On Learning a Language

Learning new languages has always been a passion for the learned. Our mother tongue is the only language we learn by the coincidence of birth, but we learn others for some purpose. Love for great poetry may make us learn a language to read Kalidasa or Shakespeare. Language is a great window to a culture, showing all facets of a culture. It is a window to a whole new world, laying bare the full picture of a society.

Great writers enrich culture through their works, give a grand cultural vision for societies and infuse moral strength. Indian society is strengthened and enriched by innumerable writers. Commenting on the revival of cultural nationalism in India, a conservative American thinker recently expressed concern that it would challenge the western universal values. As part of his strategy to ‘engage’ with the growth of nationalism in India, he urged the American youth to learn all the north-Indian and south-Indian languages and know the culture. This is a point to be noted. Why should someone be concerned if cultural nationalism is being revived in a country which was suppressed for centuries and why are languages important?

Knowledge of language and culture is a useful tool to engage with people in a constructive way or otherwise. In this respect the record of western scholars raises doubts about their intentions. In the initial days of western interaction with India many scholars were overwhelmed by the richness of its cultural heritage and sang praises. This gave rise to the period of enlightenment of the eighteenth century in the west. This situation was in conflict with the British, trying to rule a country which had great intellectual heritage. Then came the second stream of Indologists, whose aim was to use language and cultural studies as a weapon to weaken India’s self-esteem, weaken the society and facilitate British rule. The British studied the Indian languages thoroughly but incidentally brought out millions of manuscripts from various parts of India. This was a positive fallout. A love-hate relation continued with the British throughout their rule.

Recently, the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London was complaining of inadequacy of funds for study of languages such as Sanskrit. Funds are also given by the departments of defense of several countries such as the USA or China to learn foreign languages. The Chinese establishment and army are said to have experts in all Indian languages. So do the western nations.

What do these scholars do? They tend to create new vocabulary, new semantics, build new narratives and try to divide societies. An example of such a narrative is that Buddhism was always inimical with Hinduism. Scholars of Sanskrit or Pali pick up selected lines from certain texts and build a narrative that Hinduism is oppressive and divisive or that Buddha hated Hinduism. If the narrative is not effectively countered it gets established. Words like Hindutva, which start with a neutral meaning are gradually loaded with pejorative connotations to target and demonize a culture. This happens with countries all over the world, wherever the powerful countries have their economic, political or religious interests.

We can now realise that learning a language can be part of a civilizational battle. There has been a battle for Sanskrit in the last several decades, as described in a book with the same title by the India born American author, Rajiv Malhotra. Our knowledge of our Sanskrit or Pali texts and our knowledge of the literature in regional languages is an armory to counter the weapons of those who wish to demolish and enslave our society. If the leaders tend to be myopic and if they are led by subversive ideas about the usefulness of languages, society alone will be unable to preserve the languages, which are the sources to know our past.

(The writer is a former

DGP, Andhra Pradesh)