More Democracy, Less Hypocrisy - A Prescription To Fix The Tragicomedy Of India's Language Policy

Prologue - What makes a sitcom funny?

One of the recurring tropes in situational comedy is ignorance. The audience is aware of something that the characters themselves aren't. The result is a series of humorous situations, as the characters, who make logical deductions and decisions based on their incorrect understanding of the situation, end up making blunder after hilarious blunder.

A related trope is deception. Some of the characters have a secret that they hide from other characters. The audience is in on the secret of course, and this results in another sequence of situations where the ignorant characters make their comical blunders because of their ignorance, while the guilty ones are put into equally hilarious situations as they attempt to keep up their deception.

A third related trope is miscommunication. The audience is aware of what a character is trying to convey, often in desperation, but the message is either not received, or is misread by other characters, and this miscommunication provides the resulting comedy.

The Great Indian Sitcom

The Great Indian Sitcom of language policy - now in its 73rd year

An observer of India's language policies over the past 73 years since the country's independence, especially in education, could be forgiven for believing they were watching an extended situational comedy, given the existence of all of the above tropes. Unfortunately, the serious impact of such policies on the poorest and most disadvantaged sections of Indian society makes this less a comedy and more a farce or a tragedy. For the purpose of this post, I will refer to it as a tragicomedy because it has elements of both.

Ignorance has been displayed on numerous occasions when decision makers have presumed to know what is best for their constituents, and issued edicts with complete moral certainty.

Deception is equally on display as elites piously prescribe a certain course of action for the masses, then quietly pursue the opposite course themselves.

Miscommunication has also been frequently seen, as leaders pretend not to hear what people are struggling to tell them, and policy experts remain deaf to popular demand.

In Tonight's Episode 

This blog post has been prompted by yet another episode in the Great Indian Sitcom, i.e., the release of India's National Education Policy (NEP) 2020.

While the NEP contains a number of common sense reforms that are long overdue, an element in it that has stirred up controversy is a seemingly innocuous clause:

Wherever possible, the medium of instruction until at least Grade 5, but preferably till Grade 8 and beyond, will be the home language/mother tongue/local language/regional language. Thereafter, the home/local language shall continue to be taught as a language wherever possible. This will be followed by both public and private schools.

Now, many politically neutral authority figures with experience working at the grassroots level support a policy of providing initial education in a child's home language in order to ease learning. They believe that once a child is comfortable in the school environment and develops the ability to learn, they can be taught additional languages and can even handle a switch to a different medium of instruction later on. This is not a purely Indian view. There is even a UNESCO document that recommends such an approach, and it needs to be carefully considered.

What raises suspicions about such a policy in the Indian context is that there is a strong ideological lobby within the country that supports this approach for an ulterior reason. India has a politically significant constituency opposed to the English language, and the primary drivers for such antipathy range from envy (an inability to communicate in English, and hence a desire to ensure that the language does not play an important role within the country) to a belief that the use of English is a vestige of colonialism, and that the country will never become truly free until the minds of Indians are completely de-colonised. A third ideological driver is the belief that India is a "civilisational state", that language and culture cannot be separated, and that the prevalence and power of the English language ultimately threatens Indian civilisation itself. This anti-English constituency supports the education of children in their mother-tongue, not out of concern for the child's ease of learning, but because it is a blow against English. A number of these people do not in fact support the change in medium of instruction to English at any stage.

Discerning the tropes

Trope 1 - Ignorance

Something has been changing in the background over the years, which a hypothetical audience can now see, but not all the characters on the Indian stage are aware of or are willing to acknowledge yet.

Knowledge of the English language is fast becoming a fundamental life skill worldwide, on par with basic literacy and numeracy.  Proficiency in English, perhaps more than gender or ethnicity, is the new glass ceiling that keeps people from rising above a certain socio-economic level. This is true worldwide, not just in India.

In the past, members of the anti-English lobby in India would point to advanced countries, even the former Axis countries of Japan, Germany and Italy, arguing that if these countries could recover from defeat and re-establish themselves as advanced nations while providing pride of place to their own national languages in preference to English, India could very well do the same.

Of course, they conveniently tended to neglect the major complication in India's case, which is that India does not have a single language that it can call its national language, but literally hundreds of authentically native languages, and that emphasising one language over all others would be perpetrating a new colonialism within the country's borders.

