Are We Y2K Ready?
This issue of Iaclals Newsletter will be the last to be written in the 20th century and
the first to be published in the 21st. As such it allows us to indulge in the game of
drawing up lists of our heroes and villains. For teachers of English, but not only for
them, the Man of the Millennium would undoubtedly be Thomas Babington Macaulay, who with
one document of brutal logic changed the entire course of our lives. (I am not, however,
sure whether he falls into the `heroes' or the `villains' category! But isn't that dilemma
the whole point?) As for heroes, Rabindranath Tagore would be the favourite for the Man of
the Century. After all, he is our only Nobel Laureate in literature!
The century/millennium crossover-cusp also gives us a convenient historical
moment to reflect on our profession, and speculate on what might be in store for us as
teachers of English literature in India. Note that I have said `English Literature' and
not `English', for it is becoming more and more clear that the till-now automatic
conflation of English and English literature is no longer valid, and nor is their future
in India similar, but more about that a little later.
What counts as English literature itself has changed over the decades: English
departments in India now accommodate women's writing, dalit writing, translation studies,
among others, in their precincts. But these changes have taken place not because of any
serious overhaul but largely due to individual initiative or departmental zeal. Hence,
these have been piecemeal and random. In fact, the one systematic attempt to revamp the
syllabus, (The Report of the Curriculum Development Centre in English, 1989), has
largely remained unimplemented. |
As English emerges as the undisputed `Global Language' (see David Crystal English as a
Global Language, CUP, 1997), teaching English and teaching English literature have
become two separate professions. While the former (ELT/ESP) is seen to have a bright
future in the global market, the future of English literature is uncertain. Perhaps such
anxiety about its relevance has always been endemic to the profession, forcing English
teachers to be what they are not: linguists, sociologists, psychologists, cultural
anthropologists, etc. The falling stock value of English literature in the marketplace
certainly foregrounds the question about the `purpose' of teaching English literature in
India, and obliges those who profess it to reconsider their role.
In the liberal-humanist education system, literature was seen as a humanizing and
modernizing force, and the English teacher as a catalyst in social reform. This view is
predicated on the assumption that training students in how to read books is to equip them
to read the world around them. Macaulay had placed a huge, and significantly a cultural,
responsibility on the English educated: "to refine the vernacular dialects ... and to
render them by degrees fit vehicles for conveying knowledge to the great mass of the
population." Two questions suggest themselves: how far have English studies in India
addressed this agenda (either by implementing it or quarrelling with it); and what happens
to Macaulay's injunction if English studies in India are redefined as skill-development
techniques?
We hope that some of these issues will be discussed, formally or otherwise, when
we meet in Trivandrum for the Annual Conference.
T Vijay Kumar
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