Sanskrit, English and Dalits

S Anand

Unlike Sanskrit, there are no scriptural injunctions against the

learning of English; English is theoretically as accessible to dalits
and women as it is to the dwijas. However, the brahmanical classes
have monopolised the use of English (as also other symbols of
western modernity) and have justified the denial of the same to the
dalits, sometimes even reading their faulty use of the language as
acts of resistance/rejection of colonial modernity.
THE BJP-led hindutva dispensation,
which always seemed to have one foot
in the grave and one in its mouth, has
been given a burial. But despite the uncertainty that surrounded the governments last days in power, it did go ahead
with things which were very dear to its
unhidden agenda. Or rather, since the end
seemed inevitable, there was a certain
indecent haste in pushing some lastminute policy initiatives. And this remained unnoticed in the mainstream media
which was more worried about the continuance of the right-wing regime. For
instance, despite the Vajpayee regimes
ides of March having begun (literally),
the union human resources development
minister, Murli Manohar Joshi, announced
that 1999 would be the Year of Sanskrit.
And it was declared that the focus of the
year-long celebration would not only be
the popularisation of Sanskrit among the
general public but also such programmes
that would lead to the long-term and
permanent development of Sanskrit (The
Hindu March 14, 1999).
The report mentioned plans such as
Sanskrit academies in states, childrens

Economic and Political Weekly

literature in Sanskrit, Sanskrit conversation camps and seminars on Sanskrit and

science in schools and colleges. This is
in keeping with BJPs zeal to put Sanskrit
high on the HRD ministrys agenda. The
saffronisation of education that was
sought to be pushed earlier and the compulsory Saraswati Vandana that still
continues in Uttar Pradesh have not gone
unprotested. However, the declaration of
1999 as the Year of Sanskrit has slipped
by almost unnoticed.
In the context of such keenness to promote the study of Sanskrit, it would be
relevant to see what this classical language had connoted and stood for when
it was supposed to have been in its peak
(in the Gupta period), and how it is English
that largely plays such a role today.
Very often the status of English in
modern-day India has been compared to
that of Sanskrit and Persian of the classical
period. Personalities as various as
Jawaharlal Nehru, P Lal (a pioneering
publisher who promoted Indian writing in
English with a missionary zeal) and A K
Ramanujan (eminent linguist, translator,
social anthropologist and poet) had sug-

July 24, 1999

gested (each for different reasons though)

that the position of Sanskrit in the Gupta
period it being the language of the court,
the ruling elite compares favourably
with that of English today.
True, the brahmanical elite during the
nationalist movement and in the immediate post-independence phase held a tight
English leash over the institutions of power/
knowledge. But one has to acknowledge
the fact that (western/ colonial) modernity that comes with English in something that is not inaccessible to the untouchables the dalits and bahujans whose
marginalisation has been justified over
centuries by dominant varieties of Hinduism. Today, English is a language dalitbahujans can aspire to, unlike classical
Sanskrit which they were kept away from.
That the Sanskritic vedas were not supposed to be read (or even heard) by the
sudras, ati-sudras and women is something that is upheld by authorities like the
Manusmriti and the Gita.
There is no record of Sanskrit (dev
bhasha, language of the (Aryan) gods, as
it is exclusively called) ever being a
democratic language that was accessible
to the masses. It was never the mother
tongue, always the father tongue, as
Ramanujan reminds us when commenting
the poetry of the bhakti movement, which
for the first time, after the Buddhas
deliberate recourse to Pali, spoke in a
mother tongue and forged a literature of
and for the masses. The point simply is
that there was a sanction against Sanskrit
being acquired by the dalit-bahujans. Lack
of access to Sanskrit (and hence to the
agrahara and court) meant lack of space
in what the varna-dharmic forces upheld
and celebrated as culture, knowledge,
power. In fact, an adjectival form of the
very word Sanskrit comes to connote
culture (sankritiya). This meant that
Prakritic expressions were not recorded in
official histories as amounting to culture;
or sometimes, like bhakti literature, were
co-opted into an all-devouring Hindu
mainstream.
Sanskrit, in the glorious, classical
period worked like a secret code language,
access to which was determined by ones
birth into a certain caste and gender. It was
the high language in which all the rules
of society (Manu), grammar (Panini), statecraft (Kautilya), mathematics (Aryabhatta),
performing arts (Natyashastra), etc, were
written. Exclusivity was its essence. It was
never the day-to-day language of emotions even for those who used it for specific purposes. It was the language of
metaphysics. One did not, does not make
casual conversation in it. It was the language of the intellect, of the intellectuals,
of the sacral literati. Why bahujans, even

