Where East Looks West: Success in English in Goa and on the Konkan Coast (Multilingual Matters)

Where East Looks West MULTILINGUAL MATTERS SERIES Series Editor: Professor John Edwards, St. Francis Xavier University...

Author: Dennis Kurzon

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Where East Looks West

MULTILINGUAL MATTERS SERIES Series Editor: Professor John Edwards, St. Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Canada Other Books in the Series Beyond Bilingualism: Multilingualism and Multilingual Education Jasone Cenoz and Fred Genesee (eds) Beyond Boundaries: Language and Identity in Contemporary Europe Paul Gubbins and Mike Holt (eds) Bilingualism: Beyond Basic Principles Jean-Marc Dewaele, Alex Housen and Li Wei (eds) Can Threatened Languages be Saved? Joshua Fishman (ed.) A Dynamic Model of Multilingualism Philip Herdina and Ulrike Jessner English in Africa: After the Cold War Alamin M. Mazrui Identity, Insecurity and Image: France and Language Dennis Ager Ideology and Image: Britain and Language Dennis Ager Language and Society in a Changing Italy Arturo Tosi Language Attitudes in Sub-Saharan Africa Efurosibina Adegbija Language, Ethnicity and Education Peter Broeder and Guus Extra Language Planning in Malawi, Mozambique and the Philippines Robert B. Kaplan and Richard B. Baldauf, Jr. (eds) Language Planning in Nepal, Taiwan and Sweden Richard B. Baldauf, Jr. and Robert B. Kaplan (eds) Language Planning: From Practice to Theory Robert B. Kaplan and Richard B. Baldauf, Jr. (eds) Linguistic Minorities in Central and Eastern Europe Christina Bratt Paulston and Donald Peckham (eds) Motivation in Language Planning and Language Policy Dennis Ager Multilingualism in Spain M. Teresa Turell (ed.) Quebec’s Aboriginal Languages Jacques Maurais (ed.) The Other Languages of Europe Guus Extra and Durk Gorter (eds)

Please contact us for the latest book information: Multilingual Matters, Frankfurt Lodge, Clevedon Hall, Victoria Road, Clevedon, BS21 7HH, England http://www.multilingual-matters.com

MULTILINGUAL MATTERS 125 Series Editor: John Edwards

Where East Looks West Success in English in Goa and on the Konkan Coast

Dennis Kurzon

MULTILINGUAL MATTERS LTD Clevedon • Buffalo • Toronto • Sydney

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Kurzon, Dennis. Where East Looks West: Success in English in Goa and on the Konkan Coast. Dennis Kurzon. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. English language–Study and teaching–India–Goa (State) 2. English language–Study and teaching–Konkani speakers. 3. Language and culture–Indian–Goa (State) 4. Konkani language–India–Goa (State) 5. Test of English as a Foreign Language. I. Title. PE1068.I4K87 2003 428'.0071'054799–dc21 2003008662 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue entry for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 1-85359-674-4 (hbk) ISBN 1-85359-673-6 (pbk) Multilingual Matters Ltd UK: Frankfurt Lodge, Clevedon Hall, Victoria Road, Clevedon BS21 7HH. USA: UTP, 2250 Military Road, Tonawanda, NY 14150, USA. Canada: UTP, 5201 Dufferin Street, North York, Ontario M3H 5T8, Canada. Australia: Footprint Books, PO Box 418, Church Point, NSW 2103, Australia. Copyright © 2004 Dennis Kurzon. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher. Typeset by Archetype-IT Ltd (http://www.archetype-it.com). Printed and bound in Great Britain by the Cromwell Press Ltd.

Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii Part 1 1 2 3 4 5

Macro-linguistic Environment A Sociolinguistic Look at India . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 The Status of Konkani . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 The Konkani-Marathi Controversy – the 2000–01 Version . . 42 English in Goa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 Caste and Migration as Social Phenomena in Goa . . . . . . . 70

Part 2 6 7 8 9 10

Field Study and Analysis Language Acquisition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 Testing the Students . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98 Results from Questionnaire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 English in India . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123 Multilingualism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132

11

Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140

Appendix: Goa, Daman and Diu Official Language Act 1987 . . . . . 148 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155

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Book Title Chapter Title

Introduction The subject matter of this work is an attempt to explain the data given in Table 1. The data come from one of a number of tables presented in the annual Test and Score Data Summary, a booklet published by the Educational Testing Service of Princeton, New Jersey, which administers the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) all over the world. A high enough score in the TOEFL is the key to entry into a North American university (and into universities elsewhere). These data are taken from the table that gives the average grade of examinees according to their native (or strongest) language. Table 1, then, is a summary of the highest average grades of examinees according to their native language for the five school years 1993 through to 1998. Native English speakers are normally aware that speakers of Dutch and of Scandinavian languages are often good speakers of English, so speakers of languages such as Dutch, Norwegian, Danish and Swedish (and perhaps Icelandic) do not present any surprises as far as their results are concerned. These are all Germanic languages, with English as a representative of its western branch. To such a list of no surprises may be added speakers of German, another Germanic language, and Finnish (although the latter is not a Germanic language, it is still spoken in Scandinavia). There is a miscellaneous group of other ‘top’ languages such as Maltese, Nyanja (spoken in Malawi and other parts of central Africa), Setswana and Shona (southern Africa), which need not detain us, since their appearance in the list seems to be infrequent; none of them appear more than once or twice in the five years presented in Table 1 above.1 All of them are spoken in areas where the British had administered colonies in the not so distant past. But what about Hindi, Kashmiri, Konkani, Marathi, Oriya, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil and Tulu? These are all languages spoken in India; the first five are Indo-Aryan (the eastern branch of the Indo-European family of languages) and the other four are Dravidian languages spoken in central and southern India. As to the reason for their appearance in Table 1, we may give the same answer as the previous group. After about 350 years of British presence in the area, vii

Where East Looks West Introduction

viii


Table 1 TOEFL results according to native language 1993–95

1995–96

1996–97

1997–98

1. Konkani

622 1. Konkani

615 1. Konkani

616 1. Konkani

621

2. Maltese

610 2. Dutch

609 2. Dutch

613 2. Dutch

610

3. Dutch

608 3. Danish

606 3. Danish

608 3. Tulu

608

4. Tulu

605 4. Tulu

604 4. Tulu

604 4. Danish

606

5. Marathi

604 5. Marathi

601 5. Marathi

598 5. Marathi

601

6. Danish

599 6. Kashmiri

595 6. German Icelandic Malayalam

594 6. Kashmiri

598

7. English

594 7. Finnish

594

7. Kannada Finnish

595

8. Hindi

592 8. German Malayalam

593

9. Setswana Kannada German

587

9. Finnish Kashmiri 10. Hindi Swedish Nyanja

12. Swedish

591

586

13. Malayalam 585 13. Icelandic Norwegian 15. English

592 9. English

10. German

594

593

11. Kannada

591 11. Hindi

592

12. English Norwegian Hindi Swedish

590 12. Icelandic

590

590

13. Oriya

588

16. Shona

588

14. Malayalam

587

15. Tamil Swedish Norwegian

586

589

including 150 years of British rule, the occurrence of Indian languages in this list should not offer so many surprises, either. It is well known that in India, English is the academic language and medium of instruction par excellence in colleges and universities, and in many secondary and elementary schools, too. In light of the extensive use of English in educational institutions, it is to be expected that speakers of Indian languages do well in an English test. But why do speakers of one of those languages, Konkani, consistently perform better than anyone else? To answer this question, we have to examine:

