The Phoenix Tongue

The journey of English as a language in India is much like a river who finds its way through the terrains and mountains to meet the silent ocean.English has recently been accepted as the language of choice for the Young India thanks to the fast-emerging IT and BPO sector.
The history of this language in India traces back to 18th Century . The language arrived at the sea-ports along with the East India Company ships.It remained the language of the Britishers until Lord Macaulay decided to introduce it in Indian Education system in 1835 although the sole objective was to erect a class of British-loyal English tongued Indian blooded clerks and bureaucrats.The language brought with itself the ideas of democracy,nationalism and liberty.It also opened the gates of the scientific and literature jewels for the Indians. The English language grew in popularity for it was one which united the numerous numbers of kingdoms and Princely states into one united India.
Came the independence after a long battle of 200 years against the colonial imperialism.English being viewed as the foreign language and the relics of the Britishers , met a strong resistance from the Independent India leaders. They were in mood to let it continue as the official language. This move was highly supported by the North-Indian masses who were adamant to get the the official language status to Hindi. However, it was absolutely indigestible for the South-Indian states who had a greater affinity for their own regional language. They started agitating against the Hindi and thus, Hindi and English both were made the official language and the Southern states were given a time frame of 15 years to learn and implement Hindi. But, after 15 years , the Indian government has to again bend towards the agitation especially led by DMK in Tamil Nadu.This agitation of DMK against Hindi won her the support of the Tamilians and set up first Non-Congress government in Tamil Nadu. Although, the Southern States had agitated , but, their fight was more against Hindi, rather than for English. The condition of English in Indian academia reached a new bottom when Gujarat and West Bengal government banned teaching English in primary schools. The three language policy of the Indian government , for teaching English , Hindi and one regional language has an instrumental role in degrading English education in India. But, in spite of all these , it was the Indian middle class which still routed its child to English- medium private schools .
As the darkest time in the night is the hour before the dawn , the same was for the English. The phoenix rose from the ashes . Came the year 1991 , the year of economic reform when India truely achieved its Economic freedom, it opened the gates for the Private sector .And , along with it came the floods of opportunities. The English literate population grabbed this opportunity with both hands and soon, India found herself placed at the top of IT and BPO industry of the world. People who were after English criticizing her as the foreign language embraced it whole-heartedly. The story of rags to riches became a common day-to-day story with a lot of young professionals and entrepreneurs scripting their own -success story. Still, a vast majority of our population is English-illiterate which possess a big challenge as well as an optimism to harness this untapped potential. Now, English has evolved as the language of Media, business class and of-late finding its way into the society with the latest Hinglish culture. The language which came to this land with the traders, has evolved so much and become a part of this country. Eminent writers like Amitav Ghosh and others have chosen to pen down their imagination and views in this language rather than in their own mother tongue. Surely, the success of the modern India was scripted the day English was introduced in our Education system.