Strange, and Stranger Ways With Strangers

Abstract

It is difficult to find the necessary discursive focus on English inmultilingual India. Its aspirational youth still need this language of colonialprovenance to keep its otherness from the native cultures of India theynonetheless esteem. This article acknowledges the radical ambivalenceEnglish thus creates, beside an analysis of the others English engenders inIndia’s globalizing progress. It critiques what academics often practise asa version and variant of Cultural Studies, and how they end by practicingStranger Studies. The concluding part of this article probes the reservationsmost Indians seem to have about their visitors and guests, and how Englishinflects their transactions with the ‘other’ world. A Harold Pinter tableaufrom Mountain Language is read as an object lesson for students who investin English, unmindful of its undiminished potential still as an imperialistlanguage. When Language fails the Human, it is time we rethink thehumanities. The article ends with a reformist hope that no Indian or otherstate capital will ever be a stage for such an overbearing English scenariothe way it appears so blatantly in Pinter’s play.