Introduction

ix

(1) who the speakers of this language are; (2) where the language is spoken; and (3) what the conditions are that lead to the results presented in Table 1. The solutions to the first two points are fairly straightforward. Konkani is spoken by the majority of the population of Goa, the small state on the western coast of India (and the smallest state in the Indian Union), as well as by several hundred thousands in the neighbouring state of Karnataka, around the city of Mangalore, and in much smaller numbers in Kochi/ Ernakulam2 in Kerala on the south-west coast of India. Konkani speakers may also be found in Bombay (or Mumbai, as it is known by today), in other places in India to where Goans and other former dwellers of the west coast have migrated over the years, in Pakistan (especially Karachi), and overseas, in North America, in the United Kingdom, in Australia, in the Gulf States and in East Africa. The information presented here will, of course, be elaborated later on, since further explanations are necessary. Part of the solution to the third point concerning the conditions that lead to the results in Table 1 will emerge from the more complete answers given to the first two points. However, to complete the picture, a further study has proved to be necessary but on a more personal level. The population that is intimately interested in TOEFL is made up of college students, in particular those wishing to study in the United States and Canada. So, groups of college students in Goa, Mangalore and Kochi were asked to fill out a questionnaire concerning, among other things, their knowledge of languages and their self-assessment of language use; they were also given a short test taken from authentic TOEFL tests with the purpose of examining their proficiency in English. One can adopt a cynical approach to the TOEFL results presented in Table 1 and suggest that Konkani-speaking students have developed the art of exam-cheating to a very high degree. Many instances of cheating in school and college examinations in parts of India (and, of course, in many other places in the world) have been reported. Observers have noted the presence of outside writers, people standing outside the building in which the examination is taking place who write the answers to the questions and pass the answers into the examination hall. Mass copying was reported ‘on an unprecedented scale’ in resettlement colonies and rural areas (Di Bona & Singh, 1987: 240). However, the Educational Testing Service does set up checks and balances to eradicate (or at least minimalise) dishonesty during the administration of the test.3 Throughout my own personal 20-year experience in administering TOEFL tests in Israel, and because of the steps I took in running the particular test described in the second part of this

x


study, cheating, if it did occur at all, was minimal; therefore, the issue of dishonesty does not seem salient and will not be brought up again. On a more serious note, one can also question the validity of the TOEFL as an indicator of a given level of proficiency in English. The fact that it is administered all over the world and its results are regarded as valid in countries other than the United States and Canada may not be convincing enough for many people, especially those working in the field of language testing. It may be argued, as it may be argued in many other test situations, that the TOEFL tests exam-taking more than it does English proficiency. There is, therefore, nothing sacrosanct about this test in relation to other English proficiency tests (Britain and Australia are two other countries that administer tests of English outside their national borders) and there is nothing sacrosanct about any of these tests in general. It is, however, not the purpose of this study to examine the validity and reliability of the TOEFL. It should be borne in mind, however, that it is administered worldwide and many people (hundreds of thousands) put in a lot of effort in registering for the test and taking it as well. It should also be borne in mind that colleges and universities in North America recognise that the test is valid for their purposes. Hence, it has some recognised value, whatever weaknesses it may have. Language testing is, then, a subject that has been extensively researched. Moreover, the testing of English is fairly central to the field because of the universal need for proficiency in English, especially in today’s world of email and internet. On the surface, in an analysis of the reasons for the success of one group of students – from the same or similar background – in acquiring a second language, we can generalise and draw conclusions as to what the optimal conditions are so as to achieve language proficiency. However, it will be seen that it is difficult, if not impossible, to pinpoint those features that lead to the desired results. Each case – here this means each group of speakers of a particular language – seems to be highly specific. For each language group, the set of conditions may be different. One can even postulate that the substitution of one condition for another will lead to different results. Spolsky’s (1989) comprehensive set of conditions for second language acquisition are, of course, not all necessary for successful acquisition. Apart from a set of necessary conditions, it is only a subset that may be relevant for explaining the reasons behind the acquisition of a given language by a particular group. In this study, in the context of Konkani-speaking students, especially those from Goa, it will be seen that few of the 74 conditions are brought up for discussion (in Chapter 6). What is discussed is that set of conditions that have emerged from the preceding discussion and which seem to be closely connected with the group of speakers/learners we are interested in.

