Kuffir
(This is a collection of Facebook updates from the author from the year 2017, critical of India’s obsession with English, not education, as a liberation mantra to the point of absurdity)
Two hundred years of English education doesn’t seem to have brought any change in the value systems of the Brahmins.
English is the language of colonialism, slavery, genocides. Hindi/Urdu live in the middle ages. Telugu is the only language of revolution.
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When Kancha Ilaiah writes in English, nobody pays any attention for years. When he writes in Telugu, it creates riots. Ilaiah himself is the biggest proof that English serves the ruling classes or potential ruling class aspirants, it doesn’t make the masses rebellious.
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We’re all learning English – why aren’t Amreeka, UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand giving all 90-100 crore Bahujans visas?
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Trump used to speak English since he was a baby.. why is he still such an asshole?
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Chinese, Japanese should undo all their economic progress, go back to poverty.. silly people don’t understand you can’t have progress without English.
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English is the language of ‘Operation Infinite Justice’.. killed only a few millions and screwed a dozen countries.. such justice.
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The dumbest view is that English has no economic cost.. as you keep imposing English, you keep imposing private education.. because English is ‘education’ and ‘private’ is meritorious education, no? That’s how thousands of govt schools are closing down and millions of children across the country are driven towards illiteracy.. Now there are several times more illiterate people in India than in 1947.. Some education, some English. some enlightened revolutionary wisdom.
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English is the language of arbitrary execution. Amreekans etc say ‘shoot’, Indian army and cops say ‘fire’. Vietnamese, Koreans, Afghans, Arabs, Africans, Colombians, Mexicans, Guatemalans, Peruvians and other Latinos, all kinds of indigenous peoples, Kashmiris, Adivasis fall down. In millions. That’s justice and peace in English.
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It’s said, England is ‘a nation of shopkeepers’, yaane ke ‘baniyon ka desh’ or ‘nation of komtis’.. Please uphold komti-ness, uphold English.
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Only fascists experiment with the lives of millions.. The imposition of English, Hindi is just such an experiment.
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When the American natives were being killed, nobody told them English would save them.
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By 2022, the Modi regime wants all Indians to have air conditioners in their homes.. That’s how $%#@!!&; they are.. This English obsession is quite similar..
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English is the language of neo-colonialism and neo-imperialism too.. Over 200 countries in the world are its direct and indirect victims.
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The 2-4 million people who died during the Bengal famine, 99% of them Bahujan, we should tell them English would have saved them.. No, the English didn’t kill them, na na..
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English is the language of the World Bank & IMF.. It won’t spare you from structural adjustment just because you speak English.
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English is the language of warmongers.. holy wars, wars of roses, world wars, opium wars, drug wars, gulf wars etc etc.. Every minute of the day, English speaking ‘warriors’ are killing some unfortunate non-English speaking person or the other.. Make war, Not Love – that’s the actual English saying.
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Will make a film called Einstein Tripathi.. Illiterate 6th dropout who becomes head priest in Khedaville Balaji temple in New Mexico.. No English needed to retain power or expand it. Only caste is important.
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Yes, learn puranas in English..navayana will supply them. As long as caste rule lives, brahmins thrive.. No Bahujans will get justice.. English mantras can’t produce Tamarind fruits.. No mantras can.
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Less than a decade ago, the Indian ‘education market’ was estimated to be less than 1 billion dollars.. Now, various off Wall Street scamster ‘consultants’ figure it will be around 180 billion dollars by 2020.. That’s what has been fuelling the vigorous enthusiasm for English, climbing steadily in the last two decades.. You can demand a certain degree of accountability from governments.. What will you demand from private capitalists?
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English is the language of international strife, assassinations, counter-revolutions..of pure dictatorship. From Mossadegh to Salvador Allende to Patrice Lumumba – the assassinations run into hundreds, the coups into more hundreds.. The ruin unimaginable.. English represents ‘knowledge’ of the worst kind of evil politics.