2053

upper caste women were not allowed to

speak Sanskrit in Kalidasas plays,
women characters always speak Prakrit,
never Sanskrit. (It must be stressed here
that the story of Tamil, another classical
language, is very different. Unlike Sanskrit, it has been alive as a discourse both
at the high literary level and the day-today realm.)
Sacred Sanskrit has always been a dead
language. Even when Kalidasa was writing his classics, Sanskrit was hardly the
understood language of the day; in his
own times the plays were performed only
after being suitably adapted into Prakritic
versions that could be intelligible to the
viewing public of the day. The dead weight
of Sanskrit, however, remains a burden on
us even in 1999, in the form of the Year
of Sanskrit.
The same cannot be said of the status
of English in modern India, even when its
comparison with Sanskrit seems inevitable at surface level. At least theoretically
(if we see the Constitution as a progressive
text that displaces the Manusmriti) there
are no injunctions whatsoever against the
learning of English. Socially, there have
been (and still are) problems in the way
of aspirants from disprivileged backgrounds. But the modern-day Constitution (written in English) and authored by
a dalit, B R Ambedkar, opens a range of
possibilities hitherto unknown in Indian
society.
If we were to employ a motif from
Shakespeares The Tempest, the dalitCaliban never got to learn Sanskrit to
answer back his Prospero: You taught me
language and my profit ont is/ I know
how to curse you...1 In fact, the brahmanProspero never allowed the dalit-Caliban
near his language (Sanskrit). Todays dalitbahujan, of course, does not find himself
in such an unnegotiable position vis-a-vis
English.
We may hence attach a good deal of
significance to the symbolism of having
a dalit politician like Ambedkar play a
crucial role in shaping what theoretically
is the most progressive Constitution in the
world. Not only did Ambedkar give shape
to the Constitution, he was also the law
minister in independent Indias first parliament. All this an avarna who has
no place in the Sanskritic order of things
playing a crucial role in shaping the laws
that govern modern civil society goes
against the very essence of Sanskritic
diktats. And we may also be glad that our
Constitution has been written in English.
Such a work could not have been written
in Sanskrit.
The casteist elite quotes memorised
titbits like the gayatri mantra and couplets from Gita shlokas to flaunt its San-

2054

skrit (= rote learning) and thus hold the

spiritual realm under its control. But
today, it is English that is used to maintain
power over more day-to-day activities
the material realm. And hence control
over English meaning denial of it to others
becomes important for the English-speaking section of India which amounts to a
mere 2-3 per cent of the population.
English, however, has no notion of
sacredness attached to it. It is something
a person may aspire to, irrespective of
ones varna, religion or gender. On the
contrary, the very notion of democracy is
something that Hinduisms sacred Sanskrit texts do not account for. English, for
which we seem to be making a case purely
in the context of the Sanskrit-English
debate, is of course a language that an
imperial power used to enslave a major
part of the world, including the Indian
subcontinent. But it was something that
the local Ariel-elite (to use The Tempest
motif again) immediately acquired to help
the British administer India. From being
court gumasthas to civil servants the
brahmanical classes took easy pride in the
fact that they could acquire English and
serve the new political masters while
negotiating for themselves a crucial space
in the emerging social order.
But the coming of English also opened
up a new realm of ideas the European
enlightenment concepts of liberty, equality, fraternity, and hence justice and rule
of law. Again, it is the Ambedkars of India
who become alive to the practicable aspects of these concepts, while the upper
caste elite represented both by the Shyama
Prasad Mookherjee and the Nehru, T T
Krishnamachari kind were and are interested only in the intellectual and textual
possibilities that these western concepts
open up. They would be eloquent in their
use of English and apparently understand
the ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity; some like Nehru would even let
themselves be influenced by events like
the Bolshevik revolution. But when it came
to disturbing the core of Hindu society
with the kind of changes that an Ambedkar
was hoping for as law minister through the
Hindu Code Bill, which aimed at providing the people of India a new social structure of kinship, marriage and inheritance,
a law which aimed to undo the institutionalised evils of caste and patriarchy
way back in the 1950s the orthodox
Hindu elite strongly resisted such a change.
This largely explains why innumerable
things our Constitution wishes for are not
put into practice: to point just one instance, untouchability is lego-juridically
a crime, but then most uppercaste Hindus would be (unpunished) criminals by
that count.

