English Bilingualism: The Gandhian Model

Abstract

This thought about bilingualism was expressed by Indian novelist and writer, Raja Rao nearly a century ago. Today, In the second decade of the twenty-first century, as English grows to become the global lingua franca, we use the above thought of Raja Rao to develop a bilingual education project for teaching English to its nonnative learners. Since the time of British colonialism Indians learned English as a bilingual language meant exclusively for intellectual communications, whereas they used the local native languages for cultural communications in their communities and families. Gandhi, as a champion of civic humanism, advanced certain inspiring thoughts on language and culture, which is relevant for us today. He effectively segregated English language and culture from the power politics of the British empire. According to him language and culture should unify people, whereas politics of power and control would separate and segregate them. While agreeing the thoughts on English education and the secular humanist values of the British culture, Gandhi had shown his disagreeing thoughts on colonialism and colonial attitude over the natives are noteworthy points, for us to follow up, when pursuing English Bilingualism. He explained his thoughts on English as a simple and easily usable language for all kinds of intellectual and intercultural communications, and therefore English should be taught/learned and be appreciated even while fighting against British Raj and explicit white racism.