Shashi Tharoor's Oxford address and an India lost in translation

Shashi Tharoor's tour de force Oxford Union debate, gone viral on social media, demonstrated not only robust argument but also a style and wit showcasing rhetoric at its best. The motion for which he argued the affirmative was, "This house believes Britain owes reparations to her former colonies." Tharoor demolished a host of spurious claims about benevolent, enlightened colonialism and its alleged legacy to colonies. Colonialism was and is, pure and simple, a global scourge - exploitative, brutalising, vicious and inhumane.

The aftershocks continue through impoverished nations, dystopian social and political arrangements, inept borders and plundered spoils.

Apologies

As Tharoor pointed out, the actual size of reparations is not the issue. It's the moral mea culpa - willingness to acknowledge an international atrocity - that will bring a redemptive light into the heart of darkness which drove the colonial project. A contrite "I am sorry" would be a first step towards reconfiguring the moral landscape. But the high horse of colonialism takes more than debate to bring it down. Colonialism depends on unswerving belief in the truth of warped realities. It colonises down to the quotidian, with self-righteous mannerisms and absurd hierarchical orderings of everything from whose boots get polished first to the proper height from which to pour the perfect cup of tea.

Scepticism is colonialism's mortal enemy. And as post-colonials one must resist all intolerant fundamentalisms. Consider a washed up old canard, dragging in a Varanasi boatman, brought to my attention by a Swiss multilingual friend we met decades ago on a trip visiting temples in south India. "How English Ruined Indian Literature," raged the New York Times.

The article invoked the unholy trimurti of language, colonialism and power, while also calling for systematic dismantling of English-based education in India. Proclaiming definitive rack and ruin upon the entire corpus of subcontinental literature brought another conversation to mind. Asking Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai about the effects of the French Revolution, Richard Nixon had the latter responding that it was too early to tell.

Yes, the British materially ravaged India. But maybe it's still too soon to assert that causal connection with the English language sent Indian literature down the tubes. Nixon's conversation, by the way, was actually about the Parisian student revolts of 1968. Pretending the subject involved the Bastille and guillotine was too rich for those present to let go.

From orientalism to the subaltern, legions of post-colonial authors and academics have clamoured about the topic of linguistic hegemonies. Pity the trees slaughtered for essays, theses, dissertations and tomes, hell-bent on riding the post-colonial express train on tracks to tenure, literary accolades or other nooks of professional notoriety.

Language

Paddling the argument in the Times was a Varanasi boatman who told author Aatish Taseer, that Modi's election showed the demise of the "English-speaking classes." As a kind of linguistic sans-culotte attuned to dialectical contradictions, the boatman is one to avoid if seeking a serene boat ride along the ghats.

English bashers need to note that nowhere is language more reflective of class divides than for the English themselves. You peg someone immediately by accent, pronunciation and vocabulary. But this, surely, is true for every language where fluency and virtuosity of usage makes language a form of social currency.

Crude reductionisms that hitch imposition of particular languages discursively to power, are seductive. But there's more that's interesting to be said about language beyond this. Linguistics scholars argue how one comes into the world with syntax and grammar built into the structure of consciousness. Structural similarities across languages outweigh differences of particular vocabulary or specific ordering of elements. Whatever language one uses, mental schema of linguistic structures provide the material for infinite possibilities of creative play with words.

Fundamentalism

The fact that English is ubiquitous in India gives Indians a huge global advantage, Tharoor's linguistic abilities being a simple case in point. And if chauvinism is too stubborn to extinguish, let's be happy that Sanskrit is acknowledged as the mother of Indian-European languages. Along with English, would our linguicidal compatriots kill off the hegemonies of mathematics and logic too? How about music, scientific vocabulary and computer coding? Instead of absolutist either/ors, maybe the real issue is weakness of multilingual education, something a good number of other countries have effectively instituted.

A few months back, former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg was in India talking about climate change and smart cities with Amitabh Bachchan. Asked about meeting Modi, Bloomberg said they "hit it off," but you don't know what somebody is really thinking when conversation is mediated by a translator. It's a problem for our Varanasi boatman - without a lingua franca, communicative integrity of a message gets lost in translation.

So what will be the message India frames for itself and the world? Progressing as a mature nation requires transcending previous injustices and indignities, not languishing in the past nor justifying parochial actions, in a kind of reverse colonialism, that purport to be about linguistic or cultural purity.

Take a glorious sacred edifice first visited on that cultural trip with our Swiss friend - the Meenakshi Temple in Madurai. I'm told there's now a sign that no lungis are allowed because it's a garment allegedly introduced by Muslims. That a temple dedicated to the nurturing inclusive and archetypal feminine divine should be used for small-minded sectarianism is disturbing. From Stalin's purges to the Parisian reign of terror, history in every language, in poetry and prose, supplies a litany of cautionary tales. Whether purveyed by colonials, Varanasi boatman, writers or politicians, fundamentalisms of every ilk, linguistic or otherwise, really do no one any good.