From my other blog: English—Hindi Issues

http://theeducationalmattersthatmatter.blogspot.com/

My Letter to the President of India Written on 10 August, 2014.

secy.president@rb.nic.in

 mathew.thomas@rb.nic.in

Dear Hon. President of India

Since my letters to the HRD Minister over the years have never elicited any reply—except for the only one that was referred to the CBSE last year for action—I am writing to draw your kind attention to a few burning issues that concern me as an educator. Given your status of the ex-officio Visitor of all the Central Universities, I think I am doing the right thing by approaching you.

Although I have an abiding passion to serve society, my country, and humanity at large, I am aware that as a teacher of English and Hindi, I can only offer my expertise or advice for the desirable improvement in the use of these two languages in our country. If I have equal respect for both these languages, it is not because Hindi is my mother tongue and English my bread and butter. It is fundamentally because both these languages are the official languages of the Union of India. Thus, if I respect the Indian national anthem and the flag, I don’t see any reason why I shouldn’t have the same respect for the language or languages in which the government of my motherland works. However, I regret to say that both these languages seem to have fallen victim to neglect and abuse and are in a state of languishing. My article Use and Abuse of English in India: the Need for a Scrupulous Approach to Using English (http://eduspiritual.blogspot.com) amply illustrates this point—vis-à-vis the use of English across India.

 I get to read various circulars and notifications issued by the CBSE and I have rarely seen one that is fully grammatically correct. Please forgive me if I sound presumptuous, but in contemporary India, I dare say, few bureaucrats are capable of drafting a letter that is flawless in its content and is also correct in format and style. Kindly permit me to quote a rather recent example of a beautiful inspiring letter signed and issued by the present HRD Minister to very many CBSE school teachers including the writer of this letter. A knowledgeable person can easily see that the officer who drafted the HRD Minister’s letter is not fully familiar with the way today’s official and business letters are written. If he / she refers to Michael Swan’s book (Published by Oxford University Press) Practical English Usage, page numbers 123—125, these points would become clear to him/her. Alternatively, perusing the 32-page Oxford Writing Tutor section, which is part of the 8^th edition of the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, can also teach one how to write a letter that is flawless in its style and format.

 One cannot deny that the content of an official letter or document is far more important than its format/style and language accuracy. However, in order that the modern generation Indians use English of international standard, on a par with their counterparts in the other parts of the world, it is imperative that the solution to the problem of the aforementioned kind is found and effective steps are taken.

What is the Solution?

·                  The copies of the above-mentioned two reference books or any such books published by preferably British publishers should be made available to all high-ranking government officers responsible for drafting/writing English letters in their respective ministries/departments.

·                  These two reference books—if not more—should complement the study material to be used during the training of all administrative recruits (IFS, IAS, IPS, Allied Services, etc).

Please permit me to reproduce my note sent to the Hon. HRD Minister on the 1^st of August, 2014, since it raises a very pertinent issue. I wonder if my humble suggestion was given due consideration:

 “Thanks for your congratulatory letter. However, please allow me to draw your kind attention to the anomalies in the evaluation system used by CBSE. As many as 17 of the examinees, who took English Core (Code 301) exam this year, were awarded full marks. As an English teacher, it makes my heart ache to see the extent to which CBSE has diluted and degraded marking and evaluation standards. To illustrate my point, please take a look at the model answer script of English Core of 2013 exam, marked and evaluated by CBSE and available on their public portal: http://cbse.nic.in/curric~1/Ansbook2013/XII/English.pdf

 I affirm that there are several errors in this so-called model answer paper warranting taking off marks and I suspect the same is true about the aforesaid this year’s 17 papers awarded 100 out of 100.

Please send these 18 papers to the English and Foreign Languages University in Hyderabad or to a great ELT expert, Prof Rama Mathew, Dean of the Faculty of Education, Delhi University to check the veracity of my perception.”

 Postscript added on 11 May 2015: Recently I took time out to identify as many as 17 errors in the above-mentioned model answer script and emailed them to the CBSE on the 4^th of May. Subsequently, I also brought it to the kind notice of the HRD Minister by emailing to her PS.]

Please permit me to offer my humble advice that may go a long way towards improving the level of English across India:

 

·                  In the universities, Bachelor’s and Master’s courses in English Literature should be replaced with courses in English Language & Literature—as is the case now in most British universities including Oxford. Alternatively, Mass Media can also be introduced to replace the traditional course in English literature, if some of the universities can afford to recruit competent faculty. If you throw a glance at the BA English Honours and MA English courses currently taught in Indian universities, most of the topics (such as Middle Ages, Elizabethan society, Victorian values, etc) are irrelevant in today’s India where demands of the job market expect different domain knowledge and more practical skill sets. I regret to say that our syllabi / curricula seem so outlandish-outdated and are hardly productive. Of course, in every state one premier university must have a course specializing in English literature so that those who have a true passion for English literature have the opportunity to study it. Careful perusal of some of the letters written by me to the CBSE and the HRD Minister available on my blog http://theeducationalmattersthatmatter.blogspot.com/ will reveal the truth that a master’s degree in English literature has done little good to those who draft CBSE circulars or set its English question papers.