Introduction

xi

In this study, I am interested not only in a certain group of people but also in a broader social background. Part of the linguistic repertoire of a population may be seen in the environment in which that population lives. Here, I am referring to those overt signs of language use in a culture in which the written language is central. The question that may be asked is in which language or languages commercial signs, street signs, billboards, name plaques on government buildings and other public buildings are written. These factors make up the linguistic landscape of the population under investigation. Unlike the original research on linguistic landscapes (Landry & Bourhis, 1997) which relates to linguistic boundaries within multilingual states, e.g. Flemish- and French-speaking areas in Belgium, the present study looks at the ‘multilinguistic’ landscapes in several Indian states. Such landscapes may distinguish one Indian state from another but it is rarely the case that internal linguistic boundaries can be so determined. But there are exceptions such as the Moslem district – the city centre – in Hyderabad, the capital of Andhra Pradesh (see Chapter 1). This study is divided into two parts. Part 1 deals with the macro-linguistic situation in Goa itself and in India in general, the historical and sociological background to the linguistic landscape of Goa and other Konkani-speaking areas on the west coast of India. So, in Chapter 1, the sociolinguistic situation in India will be discussed in general terms, followed by chapters that deal with the situation in Goa itself. Chapter 2 discusses the history and status of Konkani, the official language of the state of Goa, including the origins of the Konkani–Marathi controversy, which is then elaborated on in Chapter 3 in light of the events and of the discourse found in the local Goan press from the spring of 2000 to the national census in February 2001. In Chapter 4, the position of English in Goa, which has emerged in previous discussions, is in effect summarised. The special historical circumstances of Goa in terms of caste and migration is the subject of Chapter 5. The second part of the book looks more at the micro-linguistic situation, especially among the groups of students in the survey. It opens with a chapter on conditions for second language acquisition (Chapter 6), followed by a discussion of the test administered to groups of students, numbering in all more than 300, in Goa, Mangalore and Kochi (Chapter 7). Chapter 8 considers the responses from the questionnaires distributed among the same groups of students. Chapter 9 discusses the role of English in India as a whole, followed by Chapter 10, which addresses the subject of multilingualism of the students against the background of Indian multilingualism, as well as a discussion of the status of the Indian national language, Hindi, as emerges from the study. The book ends with a concluding chapter, followed by an Appendix and Reference list.

xii


There are three sources from which the information and discussion in this work derive. First, a survey of students in Goa and in cities to the south of Goa, the details coming from the questionnaire distributed in the various locations. Second, bibliographical material on India and the language situation. Third, impressionistic descriptions of the linguistic situation in parts of India I have visited on three separate occasions. Of these visits the longest was in the latter part of 1999; hence, much of the information about the current situation comes from that period. The survey of Indian students (see Part 2) took place at that time, too. Acknowledgements There are many people to whom I owe thanks, and they deserve mention. In order not to discriminate, the following lists are in alphabetical order. In India Ave Cleto Afonso, Panaji, Goa Dr Matthew Almeida, SJ, Thomas Stephens Konknni Kendr, Alto Porvorim, Goa R.S. Bhaskaran, Statistics Department, Cochin University of Science and Technology, Ernakulam, Kerala Dr Charles Borges, SJ, Xavier Centre of Historical Research, Alto Porvorim, Goa Tony Correia-Afonso, Benaulim, Goa Lilia Maria D’Souza, Librarian of the Xavier Centre of Historical Research, Alto Porvorim, Goa Dr Jennifer Funseca, Nirmala College of Education, Altinho, Goa Dr G.N. Mishra, Dhempe College of Arts and Sciences, Miramar, Goa Professor Olivinho J.F. Gomes, Department of Konkani, Goa University Professor Asmita Joshi, English Department, Goa University Dr Nayak K. Kishori, English Department, Mangalore University, Karnataka Mr B.M.S. Negi, Department of Official Language, Ministry of Home Affairs, New Delhi Frederick Noronha, Saligao, Goa Professor M.G. Pai, College of Pharmacy, Panaji, Goa M. Pinheiro, Salgaokar College of Law, Miramar, Goa Professor V. Prakasam, Central Institute of English and Foreign Languages, Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh S. Sadesai, Dempo College of Commerce and Economics, Altinho, Goa Professor Pramod Talgeri, Central Institute of English and Foreign Languages, Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh Louis Vernal, GVM’s College of Education, Ponda, Goa