The problem with the "Hindi-Hindu-Hindustan" ideology is that Hindustan is pluralistic to the extreme, and represents far more than the Hindi language or the Hindu religion. This majoritarian ideology lacks the vision and the empathy to deliver what such a diverse society requires.

Even overlooking that complication, the idea of a supreme "national language" is now passé. Those very same advanced countries that the anti-English lobby in India used as examples, have now adopted English with vigour. A recent study of 55 countries, including Japan, Germany, and Italy, and surprising examples like China, shows that over 50% of public schools in these countries have adopted English as the medium of instruction at the primary level. For private schools, the figure is over 85%! Those numbers are only growing.

Further underlining the importance of English in education is the fact that English-Taught Programs (ETPs) in universities have been growing at dramatic rates even in traditionally non-English speaking countries. This is a study providing examples from Europe, China and Korea.

About half of Europe's population of 750 million people can reportedly hold a conversation in English. How does India fare by that measure?

In today's world, a National Education Policy that does not talk about how it proposes to provide Indian children with the essential life skill of English language proficiency is failing in a fundamental responsibility to its citizens.

Trope 2 - Deception

It is not as if the importance of English to an individual's social advancement has gone entirely unrecognised in India. Government-run schools providing free public education have always tended to use regional languages as their medium of instruction, but it is telling that the elites of the country, including the very politicians making a career out of their anti-English polemic, have invariably sent their own children not to these public schools, but to private schools with English as the medium of instruction. This is a phenomenon as old as the republic itself.

Without access to English skills, India's poor will be perpetually outside looking in. Wilfully ignoring this reality is criminal.

The sheer hypocrisy is staggering. The pious, patriotic posturing and exhortations to be true to one's culture are aimed at entrenching privilege and keeping the masses from competing with the progeny of the elite classes. So many scions of prominent anti-English public figures are not only fluent in English, many of them work for multinational corporations and live in the West.

Needless to say, such hypocrisy and perpetuation of privilege are indefensible, especially in a putative democracy where everyone is meant to have equal rights.

Trope 3 - Miscommunication

Again, it is not as if the masses in India are oblivious to the importance of English or to the fact that a lack of English skills is what keeps them from competing on equal terms with their elites. They have been voting with their feet, scraping together their meagre earnings in a bid to send their children to English-medium private schools of whatever quality.

The thirst to learn English is real, and no responsive government can ignore it

In some cases, governments have listened and responded, and the popular reception to these measures has confirmed that the demand was no chimera.

When the government of Karnataka announced in 2019 that one section of Year 1 in some government schools would be taught in the medium of English, there was a virtual stampede, resulting in the government being forced to consider opening many more.

It was especially surprising that the government of Uttar Pradesh, headed by a member of an organisation not known for its sympathy towards English, decided to introduce English into government-run schools right from kindergarten. If such is the demand for English in the Hindi heartland, which is the relative beneficiary at a national level from having Hindi as the lingua franca, one can imagine what it must be in the rest of the country.

The most dramatic example has come from Andhra Pradesh, where the state government has made English the only medium of instruction in public schools, and even the state language (Telugu) is only a compulsory subject, not the medium of instruction. It is nothing short of revolutionary, and the measure's popularity suggests the policy cannot be reversed by future governments of any ideological stripe.

"In order to eradicate poverty, students should get jobs, and English as the medium of instruction is required for that" - Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Jagan Mohan Reddy

If policymakers and political leaders remain deaf to the demands of their constituencies even after these examples have shown them what those demands are, it suggests wilful denial, which is an abrogation of trust that voters have placed in their elected representatives.

What needs to be done?

This is a no-brainer, but let me spell it out anyway. Indian governments, whether central or state, should simply do what they are supposed to as democratically elected executive bodies.

To break it down into two simple steps:

1. Ask the people what they want

2. Give it to them

Specifically,

1. Find out what people want as the medium of instruction for their children, whether through surveys, referenda, or other feedback methods

2. Do whatever is necessary in practical terms to ensure that this is provided, anticipating and solving the many logistical and infrastructural problems that would constrain its rollout

I cannot understand what is controversial about this. I guess we all know what the result of such a study of citizen wants is going to be. Yes, it's going to be an overwhelming vote in favour of English. (Cue boos from the "nationalist" lobby.) The reluctance to go down this obvious path is purely because the anticipated popular choice is not to the liking of the decision-making elite.

