attack:

Gandhi takes this line of thought to what I think is an original and radical conclusion: “Am I to blame the English for it or myself? It is we the English-knowing Indians that have enslaved India. The curse of the nation will rest not upon the English but upon us.”

And when Gandhi sets out the blueprint for his India of the future, English is banished utterly. Cast off the language, he seems to say, and you cast off the oppressor; his crucial hold over you is to make you speak and so think and so act like him.

It was a view which gathered strength. As India approached independence in 1947, many nationalists regarded the English language as the central fact and symbol of oppression. They wanted to be rid of it and the end of the Raj was supposed to bring the slow death of English in India. The new constitution assumed that it would continue to be used as an official language only until 1965 and then it would be replaced entirely by Hindi.