Introduction

xiii

The following institutions in India Alexandra School, Amritsar (Punjab) Anglo-Sanskrit Victoria Jubilee Senior Secondary School (Delhi) Asiatic Society, Kolkata (West Bengal) Bal Bharati High School, Ribandar (Goa) Bandandkar High School, Verem (Goa) Boys’ Secondary High School, Darjeeling (West Bengal) Government Senior Secondary School, Amritsar (Punjab) Moslem Secondary High School, Chennai (Tamil Nadu) Municipal Boys’ School, Darjeeling (West Bengal) Porvorim Primary School (Goa) Rosary High School, Dona Paula (Goa) St Britto School, Mapusa (Goa) St Xavier School, Mapusa (Goa) St Francis School, Amritsar (Punjab) Sharda Mandir School, Miramar (Goa) Outside India Nitza Barkan, and the University of Haifa Statistical Unit Pinak and Radha Chakravarty, Indian Embassy, Tel Aviv, Israel William Robert Da Silva, Hamburg, Germany Teotonio R. de Souza, Portugal Stella Mascarenhas-Keyes, UK Kyoko Matsukawa, Japan Robert Newman, Boston, USA James North, US Foreign Service Institute, Washington DC, USA Ken Sheppard, and the Educational Testing Service, Princeton, USA And, of course, I owe thanks to my wife, Rachel, and my family, for the support and encouragement they have given me over the years.

Notes 1. This is especially true for the central African language Nyanja. In 1995–96, there were only 43 Nyanja-speaking examinees, so their results are not significant. 2. The city on the mainland is called Ernakulam, and the islands off the coast include Willingdon and Fort Cochin. The name Cochin (Kochi) is given to the entire area of Ernakulam and the islands. Institutions and facilities situated on the mainland carry the name ‘Cochin’, e.g. the Cochin University of Science and Technology and the Cochin airport. Both the institutions which I visited for the purposes of this study are in effect in Ernakulam – the university just mentioned and the Sacred Heart College.

xiv


3. The various ways adopted by the Educational Testing Service to prevent cheating include the distribution of different test books with different questions or with a different order of questions or with a different order of possible answers (the test is multiple choice) at the same test administration.

Part 1

Macro-linguistic Environment

Chapter 1

A Sociolinguistic Look at India Introduction There is no doubt that India presents a very interesting sociolinguistic scene (and perhaps a sociolinguistic laboratory in some locations). Much has been written about it. The number of languages claimed to be spoken in India varies between 200 and thousands of languages. The 1961 census listed 1652 mother tongues (or first languages), although of those only 197 languages were spoken by more than 10,000 speakers; after an increase to 221 in 1971, the number of languages spoken by at least 10,000 speakers dropped to 106 in 1981 (Krishnamurti, 1995: 14–15). Very often no differentiation has been made between language and dialect, even if such a distinction may be made in a particular instance. However, the focus of the present discussion will differ from previous studies. We are not concerned with all the languages spoken in India but more specifically with what are called the scheduled languages, those languages that are listed in Schedule VIII of the Indian Constitution as being official national and regional (or state) languages. And even more specifically, we are not going to deal with all 18 languages but mainly those languages spoken in the south and on the west coast. To be added to these languages are English, which despite its widespread use is not listed as an official language in Schedule VIII, and Tulu, a Dravidian language spoken in Karnataka around the city of Mangalore by a mere 1.5 million people (but other estimates speak of a number double that in India as a whole). Of course, special attention will be paid to Konkani, one of the Schedule VIII languages spoken in Goa and various areas south of Goa, since this is the language spoken by students who achieve the highest average score in the TOEFL examinations. The linguistic situation in Goa should not, therefore, be seen entirely as an issue separate from the general pattern in India as a whole, although the history of Goa and its relationship with the rest of India follow a path totally different to most of India. As may be known, Goa (with Daman and Diu further to the north in modern-day Gujarat) was a Portuguese colony from its occupation in 1510 until its liberation at the end of 1961, when it 3

Where East Looks West A Sociolinguistic Look at India

4


was incorporated into the Indian Union as a Union territory. Goa was subsequently made a state within the Union in 1987. The fact that Goa was a Portuguese colony for such a long time necessarily led to a different path of development, although Goans were not entirely cut off from what was happening in the rest of the sub-continent, especially during British rule.