In saying all this, one is of course taking

for granted the nationalist belief the
notion that India as a nation is as old as
the vedas and Himalayas, as old and timeless as Hinduism as a faith is claimed to
be. We are not for the moment trying to
disturb the imagination, the dream rather,
that the Indian national fabric has to be
protected come what may. In other words,
in talking of English, Sanskrit and even
dalits as pan-Indian categories, we temporarily accept the belief that we have to
negotiate our identities within the rubric
of the nation state (more of a state, less
of a nation till the BJP took over) that India
is.
The point here is not whether dalitbahujans all over the country are using
English to assert their position today. They
are of course doing this in languages they
are comfortable in. But this again does not
mean that a dalit from Andhra Pradesh is
comfortable articulating his problems in
standardised Telugu a Sanskritic Telugu
that is prescribed by textbooks. Kancha
Ilaiah, a dalit-bahujan thinker from Andhra
Pradesh, theorises, in English of the
purposelessness of dalit children being
forced to acquire a culture that is alien to
them through a language which is far
removed from their social world
brahmanical bookish Telugu having nothing to do with the production-based
materiality of the dalits Telugu.
So, when we look at the interstices
between Sanskrit, English and Sanskritised
regional languages (the Prakrit) and what
these spaces mean in the everyday discourse of our civil society, we see that the
quota candidates tend to look upon
English (in which upper caste students
seem to excel) and a command over it,
as a tool that would help them overcome
their perceived inadequacies, and, in fact,
look at the brahmanised bhasha, which
they are forced to identify as their mother
tongue, with contempt. This realisation of
the importance of being articulate in
English is particularly felt at the college/
university level where the bahujan comes
into contact with the posh, convent-educated urban types.
Studies conducted by students of sociology and linguistics departments at the
Central University of Hyderabad reveal
that dalit students from rural, semi-urban
Telugu medium backgrounds tend to attribute their poor performance in the
academia in terms of low scores to a
lack of command over English. But here
too, the student does not find help forthcoming. Bad English is frowned upon
and the disprivileged students sense of
handicap is reinforced by the systems
indifference typically expressed as, cant
do anything about it at this late stage.

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July 24, 1999

Thrown into such a hostile world, the dalit

student obviously does not perform as
well as his/her upper caste counterparts.
The dull dalits forever seem to lack
merit. All the good marks are scored by
the bright English-speaking students.
And thus the dalit-bahujans forever seem
to be in need of reservations.
Such a systemic denial of English (taken
as symbolic of things modern) to the dalitbahujans in contemporary India something that is not sanctioned by the system
itself shows that it is here that the upper
caste urban Indian uses English like he
did Sanskrit in the imaginary golden,
classical era. It is thus that the genuinely
democratic possibilities that English could
have otherwise opened up in a caste
society like ours have been nipped in the
bud by a casteist elite that does not let go
of power by subverting the potential of
each new challenge here, we see English
as one such symbolic challenge to serve
its own ends.
Such an argument of English for dalits,
we would be told, is uncritical of the fact
that English was a colonisers tongue and
the colonisers intentions in imposing his
language on the natives were never a
noble one. So, why extend it to dalits?
Why not, rather, romanticise them as that
section of society unpolluted by western
aspirations and argue for letting things
remain as they are? And even perhaps ask
them to continue with their hereditary
caste occupations in villages? Also, it
would be pointed out that but for a fraction
of dalits, who because of their exposure
to higher education aspire to English, the
larger masses share a historical resentment towards English and all that it culturally symbolises: modernisation/urbanisation/and now Americanisation.
Linguistic scholars like Probal Dasgupta
(in The Otherness of English) have even
rationalised the bad English of the dalitbahujans as one form of resistance to and
subversion of colonial modernity by the
Bharat that is not India. Dasgupta
manages to read great philosophical, intellectual and political meaning in Bharats
resistance to and discriminatory use of
the symbols of western/colonial modernity, of which English is something he
discusses at length.
English is still a ticket, but to a job market
than to a cultural elite. One learns English
in India on the basis of instrumental rather
than integrative motivation. This leads to
a relatively shallow knowledge of the
language. For todays Indians, English is
a technical means to personal ends. It is
held at arms length from the mainsprings
of their personalities... (1993: 79)