Let us be very clear on this. If someone opposes giving the people what they want, they are being undemocratic, period. Such opposition is simply unconscionable and nothing less than a crime.

I have heard educated people argue against this conclusion on a variety of grounds, some of which are:

1. "People don't really want an English-language education for their kids, even if it seems that way. They're really just asking for better-run schools, regardless of language of instruction."

2. "At the grassroots level, English is not important. The local language is more important, and hence children should be instructed in the local language."

3. "Any survey or referendum organised for the purpose of gathering data to determine language policy will be influenced by politics, so we shouldn't conduct one."

4. "Look at what happened with the Brexit referendum. It shows that it's very dangerous to ask people what they want. People don't understand complex issues, and can shoot themselves in the foot."

5. "Even if you want to provide English-medium education, there are no skilled teachers, so how are you going to do it?"

I'm frankly astonished at these weasel words. The very same arguments can equally be used to argue against holding elections and respecting an electoral mandate, yet nobody dares to do that. Why do these lame excuses become respectable arguments outside the context of elections?

Brave New World

The good news, if Indian decision-makers show the courage to do what their constituents are crying out for them to do, is that it is easier today than ever before to carry this out.

Researcher Sugata Mitra's 1999 "hole in the wall" experiment involving slum children and their unaided discovery and exploration of computers was simultaneously heartbreaking and heartwarming. There is tremendous thirst for knowledge among India's disadvantaged. Governments must respond!

For one, when people want a policy measure to succeed, they will extend their utmost cooperation to make that happen. The will of the people is not just a rhetorical device. It can be the difference between failure and overwhelming success.

Second, the finding that children learn best through their native language is not an automatic argument against the early introduction of English. This is a false choice. Any number of tailored approaches will work to familiarise children with the English language in a given cultural context. When the target audience is so strongly receptive, they will pull out all the stops required to make this work.

Third, the post-Covid world has clearly demonstrated that remote working and remote learning are eminently practical. Local teachers can use online resources to educate themselves even as they educate their pupils. They can be co-learners and facilitators rather than teachers in the strict sense of the word.

Fourth, since the infrastructure required for online learning requires investments in electrification and telecommunications, this policy provides an additional impetus for these needed infrastructural developments. Far from infrastructure gaps providing an excuse not to adopt a high-tech approach to education, the requirement for online learning should be seen as a critical driver for delivering infrastructure.

Fifth, innovations in online education, even for severely disadvantaged sections, have been around for a long time, e.g., Prof. Brij Kothari's SLS (Same Language Subtitling) for broadcast programs.

Conclusion

In short, it is high time the curtain was brought down on the tragicomedy of India's self-inflicted handicaps to social advancement.

The people are speaking loud and clear, and only the most cynical still refuse to acknowledge it. Indians want their children to reach their full potential, and to enjoy everything the modern world has to offer. They clearly recognise that the key to opening the door to that Utopia is English language proficiency. It is the duty of government at every level to step up and deliver to that demand.

There will no doubt be some obstacles in the path to achieving that dream, but the correct attitude is to look for ways to remove those obstacles, not to use them as excuses for inaction.

Enough is enough!

What's Really Wrong With Farah Khan's "Happy New Year" (And Almost Every Bollywood Movie)

The critics have panned Farah Khan's movie "Happy New Year" for all the usual (and wrong) reasons. It's too long, the plot is silly, outlandish and unconvincing, the characters are caricatures, the plot twists are predictable, there are too many self-referential in-jokes, actors are underutilised in their roles, etc., etc.

Those criticisms are superficially valid, but movies like this still become blockbusters for a reason. They're entertaining. These movies are not made to please the critics. They're made to please the masses, and the masses are pleased. I've learned to enjoy movies like this because I tell my inner critic to take the evening off when I go to the theatres.

Well, my inner critic may be away, but there's still something tiny that troubles me even as I'm enjoying these movies - my conscience. There's something big and glaring that I picked up on through an accident of fate. I have lived outside India for twenty years now, and I guess I have become sensitised to think about the world and other people in very different ways. I don't think I would have changed to this extent had I remained in India. [Disclaimer: The above only refers to my personal journey, by the way. I'm not implying that Indians in India are less sensitised than Indians who live abroad.]