The Constitutional Position Therefore, we shall begin with a survey of the linguistic scene in India both from a formal and from an informal or impressionistic point of view. It was the wishes of the early leaders of India after independence in 1947 to mould an independent country separated from the imperialist past and to see it as a link with the previous pre-colonial history of India. Part of this wish may be seen in the initial language policy of the government of the first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. Let us take a look at the relevant part of the Constitution, which was originally promulgated in 1950.1 Part XVII (Articles 343–351) deals with the official language of the Union (Chapter 1), with regional languages (Chapter 2), with the language of the judiciary (Chapter 3) and with special directives (Chapter 4). The first of the articles in this part states categorically that the official language of India is Hindi, written in the Devanagari script (based on the ancient script in which Sanskrit was written). However, this declaration is then subject to a proviso concerning English. After 150 years of British rule, which had been preceded by 200 years of economic, if not political, control by the East India Company, during which English had been established as the language of the administration, the law and education, it proved difficult to shake off this legacy of colonial rule. The same dilemma has faced other post-colonial governments, especially in Africa where French and English tend to be retained, when appropriate, as the official language in the ex-colonies. In Asia, in contrast, more successful attempts have been made to use a local language as the official language of the newly independent state, e.g. Bahasa Malay in the ex-Dutch colony of Indonesia, although, in this case, this language had long been used as a lingua franca in the region, so it cannot be said that it was imposed on the country. In India, reality controlled decision-making and in the following clause of Article 343, it is stated that English ‘shall continue to be used for all official purposes of the Union for which it was being used immediately before’ the promulgation of the Constitution.2 The status of English as ‘associate language’ was guaranteed for 15 years from the promulgation of the Constitution (i.e. until 1965). However, the following article (344) relates to the other Indian languages by setting up a commission and a parliamentary committee to study the use of Hindi ‘for the official purposes of the Union’, the use of English and the

A Sociolinguistic Look at India

5

use of the languages spoken in non-Hindi parts of the country (the south in particular). The official languages of the states of the Indian Union are then dealt with in three articles. State legislatures are given the right adopt any one or more of the languages in use in the State or Hindi as the Language or Languages to be used for all or any of the official purposes of that State but English may still be used in those fields in which it was used before the adoption of the Constitution unless the legislature decides otherwise. Each state then has at least (and usually only) one official language. Inter-state communication is dealt with in Article 346, and the rights of a linguistic minority in a state to have their language recognised as official as long as ‘a substantial proportion of the population of a State desire [its] use’ are the subject of article 347. As previously mentioned, Chapter 3 of Part XVII of the Constitution deals with the judiciary in which English is declared to be the language to be used throughout the court system, unless, of course, the Governor of a state authorises ‘the use of Hindi or any other language in proceedings in the High Court having its principal seat in that State’. Chapter 4 deals with four special directives concerning languages. First (Article 350), any citizen who wants to submit a request ‘for the redress of any grievance’ to a state or union authority may do so in any of the languages used in that State. A corollary to this, although not mentioned here in the Constitution, is that the answer to such a request must be in the same language as the request itself. This Article in effect protects the use of Marathi in Goa, as we shall see (Chapters 2 and 3). Article 350A3 deals with facilities that states should endeavour to provide for primary education in the mother tongue of children who belong to minority language groups and the following Article 350B deals with the appointment of a special officer for linguistic minorities. The final article of this part of the Constitution is concerned with the ‘development of the Hindi language’, asserting that ‘it shall be the duty of the Union to promote the spread of the Hindi language’ to be used in all walks of life and legislating that the whole field of word formation (terminology, it should be stated, is a major area of what is termed corpus planning) should draw primarily on Sanskrit, the classical language of India, and only secondarily on other languages. This is seen in the attempts to use native words in many languages for new machinery, equipment, etc., instead of the Americanised forms that seem to occur. Urdu, basically the same language as Hindi but spoken by Moslems, uses Persian and Arabic words and roots in word formation.