·                  It is curious that the two greatest English Language Teaching (ELT) experts in India are not to be seen on the English curriculum committee of either CBSE or NCERT. One of them, Prof Paul Gunashekar, is not only the Dean of the School of English language Education at the English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad (directly under HRD) but has also been one of the nine advisers on World English for the renowned Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary—for decades. Another ELT expert, Prof Rama Mathew, is not only the Dean of the Faculty of Education, Delhi University but has been on the editorial panel of the ELT journal, published by the Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK. I am intrigued enough to ask: Is neither CBSE nor NCERT aware of these internationally acclaimed gems in the ELT field available right in our own country? I think it is time these two authorities on the subject were put on the curriculum committees of the aforesaid educational bodies.

·                  We have a huge Rajbhasha department under the HRD ministry, which is understandably doing a good job to spread the use of Hindi in the country. But it doesn’t occur to anyone at the helm that India without a formal ‘national language’ has actually two Rajbhashas (official languages): English and Hindi. There is apparently a lack of coordination between the use of these two languages in India in spite of the existence of Rajbhasha Vibhag, Hindi Nideshalaya (Central Hindi Directorate), Kendriya Hindi Sansthan, Agra and last but not least Kendriya Hindi Samiti under the Prime Minister of India as its chairman. Even after decades of our independence we have not been able to decide whether to write the figure of one hundred thousand (1, 00,000) in the Roman alphabet as ‘lakh’ or ‘lac’. All right, let us say both ways are equally correct. The worst part is that in very many government documents one can see the numbers written in words, for instance ‘three lacs / lakhs fifteen thousand...’ instead of ‘three lac / lakh...’. Nobody questions if ‘thousand’ has to be written without the suffix‘s’, why ‘lac’ or ‘lakh’ should be written as lacs or lakhs. (One such error has been corrected by the CBSE in the year 2014 as a result of my initiative.)

·                  While it is heartening to note that you have given instructions to enhance the use of Hindi in official work, you must take note of the current situation. Please permit me to give a relatively recent example. The Ministry of Power issued circulars last year requesting schools to organize painting competition on the theme of ‘Energy Conservation’. One of the topics suggested writes the Hindi word ‘Ujjwal’ as ‘Ujjawal’ in Devanagari script. Apparently a lot needs to be done to teach even the adults how to spell Hindi words correctly.

·                  Central Hindi Directorate Published the booklet ‘Hindi Vartani ka manakikaran’ in 1968. In 1983, its modified and revised edition was published namely ‘Devanagari lipi tatha Hindi vartani ka manakikaran’. Now look at the claim made by the official website of this organization, i.e., (http://www.hindinideshalaya.nic.in/english/schemeofpublication/devanagari.html) which says “...this booklet was reprinted in 1989 and distributed free to different Hindi voluntary   organizations, offices, educational institutions so that the use of standard form of Hindi may be increased. In the context of official language, all ministries, state governments, educational institutions like NCERT etc., newspapers, journals etc officially adopted this standardized form of Hindi to bring uniformity in the language.”

I can, however, give numerous examples from govt. documents, CBSE documents, Doordarshan news sub-titles, etc where the standardized spellings and script (lipi) are not adhered to by the government agencies, let alone the private bodies. The basic problem is that there are numerous Devanagari word processing fonts in circulation today in our country. And they write conjunct letters differently. Thus the Central Hindi Directorate may want us all to write words like vidyalaya, uddeshya, Padya, etc in a particular way, but even the central govt departments still write these words in the traditional way creating confusion.    

What is the Solution?

 If the Hindi Directorate has made any Devanagari word processing font programme or at least is aware of any one that is available on the Net in the downloadable form, it should inform the public on the same aforementioned website. If it is true that the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), an autonomous Society under the Department of Information Technology (DeitY), Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MC&IT) has made a set of Hindi Software Tools and Fonts, then government bodies like Doordarshan, CBSE and NCERT—to start with—should be asked to use nothing else but this. The govt. of India should put it in its various public domains for free downloading.  

·                  Indian educational publications, including those of the CBSE and NCERT, usually invite suggestions and feedback on their books in their preface. However, they never give a definite email address to which the feedback can be sent by the discerning readers and critics. During my last five years of teaching in an overseas CBSE school I have made a long list of errors in the English textbooks with possible corrections. On a couple of occasions, I emailed both CBSE and NCERT informing them about it and offered to help them with corrections, but they never wrote back to me on the issue inviting me to discuss those errors with their English consultant and experts. The errors thus continue to appear in successive editions.

What is the Solution?

 There should be a legislation that no scholastic books should be published without giving a definite email address to which feedback and corrections can be sent—and acknowledged too. At least it should be obligatory for all government publications like those of the CBSE and NCERT. (In this electronic and digital age no one would choose to write their feedback on paper, enclose it in an envelope and walk all the way to the post office to mail it at their expense.)

·                  India is a country where books can be published and retailed without mentioning the year of publication. Look at the innumerable school and college study/exam guides flooding the markets. They all proclaim: ‘As per the latest syllabus of CBSE / ICSE,...’ The gullible students unwittingly buy these books only to discover later that the contents of the books are based on the syllabus that has already undergone on or two modifications and thus are rather obsolete.

What is the Solution?

It should be obligatory for all the publishers to mention the year of printing in all their publications. If they are referring to a syllabus, they should give the URL of the syllabus or name it by year so that the student can take his/her time to check the veracity of their claim before proceeding to but it. One doesn’t deny that all standard publications in India mention the year of their publications along with ISBN. However, here I am especially talking about the school and college study/exam guides that are omnipresent in India and millions of students, rightly or wrongly, depend on them.

Thank you for your valuable time.

With Pranams and regards

Yours faithfully

Hareshwar Prasad Singh