The problem with "Happy New Year" (and most Bollywood movies) is this - it's racist, it's sexist, it's homophobic (or whatever the word is that means "making fun of gays"), it's snobbish about people who can't speak English, it treats overweight and handicapped people as figures of fun, and in general, holds everyone outside an in-group in contempt. If you're an upper-class North Indian male who can speak English, are heterosexual, able-bodied and not grossly overweight, these movies will have you rolling in the aisles at all the funny things those other people say and do.

Take racism first. Happy New Year features an international dance competition, so obviously we need villains, and who better than the North Koreans, for whom nobody can possibly have a good word? Good choice there, Farah Khan. Introduce them as North Koreans for political reasons, and thereafter refer to them as just Koreans, since the distinction is unimportant thereafter. Obviously, the Koreans are cold, robotic, vicious and cruel people who treat competitors as enemies and show no mercy to their own children when they make mistakes. Contrast that with our warm, affectionate Indian selves who love children and help our enemies even when they want to kill us. Never mind that we can casually let loose with epithets like "haka noodle" whenever we see anyone with vaguely Asian features. It's all good fun. I don't know if art reflects life or life imitates art, but I'm not surprised to read that Indians from the northeastern states are routinely slurred with racist epithets in "mainland" Indian metros. Anyone who looks different from us is fair game.

("Kal Ho Na Ho" was cringe-inducing when it casually injected racist dialogues to characterise the competition between the Indian and Chinese restaurants. Even that otherwise excellent movie "Vicky Donor" ruined everything when the female lead (who should definitely have known better) referred to a child with Asian features as a "ching-chong" - at 1:57:20).

We've of course seen this trait in non-Indians as well - the practice of casting people other than ourselves as dangerous and cruel barbarians and ourselves as brave, wonderful, civilised people. Remember the "rescue" of Private Jessica Lynch by brave US soldiers from that terrible fedayeen-infested Iraqi hospital where she was being treated for her injuries by demonic doctors and psychopathic nurses?

Seriously, the practice of demonising the "other" has to stop.

Sexism - where do we even begin? I'l just talk about one scene in Happy New Year. We have Deepika Padukone as the dancer who is engaged by this group of men to teach them dancing. She's their teacher, for goodness's sake, but in the very next scene, she's going around the table, serving tea to all the seated men. Seriously!? (Yes, I know, the point of that scene was to show that she carries a torch for captain Charlie because she gives him his tea in a special mug, but I would have chosen another way to make that point).

Homophobia or something like it - Indian movies probably can't be accused of gay-bashing, but that's because they engage in gay-shaming. Gays have been a major source of merriment in Bollywood. They're effeminate and ridiculous and do the most creepy things, and of course all the main (straight) characters share a good laugh at them with the audience. Oh, gays are so funny!

Classism - England and America may be two countries separated by the same language, as Bernard Shaw said, but India is one country divided in two by that same language. Those who don't know English either aspire to learn it or want to rid India of it (sometimes at the same time), and those who speak it look down on those who don't. Happy New Year takes all these traits and rubs it in our faces. The scene where our supposedly wonderful English-speaking hero insults the female lead in the vilest sexist terms within her hearing, then charms her back by speaking to her in English just made me feel ... bad. But there was a redeeming feature, however unintended. The female lead's consistent quest for respect, which then makes her one of the most respectable characters in the movie, is a subtly powerful message for those who will listen. That respect isn't gained by her being able to speak English. In fact, the most fluent English in this movie is spoken by utter jerks.

Fat-shaming? In one of those humorous, musical, fast-forward interludes that shows our gang of heroes searching in vain for a dance teacher, an obese one is of course a mandatory part of the parade of unsuitable characters. (I don't know if that was Farah Khan's subtle dig at Saroj Khan.) Again, seriously, Bollywood needs to stop the practice.

The disabled got off relatively lightly this time, with just a few gags on epileptics and the partially deaf, but Bollywood in general finds disability irresistibly funny.

In short, that's what's really wrong with Happy New Year, and with virtually every movie that comes out of Bollywood. Indian directors should hire humanism consultants to educate them on messages that are simply unacceptable in other parts of the world. They don't really need to fix the weak plots and the cliches. Those could even be considered endearing traits of the genre, but if Bollywood ever wants to cross over to a mainstream world audience, there's a lot more basic stuff that needs fixing.