With this premise, he goes on to argue

towards the end of the book, by when the

Economic and Political Weekly

India of page 79 becomes Bharat, and

todays Indians Bharatiyas, that
This refusal the typical learner in Bharat
achieves by focusing in an exaggeratedly
formal fashion on the content of what is
learnt, by memorising lists of points, by
treating examination success as a definitive correlate of adequate mastery... and
thus refusing to engage any personal element... in the job of learning (183).

This sense of discrimination, which

Dasgupta bestows rather patronisingly on
an almost castewise unspecified Bharatiya
(rural?) learner, results in fragmentary
learning where the learner is seen as being
able to welcome some material and resist
the rest (183). Does this learner occupy
a dalit position? Dasgupta does not specify;
but it seems so. On the whole, what we
read as the denial of English (among access
to other symbols of modernity) by a casteist
elite, occurs in the linguists account as
a form of intelligent (yet romanticised) act
of resistance whose roots are mischievously traced to the bhakti periods resistance to Sanskrit and things Sanskritic
(p 84, 147).
In Dasguptas framework, such resistance which results in a deliberate faulty
and fragmentary acquisition of English
explains the mistakes the so-called
Bharatiya (as opposed to Indian) makes
in his/her use of the language. So the
conclusion that we have to draw is that
the dalit learners if we are forgiven our
understandings Dasguptas misrepresented
Bharatiya as that have a certain stake
in their apparent resistance to not just
English but other things modern (as in
western). So when the typical learner
in Bharat resorts to rote learning (that is,
simply memorises lists of points from an
examination point of view using kunjis,
guidebooks) we are asked to understand
this as an act of subversion into which
great political meaning is sought to be
read, and not as an inherent flaw in a
patently dalit-unfriendly pedagogy.
Dasgupta, of course, points out that this
is a result of the India-based, teachercentred (as opposed to Bharat-based,
learner-centred, in his lexicon) approach
of the system, but then again according
to him, in this learning game the learner
controls by giving the teacher a lot of long
rope; the learner is not fully and emotionally involved in the act of learning
(English). What in our reading figures as
a method that ensures that the dalits and
shoshits are not empowered by a system
which seeks to produce good speakers
of English (apart from scientists, engineers, doctors... and, of course, linguists)
from among only the upper castes, becomes for Dasgupta a metaphor for
Bharats rejection of western modernity.

July 24, 1999

If we extend the logic of such a disempowering reasoning, it would mean that

when a dalit student is awarded less marks
(just pass marks, or as in most cases not even
that) because of his/her faulty English
it is actually an act of resistance. By the
same logic the fact that a lot of Bharatiyas
drop out of the education system at different levels from primary schools to
university will also be sought to be read
as an act of conscious resistance. Such a
rationale, of course, has another subtext
to it: the teachers of English (as a language) can now draw theoretical solace
by pointing out that when the dalit is being
awarded low scores for his lack of grasp
of correct English, it cant be really helped
because it is an act of wilful Bharatiya
resistance to the hegemonic influence of
English-modernity. At a less obvious level,
it is one way of hiding the unwillingness
of the (mostly upper caste) teacher (someone like Probal Dasgupta himself in a
classroom situation) to devise methods
that might enable Bharatiya (rural/dalit)
learners to be articulated in English on par
with their Indian (urban/upper caste,
middle class) counterparts, and at a more
obvious level it is one way of attributing
an imagined agency to the reluctant learners and thus escaping the blame of inbred
intellectual and professional laziness.2
Compared to the usual middle classupper caste reasoning which says something like the bahujans anyway lack merit,
therefore are not good at English, the
Dasgupta kind of rationalising which sees
the shallow use of the language as a form
of resisting modernity seems more politically dangerous. If we were to cut all the
crap of theoretical jargon, both these
positions emerge as classic justifications
by which the language of power may be
sought to be denied to the bahujans. The
upper castes and classes fear to have the
oppressed learn the language of power and
do what they (the twice-born) are supposed to do best. In political terms, such
knowledge would only result in the dalits
getting ideas: ideas like converting to
Christianity or harking back to Buddhism;
ideas that will enable them to mount a
critique of the knowledge that has been
used to oppress them; ideas that will make
an Ambedkar mount a powerful critique
of Hinduism in his Riddles of Hinduism
and Annihilation of Caste; that will result
in an Iyothee Thass claiming an authentic
Buddhist past for the Pariars; ideas that
will result in a category like militant
Marathi dalit literature, books like Kancha
Ilaiahs Why I am Not a Hindu which gives
a call for rewriting all history from a dalitbahujan viewpoint, ideas... ideas something the dalits in the first place are not
supposed to have at all.

