Why do Indians care so much about their language? Seems like a retarded question to ask because everyone cares about the language that they speak in, but Indians especially care about the acquired foreign delicacies. English has been nativised and the natives have been stylised into what we actually wanted to be forever, beyond our own given selves. Indians want respect bad, not that no one else does, but Indians want this more than anything else, period.
For having this respect, we're ready to indulge in whatever the fuck is required, including making English our lingua franca. It could've been Sanskrit, it could've been Persian, it could've been Peruvian, but it needed to be a language that the majority of Indians would be uncomfortable with, just so that the elite would have their own norms and language and words, a world which would be closed to everyone else but them.
I agree that such has been the practice of all the peoples all around the world, for the longest time and that India isn't an exception to what is basic human nature. We have just taken it to the next level, to the level that we derogate our own cultural heritage for the sake of becoming the part of the elites. Even as I write and think in this foreign language, I can't imagine how these words have shaped my worldview, have throttled the deep upsurge of the groundswell emotions, ignored the 'feel' of this reality of my own which has to be constantly interpreted in terms which are not perfect for me. When I try to go back to that which is mine, I find it inadequate, unfamiliar, a mirage.
India has several languages, which have had centuries of developmental history behind them. Languages which are an organic groundswell of all of the histories that have had their role in shaping who we are and why we do certain things. Why do Indians frown upon premarital relations? Is it because of the Victorian British 'properness' which we have imbibed or is the Moghul 'Riwayat', the Manuwadi 'Dharam' or just the socio-economic reality of our times?
An agriculture based society would need strongly built familial bonds which need to be patricentric to allow the proper exercise of authority, the upkeep of the farm and works, without which the people would starve. That is why India has a tyrannical system of "Khap Panchayats", not just because people want to localise the organs of power, but also because the rule of the many provides them security from their frail existential situation and the tyranny of their laws keeps off their minds from their looming death.
Language then, in this context doesn't need to do its work of conveying the heart of the matter. It needs to hide things, to make things ambiguous, to be used as an obfusticating agent of justification, to justify what the people have to face in their everyday lives to be able to survive. We can blame the 'system', the government, the 'foreign hand', but perhaps there is some truth in the misery that millions face, that India is a poor country still and therefore has all the paraphernalia of poverty with it and the ways in which people still seek to maintain their respect in face of the odds. Language can become a cheap tool to overcome a lifetime of problems.
NEXT
Going beyond language ...
- Part two of series; Imagined realities of a familiar foreign land.
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