Notes On English From A 'Non-Native Speaker'

(Apologies in advance if this post comes across as being snobbish. I can't help wincing at poor English spelling and grammar. If it's any consolation, I'm equally hard on myself, and am quite grateful to have my mistakes pointed out (once I overcome my mortification), such as when a friend recently informed me that there is only one 'f' in aficionado.  In any case, listing out the common mistakes that irk me has been cathartic, so I'm glad I did this.)

A recent article on LinkedIn, "Common Grammar Mistakes That Make You Look Dumb", has attracted hundreds of comments. Some of the comments touch upon the issue of native versus non-native speakers of English, but only a couple of them make the point that the mistakes made by the two groups tend to be quite different.

The kinds of mistakes made by non-native speakers of English are legion, and I can't afford to go into them in detail here. Just a couple of examples from my home country (India):

This is a Maharashtrian classic: "If I would have known, I would have told you" instead of "If I had known, I would have told you".

These phrases instantly identify the speaker as a North Indian: "Until it doesn't happen...", "Until I don't tell you...", etc. These are literal translations of the Hindi idiom "jab tak yeh nahin hua..." which uses the negative form of the verb.

Non-native speakers of English also have trouble with English phrases and idioms. Another Indian colleague once said, "I should not slip up this opportunity," instead of using either pass up or let slip.

Add to these examples the uniquely Indian words "prepone" (used as the opposite of postpone) and "updation" (used as the noun form of "to update"), and the phrase "revert to" (used to mean "reply to"), increasingly encountered in offices around the world as corporate India flexes its outsourcing muscle.

The mistakes made by native English speakers are quite different. But before I say anything further about these, here's a pet peeve - I don't like being referred to as a "non-native speaker of English" or a "person for whom English is a second language", as some of my Australian colleagues have occasionally done. I've been speaking English since I learnt to speak, so I certainly don't consider myself a non-native speaker.

Besides, I had the advantage of having had very good (read pedantic) English teachers as a child. One of them was my own mother, who was my English teacher for three years in primary school. An incident from those days remains in my memory. In a spelling test, I had misspelt the word "independence" as "independance". The test papers were handed back in class without comment, but I received an earful at home. When I protested that other kids had made the same mistake, my mother said simply, "My son cannot make mistakes in English." That sense of perfectionism and fierce pride rubbed off on me, and I think it's fair to say that I've grown into a pedant too.

When I migrated to Australia fifteen years ago, I was shocked at the spellings and grammar I encountered in the emails and notices written by my Australian colleagues. And with the advent of the borderless world that is the Internet, I can see for myself that the malaise afflicts other nominally English-speaking countries as well. I wasn't too surprised to encounter poor English from Americans, since I had been influenced by British prejudice right from my childhood ("There even are places where English completely disappears. In America, they haven't used it for years." - Professor Higgins in My Fair Lady). But it shocked me to see poor English from English people. Clearly, in the years since World War II, Great Britain has lost more than just an empire.

Why can't the English learn to speak?

Inspired by the LinkedIn article, here's my compilation of the commonest mistakes I've seen made by "native speakers of English". Interestingly, many of these mistakes seem to be exclusive to this group, because I had never encountered them during my years in India. Perhaps the reason is as former Indian Foreign Minister VK Krishna Menon put it to an English lady, "You merely picked it up. I learned it."

Lest this descend into mere finger-pointing, let me be constructive in my criticism. I've added examples that should illustrate the distinction between different terms.

1. You’re versus Your

You're worried about your children, aren't you?

2. They’re versus Their versus There

There go the Robinsons. They're showing off their new car, as usual.

3. Lose versus Loose

If the mooring comes loose, we could lose the boat.

4. It’s versus Its

It's ironical that celibacy is its own punishment.

5. To versus Too versus Two

This is too hard for one person to do alone. You need at least two people.

6. Then versus Than

Rather you than me. First you, then me.

7. Lie/Lay versus Lay/Laid

Dorothy laid the child down on the bed, then lay down beside her.

You must lay the bed if you want to lie on it.

8. I Couldn't Care Less versus I Could Care Less

"I couldn't care less" means I don't care at all.

("I could care less" just means I don't care at all - about English!)

9. Should Have versus Should Of

Writing "should of" indicates that you should have paid attention in English class.