2055

A few remarks about dalit writings in

English would be pertinent in this context.
Today, we see a number of intellectuals
like Gopal Guru, Kancha Ilaiah, Bojja
Tarakam, Katti Padma Rao, V T Rajashekar
and others articulating the dalit point of
view in English. Of course, B R Ambedkar
was farsighted in realising the importance
of writing all his works in English. On the
other hand, someone like M K Gandhi, the
darling and holy cow of the Hindu intelligentsia, did not have to really bother
about being inaccessible because of his
use of Gujarati (just like Adi Shankaracharya enjoys an all-India access/ sanction despite his recourse to Sanskrit a
reactionary gesture especially in the light
of the fact that the choice of Sanskrit went
against the then popular democratising
influence of non-Sanskritic bhakti).
Gandhis iconisation and prompt
saintification ensured that all forms of
media are used to din in his messages.
On the radio, What Gandhi Said (Gandhi
Anjali) is a regular feature in all languages. His books are made available easily
and cheaply. His quotes adorn public
spaces. He is the subject of venerative
books, films, art. He is the most accessible
though also perhaps comparatively less
read. We will be however told that the
post-Mandal period has seen a proliferation of Ambedkars statues/framed
photographs; but that even today it is
extremely difficult to get hold of a copy
of Ambedkars work does not bother
many. The government of Maharashtra
publications are there, but that seems to
be the worst possible way of publicising
the mans work. And given that such
difficulties have to be contended with,
had he not written in English, he would
certainly not have become a pan-Indian
figure.
This would become more clear if we
look at the case of another anti-Hindu
contemporary of Ambedkar, E V Ramsami
Periyar. The few translations of Periyars
speeches/writings into English that are of
late becoming available seem to be doing
more of a disservice to him, so much so
that they seem to put off even a prospective non-Tamil reader, especially if he/she
is a stranger to the (much-maligned) nonbrahmin movement of the south. The same
is the case with someone like Jotiba Phule
who is virtually unavailable to nonMarathis. During a private conversation,
social scientist Gail Omvedt recently told
me that Ambedkars decision to write in
English was a conscious and deliberate
one.
Here, we do not contend with proficiency in English as much as with the fact
that an attempt is being made by dalits to
articulate their viewpoint in the language

2056

that connotes power, despite the difficulties that surround such an effort. We are
more concerned about the social, cultural,
economic and intellectual weight that a
statement made in English (like Ilaiahs
Why I am Not a Hindu) carries and how
the same statement in a bhasha, even if
made more intelligibly, fails to make much
headway. And for this very reason, the
stance taken earlier in this article we may
make much of the fact that our Constitution has been written in English; such a
work could not have been written in
Sanskrit stands.
Today, if someone like Kancha Ilaiah
is being reckoned with, despite typical
dismissals of his being unscholarly, it is
because for the first time after Ambedkar
a dalit writer is being packaged and sold
in English, if not with the kind of hype
that surrounds Arundhati Roy and Salman
Rushdie at least with a fair degree of
savviness. This underscores two things:
the importance of speaking in English, a
language that has been monopolised by
the brahmanical elite and denied to dalits;
and secondly, that it is a myth that dalits
resist English/ modernity. To give another
example, the pan-Indian popularity of a
journal like Dalit Voice owes to the fact
of its being published in English.
In such a scenario, the atavistic gesture
of saying that Sanskrit academies will be
opened up, universities set up, the dev
bhasha will be popularised all this
hopefully without hidden caste riders
will not mean a thing as far as empowering
people is concerned. The learning of
Sanskrit today is not going to materially
help anybody irrespective of caste. The
brahmanical classes, who know this best,
have taken to English and monopolised
it. At such a time, making Sanskrit available to all (irrespective of caste, unlike in
the inglorious ancient times) might sound
like a symbolic progressive move. However, it is clearly at least a good 2,000
years late in coming. And even if a new
government comes to power, it cannot
roll back the declaration of 1999 as the
Year of Sanskrit.

