THE CAUSE OF THE VERNACULARS

[Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav]

Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav

Gandhian Scholar

Gandhi Research Foundation, Jalgaon, Maharashtra, India

Contact No. – 09415777229, 094055338

E-mail- [e-mail];[e-mail]

 

 

 

 

THE CAUSE OF THE VERNACULARS

 

 

 

 To anyone who watched the proceedings of the recent Sahitya Sammelan it must be clear that our national awakening is not confined to politics alone. The enthusiasm displayed at these gatherings indicated a happy change. We are giving in thought their proper place to the vernaculars in our national life. Raja Ram Mohan Ray’s prophecy that India will one day be an English-speaking country, has not today many stars in its favour. The great reformer’s spirit, however, still haunts some. A number of our eminent men hastily generalize in favour of English as the national medium. The present status of English as a court language weighs with them unduly. They fail to see that the present status of English is no credit to us and that it is not conducive to the growth of a true democratic spirit. That crores of men should learn a foreign tongue for the convenience of a few hundreds of officials is the height of absurdity. An instance is often cited from our past history to prove the necessity of a lingua franca to strengthen the Central Government of the country.

Nobody disputes the necessity of a common medium. But it cannot be English. The officials have to recognize the vernaculars. The second consideration that appeals to the Anglicizes is India’s position in the Empire. The argument, put in plain words, amounts to asking 31crores of Indians to accept English as their common language for the sake of the other parts of the Empire whose population is not more than 12 crores. The first fact that ought to receive consideration from every student of this problem is that after a century and a half of British rule English has failed to take the place of a lingua franca of India. A kind of broken English, no doubt, does seem to have succeeded in this respect in our cities. But this fact can only dazzle those who profess to study our national problems in big cities like Bombay and Calcutta. And what is their population after all? It is only 2.2 per cent of the total population of India. The second fact that the Anglicizes ignore is that a very large majority of our vernaculars are akin to one another, and as a result of this, Hindi as a lingua franca suits all the provinces except the Madras Presidency. In view of this advantage in favour of Hindi and in view of our present national consciousness how can we accept English as our lingua franca? The solution of this problem will decide the fate of the vernaculars. In our educational system English is suffered to have Unna- tural dominance over vernaculars. The extreme Anglicizes hold that English should be used as the medium of instruction “at the earliest age possible”.

This argument is based on the fact that children in a foreign country pick up the language of the country without difficulty at an early age. Refuting this argument the Calcutta University Commission say: Whereas in a foreign country a child is surrounded by others who speak the language of the country, in a class-room he is surrounded by others who, with the exception of the teacher, are as ignorant as himself of the new medium; it is a class of one person teaching many, not of many teaching one; and it is only by experiment that class-room methods can be worked out successfully. The “educational economy”, as an advantage of vernacularizing our educational system, has received recognition at the hands of the Commission. We have pointed out, in our issue of February 11, that the recommendations of the Calcutta University Commission in this connection are a further step. The next logical step after this is recommending the use of vernaculars as the medium in our universities also. The Sadler Commission have made the matriculation stage as a halting place between the use of vernaculars as the medium of instruction in secondary schools and their use in the college department. They have suggested as their own opinion a bilingual system for the future. But they also say: We do not wish to prejudge the future. It is not for us to predict whether the natural desire to use Bengali to the utmost will eventually outweigh the immense advantages of being able to use a medium common not only to the educated classes throughout India, but to more peoples than any other, and giving access in effect to the literature and the scientific records of the world.

Though in view of the evidence submitted to them the Commissioners could not be persuaded to lay down a policy for the future in favour of vernacularizing university education also, it is equally true that they could not find anything in the evidence which supported the Anglicizes or the bilinguists. Thus, though the replies to the Commissioners’ questions do not in themselves decide the future, they do reveal a strong movement in favour of the immediate introduction of Bengali for some University purposes, and of its ultimate introduction for others, a movement of which there was little sign in the debate in the Imperial Legislative Council of 1915. If we study the Commissioners’ analysis of the replies, we can more fully appreciate their remark.

The question put to the witnesses was:”Do you hold English should be used as the medium of instruction and examination at every stage above matriculation in the university course?’ The replies are analyzed as follows : (i) 129 are positively in the affirmative; (ii) 29 are in the affirmative, with slight reservations; (iii) 68 are in favour of a joint use of English and the vernacular either side by side in the same institution, or in parallel institutions; (iv) 33 replies suggest the gradual replacement of English by the vernacular as the object to be aimed at; (v) 37 are in the negative; and (vi) 9 are insusceptible of classification. So, 155 replies are in favour of the English medium and nearly 138 are not against using the vernacular medium sooner or later. This proportion is certainly encouraging to the vernacularisms. Besides, even among those that favour the English medium there is not an inconsiderable section of witnesses who advise the foreign medium, because there is no provision for proper and sufficient text books for different subjects. This school of educationists is not against the vernacular medium on principle. They do not like us to get into water till we have learnt swimming. Of a similar sort but more decisive is the evidence of the remaining witnesses that stand for the English medium.

This latter evidence has stamped the vernaculars as unfit ever to serve the purpose of the medium of instruction. These witnesses betray an ignorance of the history of our vernaculars. There was a time when Sanskrit was the sole medium for Hindu philosophy. But a few enthusiastic scholars enriched their vernaculars with a decent store of philosophic literature and brought Hindu philosophy within the reach of the masses. Can we not with our present ideas of organization do for our vernaculars in the sphere of science what once those vernacular scholars did in the sphere of philosophy? As against the diffidence of these witnesses, the vernacularisms can cite the example of Japan. The Rev. W. E. S. Holland, Principal of St. Paul’s Cathedral College, Calcutta, in his evidence, writes: Japan by use of the vernacular, has built up an educational system that commands the respect of the West. The evidence of Babu Ramanand Chatterjee, the editor of the Modern Review, is even more convincing. He says: The use of the vernaculars in all grades of university education is indispensably necessary. All objections have force only temporarily, for the most highly developed modern languages and literatures were at first no better than Bengali. In their case development was obtained by use; and it will be obtained in our case, too, in the same way.

Thus we find that though the evidence before Dr. Sadler’s Commission is not today in favour of vernacularizing university education, it does hold high hopes for the future of the cause of the vernacular medium. Time was when the vernacularisms’ cause was looked upon with distrust. There is now not only no distrust but confidence has taken its place. Two important institutions have recently joined the cause. The Women’s University of Poona1 and the Osmania University of Hyderabad are using the vernaculars as the sole medium. Their progress is being keenly watched by many. Their success will, as Justice Sir Abdul Rahim says, make the solution of the problem of the vernaculars easier. At the last convocation of the Hindu University, the Hon. Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya invited all the eminent vernacularisms to meet in a conference. We hope that such an organized effort will hasten full recognition of the vernaculars as media of instruction. The present distribution of provinces is another factor which has done no less an injury than any other to the cause of the vernaculars. The redistribution of provinces on a linguistic basis will be followed by a rearrangement of universities. We have shown above the three allied spheres of work for the cause of vernaculars. And it is evident that unless we advance this cause, we shall not be able to remove the growing intellectual and cultural gulf between our men and women and between the classes and the masses. It is also equally certain that the vernacular medium alone can stimulate originality in thought in the largest number of persons.