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English was always the language of selfishness and greed.. To grow indigo, tea, coffee, cotton, tobacco, sugarcane and a thousand other crops, they enslaved, persecuted, exploited and starved millions of non-English speaking peoples across the world.. and it still goes on.
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Why was there so much ‘national’/international abuse by the academia/media/’civil’ society directed at the debate critiquing Navayana-Roy’s intro to AOC and not against Ilaiah’s ‘Social Smugglers’.. ? Because the brahmins own English, the baniyas don’t. That tells you who actually holds power in India and who are just chamcha collaborators..
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If there is a pan-India Vaishya caste, why aren’t they protesting against Ilaiah’s book across India? Both India and the varna system, as interpreted by the academia and other state ideological apparatuses are a fiction. There’s only one pan India caste or varna in India, and that is the brahmins, the imperial class. You’ve to chuck English driven ‘knowledge’ to realise that.
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India is in the 100th place – that isn’t relevant information.. It’s worse than saying Africa is in the 100th place.. It’d be good if every state is analysed for its place in the Global Hunger Index.. Will help you see where caste reigns the most. Flood those places with English if you want.. English will cure everything, no..
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The presupposition that liberal democracy and its obverse facet, capitalism, are natural realities which shouldn’t be questioned, and all discussions around bahujan emancipation should be discussed within this paradigm: this is what fuels the obsession with the English mantra.. Read ‘States and Minorities’ – was Babasaheb in favour of this kind of nominally political democracy? Indian democracy was an unfinished project for him, a sorely weak entity which had to be strengthened with social and economic democracy. ‘the Bahujans are deficient subjects, they should improve themselves, they should learn English and earn lots of degrees and prove their ‘merit’ to the brahmins’ – this thinking is the foundation of the English project.. It has slavery at its roots, not freedom. So it can never ensure emancipation, only elevate the brahmin higher.
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Churchill spoke English all his life. How could he have died?
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Newton (the movie) is ‘dangerous’ therefore the Sanghi govt sends it to Oscars..? English is ‘liberation’ therefore Yogi Adityanath promotes it in up schools? English/Hindi/Sanskrit/Hindutva/India – they all mean the same thing – slavery.
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English is also the language of purposeless mass murderers – Steven Paddock to Columbine shooters to dozens of others.. They’ve no clear political or religious motives.. Probably the extreme levels of self-absorption that English inculcates in them is the major reason.. English speaking governments also behave in the same fashion – Their leaders nurture fantasies about an ‘Axis of Evil’ plotting against them, random enemies harbouring imaginary ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’ etc etc when your whole imagination is trapped in only one language like English, it can certainly lead to the above kind of psychosis. Beware.
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Languages, religions, ideologies – which all seem liberatory in the beginning steadily become repressive as their followers increase.. Because, even as their liberatory potential attracts more and more people, their anxieties about unity and dissent also multiply. as Marx said, quantitative change does lead to qualitative change. So England and America become ‘two countries separated by a common language’.. and religions — don’t need to elaborate on that.
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Sometimes, the problem seems to be that the Bahujan is unable to imagine a world without the Brahmin, even as he talks loudly about overthrowing the Brahmin.. Why would any Bahujan want to study the puranas or any Brahmin scriptural literature in Telugu if he has the power to decide what shall be taught in schools? Even during the course of his struggle for power, what prevents him from demanding that Brahmin puranic literature be totally removed from school pedagogy? I can clearly see a future where only Bahujan literature is taught in Telugu – starting with Jashuva to Gorati Venkanna to all others.. Ancient Telugu literature could be Basava to Veerabrahmam to Vemana and all others who are yet to be discovered.. But with the brahmins always in power, you’ll be taught brahmin literature, puranas and scriptures not just in English but also in Latin and Arabic etc too.
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It’s strange to oppose English in English? I find it even more stranger to advocate English in Telugu or any other language.. You should taste something before you say it is good or not, no? So i think it’s more logical to oppose English in English..
