The Idea of 'Correct' English in India

When a book written by an Indian having British English, American slang, Urdu, Hindustani etc. in one narration without a glossary in the end goes on to become an international best seller, one asks why are we still so focused on using the ‘correct English’? When I completed my graduation in English Literature, I asked myself why as Indians we are still so concerned with the British pronunciation and make fun of the Indian English i.e. the Mother Tongue Influence on English. Probably I was a bit too late in thinking about the issue, given my mind is still a victim of colonization, but I asked it nonetheless.

One of the teachers in my Masters course always says that he doesn’t give a damn about pronunciation. If he doesn’t understand the word, he asks for the spelling. But he doesn’t as such ‘correct’ the speaker. He doesn’t understand the relevance of studying phonetics when we have such great MTI on our English. Yes, some people might free themselves from the accents but according to him, it shouldn’t be a must. These ideas coming from an English teacher took me by surprise. But when thought about it, he actually makes a lot of sense.

When Midnight’s Children took the 1980s under its sway, I was still 14 years old on the left side of the number line. Almost 36years later when I finally read the book, I was swept off my feet. Every canon of the English Literature that was built in my head was crushed. The line between a classic and a non classic was blurred. A novel making way to become literature and a comic book not filled my brain with questions. Every notion of literature, reality, truth, rumour, classic, fiction, fact, in short life, seemed absurd.

I remember discarding Chetan Bhagat when I was introduced to the American writers of the modern times. I discarded these writers when I was introduced to the Victorian writings. Again, the modernists took over the Victorians. I questioned the established Literary Canon but made one in my head and Salman Rushdie made literature absurd with one simple book about India. 

As a citizen of post colonial India, I have made fun of people who do not speak the ‘correct’ English. Sometime or the other I had considered that English is the way to development. With all honesty, I am not proud of it. My mind remains colonized even after so many years of ‘freedom’. I have provided a glossary even in some of my blogposts to give myself the satisfaction that anyone and everyone can understand it. (But it is not the writer’s responsibility. The one who really wants to read needs to do his homework.) And of all things, I have tried my best to follow British English without experimenting with it when it comes to writing. Colloquially, I am very good at mixing the words of all the languages that I know but when it comes to writing, it needs to be perfect. The British perfect.

It is said that with the publication of Midnight’s Children, the Indian writings in English underwent a great change. It provided the Indian English writers a confidence of playing with the language as their own. They were comfortable with English and it was no longer just the language of the superior, or the Occident. But by the year 2016, when the colonized minds of my school teachers, my parents, my friends and acquaintances made me focus on the correct use of English, Midnight’s Children created the very same effect on me as it did three decades ago on the Indian writers in English. I finished the 650 pages of the book in two and a half weeks. But I wish it were longer. Or at least had a sequel. I am not enchanted with the story. I am taken by its narration.

Most of my friends who began reading the book simultaneously cannot believe how I finished it in a couple of weeks. To them I would say, choose your thing from the book and you will make it to the last page. If you’re into storytelling, read it for storytelling. If you are into history, read it for history. If you are into Bombay, read it for Bombay. If you are into partition, read it for partition. If you are into religion, read it for religion. If you are into absurdity, read it for absurdity. The list goes on and on and on. But if you are someone like me who aspires to be a writer, then read it for the writing. Midnight’s Children is a must read for every aspiring Indian writer in English and anyone with a love for reading.

After reading a book like this, one does find the concept of correct English absurd. But then the book makes everything seem absurd. While reading, you find incomplete sentences every now and then. Words are repeated to create an impact that we might have while watching soap or a movie. The grammar on rare occasions gets lost in the Sunderbans. The vocabulary uses different languages as per the need. The fairy tale beginning meets the autobiographical elements handcuffed with historical notions of truth. But in the end, it makes complete sense. Not once will the reader feel that what is written isn’t correct.

So maybe we need to learn the basics of English to communicate but I still don’t see the very need to acquire a fake accent leading to the making of a synthetic self. Someone might be able to get rid of the MTI entirely, someone might not. Someone might write very well in English, someone might not. English is anyway an ever expanding language. We need to do away with the idea of British English as the only ‘correct’ form of English and encourage people to speak and write in English however they can, correcting them when needed without making them feel inferior. We do have something called the General Indian English, it's time we follow that. The colonisers did their job by introducing English to us, we might as well feel comfortable with the language and play with it keeping the basic skeleton in its place!