The Brit in me

Britain is in the news for many reasons – leading the G8, the EU, winning the Olympics bid, beating Australia in cricket. The fact that the horrible terrorist attacks took place in London only reminded the whole world that the small island once ruled the world and retains a bit of the power from those days even now. When the Indian PM was given a honorary doctorate by his alma mater in Oxford, it made me think – there is a Brit in everyone of us, Indians!

Amongst those peoples who had the least difficulty reconciling to the reality of the British rule, Indians were probably the first. The Indian middle ages prepared them well for it. Because during that time, the nation had a lot of foreign rulers – the Mughals who ruled most of India themselves were of Iranian origin, some Tamil kingdoms had Marathi rulers, the largely Islamic states of Sind and Kashmir had Hindu Maharajahs.

In fact the British were the last foreign rulers of India and not the first. The difference was that they managed to annex the whole of India which by then was only a concept and not a real nation; and the wealth was for the first time being moved out of the country! And it was that point that hurt the people. The plundered wealth had to stay inside the country! That way the king’s nationality did not matter.

The point is the Indians were very tolerant and infact, welcomed all foreign influences. It can be argued that any intolerance to differences was cultivated by the British during their rule as a political strategy. Meanwhile leaving a very strong British influence on the cultures of the sub-continent.

It was English that actually gave meaning to the country of India – no other language could be the unifying language as it would be somebody’s mother-tongue and advantageous to those people. (Let us all have a common handicap of learning a foreign language – that is acceptable!). It was the British who gave the Indians the concepts that has defined our nation-hood in modern times.

Ironically, English has only become more important to Indians only since Independence. What started as a ‘language of convenience’ amongst the first subjects of the British Raj, to get along with the British and each other then became ‘the language of education’ for the subsequent generations. Till then, educated people needed the proverbs, verses, couplets from the vernacular literature even if they spoke to a foreign audience. But, engineering, science and law needed English – it would take too much effort to restart the learning in your own language.

Now, English is ‘the style language’ for most of India’s urban youth and has hijacked day-to-day conversations. Soon, it will become the mother-tongue for a significant section of our people as many mothers nowadays can actually be found talking to their infants in English (which they learnt in evening classes) to encourage the child to learn English!

As one economist had argued, out-sourcing is justice in a perverted manner. The British had forced the Indians to be something close to them so that they can get work done by us. Now, Indians have actually become quite good at being someone else that they are taking their jobs too. (Call centre employees who cultivate an American accent are just the extreme!)

Today, Indians might say whatever they want to but there is a bit of the British left in everyone of us. Be you a Hindu nationalist, a Bodo militant or a Tamil fanatic!