“PIDGIN ENGLISH OR PIGEON INDIAN?”

Abstract

The figure of the Indian Babu is fundamental to the concept of colonial mimicry, and has a conspicuous historical and literary genealogy. In this paper I will address its presence in colonial English fiction such as Rudyard Kipling’s Kim and George Orwell’s Burmese Days as well as its central role in certain Bengali farces and satires of the 19th century, and more recently in Vikram Seth’s novel A Suitable Boy. The aim of the paper is to present the Babu as a figure whose English speech is intimately linked to the appropriation and subversion of colonial language. I analyse various key moments in the evolution of the term Babu: a comparison of dictionary definitions, from the Oxford English Dictionary, Hindi and Indian English lexicons, and the Babu as an object of satire in Bengali culture of the 19th century, a social parvenu who symbolizes the debates of the Indian Age of Reform. Finally, I critique Tabish Khair’s concept of “Babu English” which defines postcolonial Indian English writing as an inherently elite form of literary expression. I suggest that for all its supposed silencing of the subaltern voice, the language of the Babu characterizes the innovative potential of Indian English as a “contact literature”.