10. Effect versus Affect

You've tried to effect change, but your efforts have had no effect. Your colleagues will affect great concern, but don't let that affect you.

11. You and I versus You and Me

You and I have had our differences, but between you and me, I'd rather work with you than with Jim.

12. Principle versus Principal

That's the main consideration. You could say it's the principal principle.

13. Accept versus Except

I'll accept your advice except when it concerns my private affairs.

14. Less versus Fewer

There's a lot less traffic after 10 pm, because fewer people want to go out at night.

15. Complement versus Compliment

You and your husband complement each other perfectly.

Thanks for the compliment!

16. Here, Here versus Hear, Hear

Where should the government be spending our tax dollars? Here, here! In this country!

Hear, hear!

19. Discrete versus Discreet

I have two discrete guest lists for the wedding, and only the first group is invited to the main ceremony. So be discreet when you talk to my friends about it.

20. Using 's to form plurals

Here's baby's milk bottle. After baby's had his feed, rest him against your shoulder and pat him gently. Babies need to be burped after a feed.

The New York Times has come up with a list of more subtle errors that their authors made (and their editors let slip).

Our Lingua Franca Has A Certain Je Ne Sais Quoi

I saw this wonderful picture on the net, and it rang so true.

The original image said "loose grammar", but one of the comments on the site where I found it suggested "loose lexemes", so I made the necessary modification. Now it's accurate, but incomprehensible :-(.

So what IS a lexeme? According to SIL (formerly the Summer Institute of Linguistics), a lexeme is "the minimal unit of language that has a semantic interpretation and embodies a distinct cultural concept".

And armed with that knowledge, when we look again at that picture, we realise that it describes exactly what English has taken from other languages, and why this has served to enrich rather than destroy its own character. A language that acquires the power to describe virtually anything, pragmatically lifting lexemes to accurately describe cultural concepts it has no native words for, becomes universally useful, like a Swiss army knife (there, that's another lexeme). The British empire might have imposed English on the four corners of the globe, but if the language itself had no staying power of its own, it would have swiftly retreated with the disappearance of that empire. The fact that English is still around in the world, stronger than ever, says something about the character of a language that is not above mugging others for their loose lexemes.

Many years ago, when I was a student, I was having dinner with a friend and his father who was visiting. The senior man went off on a bit of a rant about English in India. "Indian languages have been corrupted by English", he fumed.

I felt I had to disagree, and did so politely, "Or enriched, depending on which way you look at it..."

"No", he said firmly, "it's not enrichment, it's corruption."

I didn't know the word "lexeme" back then, or I might have been able to impress him a bit. Or perhaps not.

My own father had quite the opposite opinion. He was a linguist who entered his profession by choice, because of his love of languages. He could read and understand 6 Indian languages and 6 foreign ones, apart from English. And though I can hardly call myself a linguist, I guess I've inherited some of that curiosity and love for language that he had.

Just last week, I found myself explaining to my son that the English word "ambrosia" (a food or drink of the (Greek) gods that confers immortality) is related to the Sanskrit word "amṛt", commonly spelt either "amrit" or "amrut" (a nectar that gave the (Hindu) gods their immortality).

The gods and the demons (the bad guys always have wicked moustaches to help us identify them) wait to be served amṛt. (Of course, the demons get cheated out of having any, and only the gods end up having it. History is written by victors, so now you know why the gods always win. Just sayin'.)

It's easy, once it's pointed out, to see the connection between "ambrosia" and "amṛt". But here's where it gets interesting.

The word "amṛt" is actually a compound word "a-mṛt", because "mṛt" or "mṛtyu" means "death" (which corresponds to mort in Latin), and "a-mṛt" is literally the opposite of death, or im-mort-ality. No one reading the original definition of ambrosia ("a food or drink of the gods that confers immortality") would immediately make the connection from "ambrosia" to the word "immortality" and realise that they're essentially the same word. The lexeme that English pilfered from Sanskrit just cloned itself in the same sentence, and nobody saw that happening! It's sitting right there under our very noses, just like the hidden white arrow in the FedEx logo.

Oh, those sneaky ad-men and their subliminal suggestions to go right!

It's amazing just how many words from other languages have found their way into English and are now strutting around in suits and top hats. Actually, that should just be jeans and T-shirts, because English is no longer the language of the British empire. It belongs to all of us as our working language, which is what the term "lingua franca" means anyway.

