Is English for Mere Employment or Social Empowerment?

Abstract

English has always been socially viewed as a passport to employment and therefore economic liberation and social uplift from the days of the introduction of English in India during the early colonial times. The then upper caste Indians capitalized on the opportunities available through English education to shift from temple-based occupations to company- dependent employment in the East India Company. The new converts from Hinduism, the first generation of Indian Christians chose teaching as their vocation in institutions started by missionaries. A sort of social engineering about the importance of English for employment and development was successfully created by sponsored church leaders, independent evangelists, and secular professionals who felt a burden to impart western knowledge to Indians who were perceived to be in the darkness through English. Such efforts were sanctified and legalized through the English language teaching discourses such as Charles Grant’s Observation and Macaulay’s Minute. Later, the colonial design of English for employment module was unquestioningly adopted by policy makers and accepted by people of ‘free’ India. However, empowerment aspect of colonial educational policies was conveniently sidestepped in postcolonial educational reports. The research paper proposes to investigate the colonial and post-colonial educational reports to ascertain if there is any paradigm shift in the social perception on English just as the language of higher education and employment or the language of empowerment and development.