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The World Bank, around twenty years ago, started talking about what it called the ‘Ease of Doing Business’ across nations.. In 2001, it even developed an ‘Ease of Doing Business index’ through which it measured how relatively easy or difficult it was to start and run a business in any country.. One of the implied cultural components of the index, apart from its focus on legal/regulatory issues, was the thrust it gave to the right language: a country in which the govt understood English, as did its market and also various institutions was considered business ‘friendly.. This was when various business and other magazines across the world started talking more and more about how x and y country provided such a good investment prospect because it had an English education system and so on.. So this privileging of English steadily came to be accepted as more than a norm, across the world, especially by policy makers, regulators and economists and social scientists.. It became a mantra. But this mantra was conceived to provide a helping hand to international capital, to ‘ease’ their problems in entering any country or market and mop up profits.. Not to provide jobs to the unemployed masses in those countries. And definitely not emancipation.
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Who makes films like ‘Wonder Woman’.. The English-walas want Zeus now.. Do you want the vedic gods back?
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Telugu village goddesses protect your crops, your water bodies, ward off diseases, famine and floods. that’s the extent of the theology of these native faiths.. Very down to earth, no after life or before life or karma or reincarnation sophistry.. And modest. But if you think about it, what more could a human being want from a superhuman being? But the understanding of English speaking or pursuing people would be quite different, of course. Ask the native Americans who had similar modest ideas about faith etc, ..
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What about all the ills attributed to the faiths built around village goddesses (and local languages and cultures)? Like for instance, the Jogini system? Any English admiring person with half a brain would also turn a critical eye towards this and other tropes built around the village deities (because isn’t the critical eye supposedly one of the key elements of the enlightenment era..not in India, i guess..where we just eat Horlicks, not drink it, remember).. The Jogini system was obviously a by-product of the feudal land control system introduced by various empires in the Deccan in the middle ages.. When land started transforming from a natural resource into a key state asset and power sharing arrangement between the rulers and various warrior clans (which later expanded into dominant jatis) who actually extracted revenue from designated territories, sometimes covering hundreds of villages.. Ritual prostitution was, therefore, a natural outgrowth of the need to channelise this new found power and surpluses (anyone who says prostitution is the oldest profession isn’t an English speaker, only a bhakt. Cornering power or exploiting labour is actually the oldest profession, the profession of priests) to further sectarian agendas, and for more comprehensive exploitation of the bahujans, especially the Bahujan women.. And myths built around the Jogini system by the brahmins pre-empted any organised resistance against it at the village level.. Don’t blame Yellamma for the jogini system, blame the brahmin and the landlord or the brahmin landlord, most times, because it was the brahmin who turned Yellamma into Renuka, avatar of Parvati and wife of Shiva.. Not the Bahujan villagers.
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Some myths need to be busted:
Myth no.1: English is going to get you the best jobs in the future.
The truth is, there isn’t going to be any growth in the best jobs available in the country in the future. Not for another twenty years, at least. Consult any astrologer or Goldman Sachs on what would happen beyond twenty years. The best jobs in the country are in the organized sector: jobs that offer both good pay and benefits and security. Those jobs have actually decreased in number in the last twenty years and will continue to do so.
Of the future, there is only one kind of growth that can be predicted with any degree of certainty: growth in the number of the self-employed (who already number 55% of the workforce in the country).
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The whole world will one day speak only English and India will be its call centre. But how can india be the world’s call centre, or back office as some say, if other poor countries (like the Afghans, the Somalis, the Laotians, the Haitians etc) also learn to speak English? Wouldn’t that rob us of our only advantage (over the Afghans, the Somalis, the Laotians, the Haitians etc): our ability to speak English? Now, wait a minute- is that our only advantage? Isn’t being poor our other major advantage? We should somehow learn the trick to do both at the same time- learn English and strive to remain poor (poorer than the Afghans, the Somalis, the Laotians, the Haitians etc etc, if possible) at the same time – if we wish to live upto our reputation as the world’s back office and become a rich country, one day. in the near, distant future.
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