Notes
1 William Shakespeares play The Tempest
anticipates the colonial paradigm where the
duke-in-exile, Prospero, ends up in an island
that belongs to Sycorax, who is made out to
be a witch-figure whose magic Prospero
learns, only to use the same to colonise the
island and enslave Sycoraxs son Caliban, an
indigenous inhabitant who is animalised in the
play (he smells like a fish) and referred to
as a misshapen monster having no language,
no culture, despite which he (Caliban) insists:
This island is mine.... Parallel and in contrast
to Caliban, who does not mind swearing at
Prospero and his daughter Miranda in the

language he learnt from them, is Ariel, a fairylike creature, also a native of the island, who
is glad to serve Prospero though he too wants
to be set free one day. The Ariel-Caliban
contrast had engaged, fascinated and angered
the intelligentsia of other (post)-colonial
contexts, especially in Latin America, resulting
in intellectuals like Retamar and Memmis
brilliant use of this paradigm, literally and
metaphorically, to understand their own
situations. More recently, Caribbean poet Derek
Walcott reverses The Tempest paradigm in his
Pantomime. However, English departments in
India centres dominated by a brahmanical
crowd even as they swear by Shakespeare
and his universal greatness never seriously
discuss the colonial paradigm of The Tempest,
though it seems that given our immediate
history of British colonialism such a discussion
and engagement with the text would be
politically most meaningful. Rather, English
department personalities like C D Narsimhaiah
congratulate themselves over their outright
rejection of Caliban. Without the slightest
self-consciousness of intellectual poverty it is
announced that even In the worst days of our
national struggle no Indian patriot who
incidentally knew his Shakespeare better than
some professors of English, brought himself
to mouth Calibans You taught me language
and my profit ont is I know how to curse you.
On the contrary he pined with Miranda
[Prosperos daughter] for the brave new world
and our little life is rounded with sleep
(1990, 174). This assertion, even as late as in
1990, best captures the spirit of brahmanisation
that has overseen the trajectory of English in
India.
2 It must be made clear that we are limiting our
discussion here to the non-literary use of
English in India; the use of English for
discursive purposes as distinct from
literature (as defined in the conventional
English department sense of the term). For his
assessment of the literary output by Indians
in English, we are totally with Dasguptas
brilliant demolition of this much hyped and
celebrated body of writing that goes under the
guise of Indo-Anglian writing or Indian writing
in English. See chapter 3 of his The Otherness
of English, particularly, pp 111-44, which
makes a case for the non-substantiality of
Indian English.

References:
Dasgupta, P (1993): The Otherness of English:
Indias Auntie Tongue Syndrome, Sage, Delhi.
Ilaiah, K (1996): Why I am Not a Hindu, Samya,
Calcutta.
Lal, P (ed) (1969): Modern Indian Poetry in
English : An Anthology and Credo, Writers
Workshop, Calcutta.
Narasimhaiah, C D (1990): The Indian Critical
Scene: Controversial Essays, B R Publishing,
New Delhi.
Nehru, J (1974): Discovery of India, Bombay.
Ramanujan, A K (1990): Is There an Indian Way
of Thinking?, in M Marriot (ed), India
Through Hindu Categories, Sage, New Delhi.
Shakespeare, W (1980): The Tempest in Complete
Works of Shakespeare, Oxford and IBH, New
Delhi pp 1-26.

Economic and Political Weekly

July 24, 1999