And we start using words from our own languages as English words, often even pronouncing them as English words, and no one seems to mind a bit. It's cultural Stockholm syndrome (an English lexeme that others can use).

Stockholm syndrome - "Everyone say 'Anglophilia', or it's au revoir, mademoiselle."
"You're so cool."

I personally find it amazing that the tech industry casually uses the Sanskrit words "guru", "nirvana" and "mantra", while "karma" and "avatar" need no translation at all. Guy Kawasaki, in a talk to Indian IT professionals in Silicon Valley, advised them to adopt a mantra for themselves with the quip, "You guys are Indians, you know what a mantra is".

Don't look now, but someone is stealing your loose lexemes

So the moral of the story is, go get those loose lexemes, from any language careless enough to leave them lying around. One of them could be the mot juste that you're looking for.

Even the linguistically pure French have taken the lesson to heart, it would seem.

...or they might ruin le weekend for you

Benazir Bhutto and Rajiv Gandhi

It was very sad to hear of Benazir Bhutto's assassination last week. Like many other Indians, I have had mixed feelings towards Benazir. On the one hand, she was smart, articulate, Westernised (and I mean that as a compliment) and came to power both times through democratic elections. But on the other, she was not particularly friendly to India when she was prime minister of Pakistan. I don't know what peculiar property the seat of power in Pakistan has, but anyone sitting there tends to become anti-India. It's a bit like the mythical throne of Vikramaditya which conferred wisdom on anyone who sat on it, just in reverse. The memory of Benazir Bhutto to Indians is predominantly one of the hopes for peace belied.

I just want to record two thoughts here. I feel really bad for her young children. It must be absolutely terrible for them to lose their mother in this way. And now, with the nomination of her young son Bilawal (19) as leader of the party, there is fresh danger too. I hope and pray that they stay safe.

My second thought is about the many similarities between Benazir Bhutto and India's former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, some uncanny, some funny.

Both belonged to political dynasties and were the offspring of former prime ministers (Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and Indira Gandhi, respectively). Both were assassinated when they were in opposition, while they were campaigning before an election. Both their parents were assassinated too (I consider the judicial hanging of Z.A. Bhutto by Gen. Zia-ul-Haq an act of political vendetta and therefore an assassination). Both had siblings who died violent and unnatural deaths (Murtaza Bhutto shot dead in unexplained circumstances, Shahnawaz Bhutto found dead in a hotel room, Sanjay Gandhi killed in an air crash). Both had their sons enter politics as well (Bilawal Bhutto Zardari and Rahul Gandhi).

The two did meet when they were prime ministers of their respective countries, at least once that I remember. Rajiv Gandhi made a personal reference to the Simla accord signed by Z.A. Bhutto and Indira Gandhi in his speech when he said, "Your father and my mother..." This personal touch was later criticised by political commentators when the India-Pakistan relationship deteriorated again. It was sarcastically referred to as the your-father-and-my-mother diplomacy.

I think Benazir Bhutto and Rajiv Gandhi were both more comfortable in English than in their respective languages. Left to themselves, they would have been part of the elite of their countries who can easily survive without speaking any local language. But fortunately or unfortunately, politics in countries with large populations that don't speak English forces leaders to speak the local language - with hilarious results.

I remember watching parts of Rajiv Gandhi's speech in Assam after an accord was signed with the agitating Assam Gana Parishad. He said in Hindi, "Hum accord ko implement karenge, letter mein aur spirit mein" (We will implement the accord in letter and in spirit).

Likewise, I saw a short clip of Benazir Bhutto making a speech in Urdu to the Pakistani parliament, "Main is assembly ki floor par declare karti hoon..." (I declare on the floor of this assembly...)

I remember laughing out loud and exclaiming, "This woman is Rajiv Gandhi's sister!"

Neither could speak Urdu/Hindi without resorting to English on every alternate word.

Well, there ends another era. I wish the Bhutto children strength and courage in the days ahead. And I hope Pakistan comes out of its current turmoil and becomes stable, peaceful and democratic once more, if not for its own sake, then at least for India's. While India has always lived with the threat of a hostile and militarily strong Pakistan, a stable enemy country is far preferable to one where law and order have completely broken down and unpredictable violence can spill over the border at any time.