Language as a tool of cultural imposition

Some time ago, I had moved to Dubai for work and was a bit surprised to find that my daughter had to learn Arabic at school. This was so even though the school was run under an Indian Board (ICSE). Thankfully, it was more a symbolic gesture than a real attempt to force kids to learn Arabic, and the level of Arabic being taught was pretty basic. So it didn’t really take too much of my kid’s time.

The logic was simple. ‘When in Rome, do as the Romans do.’ An Arab friend put it more bluntly, “You come to my country to make money. So respect my customs and learn to speak my language. If you can’t, then go back home. No one is forcing you to stay here.”

I didn’t like the idea of a language being forced on me for the simple reason that I’m linguistically challenged. It takes me ages to pick up a new language. However I had to admit what my Arab friend said seemed fair.

Look at it another way, being forced to learn a language is a lot better than being forced to wear a veil. Which you have to do if you are a woman living in Saudi Arabia. I have no intention of ever visiting that country but even my male eyes could see no upside to wearing a veil. So I was surprised to find there actually is one. A cousin of mine, a doctor, told me she often jumped straight out of bed, threw on the hijab over her nightdress, and went off to work, with no one the wiser. However going to work in her pyjamas was not a strong enough incentive to compensate for her lack of freedom. She left the country as soon as she had enough money to move on.

That story made me think. What if this same rule was applied to the conservative Saudis going to live in the West? What if they are told when they enter a Western country that the public dress code is swimming trunks for men and bikinis for women. I guess only the open minded Saudis would migrate, and that mindset may possibly make it easier for them to integrate into the culture of the new country.

What I mean is if you are in Rome, and do what Romans do, you will find it easier to live in Rome, blend into Roman society, and be more likely to be accepted by the Romans. And once they are integrated at this level, they are more likely to relate to their new country, and far less likely to support a team of Saudi terrorists, like say, the 9/11 gang.

Forcing people to wear bikinis will never happen, but enforcing languages does happen. The thing is there will be consequences. Like if Dubai had insisted Indians learn Arabic before being allowed to work there, very few Indians would have gone there. And since those hardworking migrants are what made the country what it is today, maybe it would remained nothing more than a small trading port.

In fact, that is the counter argument against enforcing customs on migrants. These newcomers bring their own cultures to new country, and revitalise the place by injecting new ideas and fresh energy. It’s this cross pollination of ideas that has made the US what it is, and makes Trump such a disaster.

Another counter argument is you can integrate only up to a certain level. For instance, you can’t change the colour of your skin. Whether this is an issue or not depends on the culture of the country you migrate to. In Dubai airport, I once observed a white lady wearing jewellery being waved through the body check. Whereas my 70-year old, dark skinned mother was rudely told to remove her gold bangles even though it was quite tight and painful to take off. I doubt if she would have been treated differently if she knew Arabic. I put up with this treatment for a while as I was broke. But eventually it got to me. By then, my financial situation had improved so I returned to India.

What I learned was a migrant may choose to overlook discrimination in order to have a better life. But it doesn’t mean he accepts it. He will move on once he has the opportunity, just like my cousin moved on from Saudi Arabia. If he can’t move out, the anger against his host country will linger. I suspect some of the current crop of truck killers belong to this category.

At least, these migrants had an option to choose whether to stay or not. But what happens when you don’t have a choice of leaving because it’s your own country that is discriminating against you. White cops beating or killing blacks in the US is a good example. Those in such a situation can’t pack up their bags and leave. They have nowhere to go as this is their home. When people have their back against a wall like these, they tend to fight back, which is why such a situation quickly becomes volatile.

All this came to my mind when I heard the Indian government is going to make the Sanskirt language compulsory from next year for students under the same ICSE board that my daughter is studying in. It was ironical that I who had partly left Dubai to avoid having a language imposed on me, was now faced with my own country planning to do the same.

A bit of background. India is a country of many languages, with no common language. Hindi is spoken by a majority of Indians in the North but it’s Greek to Indians in the South. So Southies resisted strongly when the Northies tried to impose Hindi on them around the time of independence some 50 years ago. There was even talk of secession. With India just having been divided on a religious basis into India (Hindu majority) and Pakistan (Muslim majority), no one wanted another division based on language. So the Hindi drive was stopped in its tracks, and things calmed down.

There was one other minor flare-up some years later. The capital of Kerala, a southern state, used to be called Trivandrum. It was named this by the British, as the original name of Thiruvananthapuram was quite a mouthful. After independence, the State TV which was run by the North Indian led government, insisting on pronouncing Trivandrum as Three-vhen-dhrum. The easygoing Keralites protested at having a third variation on their capital’s name but the central government ignored them. One fine day, the Kerala government had enough. They upped and officially changed the name to Thiruvananthapuram, and asked the Northies to go suck an egg.

Coming to Sanskirt, it’s a bit like Latin, a language that no one actually speaks. What’s relevant is that it’s the ancient language of Hindus, and the current political party in power in India is a Hindu nationalistic party.

So to a non-Hindu Indian, this imposition of Sanskirt will engender a siege mentality. It will be perceived as the majority Hindus pushing their language to be India’s national language. If all Indians accept Sanskirt as the national language, that would mean all Indians accept India as a Hindu nation. That’s a huge thing symbolically for the current Hindu government, worried as they are by the rising levels of Muslim population on one hand, and Islamic extremism on the other. I guess this desire to assert the Hindu credentials of India is why they are pushing Sanskirt any which way it can.

Will this language imposition work?

I don’t think so. I’m a Hindu myself, but I have no desire to torture myself by trying to learn a difficult language like Sanskirt. Even if I were good at picking up languages, why would I be interested in learning Sanskirt? What do I get out of it apart from being able to read the religious books of the Hindus? I once tried reading the English translation of the Bhagavadgita (a Hindu holy book) and fell asleep before I got to the second page. How far would I get if it were in Sanskrit? No, I don’t believe this imposition of Sanskirt will be any more successful than Dubai’s attempt to impose Arabic on us. My daughter still doesn’t know a word of Arabic, while my wife and I are marginally better as we know a couple of words.

I do worry about the consequences of government’s current drive to impose Sanskirt, and other aspects of Hindu culture, on the unsuspecting common man in India. Will it cause resentment to swell up among non-Hindu Indians, and will it explode like in Kashmir? For instance, in Kerala, all sides of the political spectrum seem to have taken a beef with central government’s drive to ban cattle slaughter. Holy cow is no longer a joke!

Still, I’m comforted by the thought that India is a healthy democracy. Let’s say the government insists all students have to be able to read, speak and write fluent Sanskirt to be promoted to higher classes. There will be an instant and indignant protest by the enraged mothers of all those students, and the government will hastily back off. My gut feel is Sanskirt imposition will remain more a symbolic gesture than an actual imposition.

After all, like the proverbial horse taken to water, you can put a language under a man’s nose but you can’t make him imbibe it.