6


Schedule VIII of the Constitution lists the official national and state languages of India. The original list consisted of 16 languages including, of course, Hindi and the classical language, Sanskrit. In 1967 Sindhi was added, which is spoken in various states in the northwest of the country but is not an official language of any of the states. Finally in 1992, Konkani, the regional language of Goa, was added. The language that is conspicuous through its absence as an official language is English. It is considered to be neither an official language nor, of course, a regional language. It serves as a link language, i.e. it is used between people and bodies who do not have a common language (lingua franca), and as a library language, used in education. The Indian languages that will appear in subsequent discussions are the Indo-Aryan languages – Marathi, Konkani and Hindi, the Dravidian languages – Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam and Tulu, and the western IndoEuropean language, English.

Linguistic Attitudes This lengthy description of the relevant articles of the Indian constitution is important, since references will be made to the Constitution in relation to the actual situation ‘on the ground’. What the Constitution presents is some ideal situation in the eyes of mainly Delhi-based politicians and Delhi is the centre of what is often termed the ‘Hindi belt’. Reality is rather different. Let us illustrate this by citing a position taken by the state government in Tamil Nadu (on the southeast coast of India) and the subsequent popular reaction to it.4 This example is not directly related to the linguistic situation in Goa, the main topic of this study, but is symptomatic of the language situation, especially in southern India. The population of Tamil Nadu at the time of the 2001 Census runs to just over 62 million. Its language has an ancient past; some even claim that grammatical work was written in Old Tamil before Panini wrote his work on Sanskrit (the AstªdhyªyÌ) in the seventh century BCE. The language is written in its own script, which may have emerged from the same source as the Devanagari script in which Sanskrit, Hindi and most of the Indo-Aryan languages are written; the connection is only historical, for today the scripts do not show much similarity. The situation with regard to the script is true for other major Dravidian languages (Kannada, Malayalam, Telugu), each of which has its own, but interrelated, script. The state government of Tamil Nadu issued a government order ‘imposing Tamil as the medium of instruction up to Standard V’ (The Hindu, 8 December 1999) in government schools. To be educated in one’s own language seems to be a human right to be defended, and is protected in


7

the Constitution (according to Article 350A), as we have seen. In this case, and many of the Indian states (except perhaps in the Hindi belt in the north, see later), education in the mother tongue or in the regional language takes place until the fifth grade (Standard V), after which English takes over. However, the decision of the Tamil Nadu government ‘threatens to snowball into a major agitation’ (The Hindu) and led to a one-day closure of schools. Despite the widely accepted psycholinguistic position that children ‘would be able to learn better and faster in their mother language’, school officials and parents see this move as placing their children at a disadvantage. After the anti-Hindi agitation, i.e. after agitation against imposing Hindi – the official language – as a language to be learned at school, ‘[i]mposing Tamil as the medium of instruction would worsen the situation’. One school official was quoted as saying that as long as English continues to be the primary language in universities, it is impossible for us to reconcile ourselves to using Tamil as the medium of instruction. The government order did not cover minority institutions nor private schools, that is schools belonging especially to the Delhi-based Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE). It should be noted that private schools in India, in general, use English as the medium of instruction. An official of a government school even threatened to affiliate with the CBSE. Writers of letters to the same issue of the newspaper also expressed similar views. One person claimed that students leaving schools in which the medium of instruction was the local language found themselves at a disadvantage in a competitive world where adequate proficiency in English is absolutely necessary for success. Another claimed that ‘Tamil medium students will face a dark future’, while suggesting that Tamil be made a compulsory second language at school (The Hindu, 8 December 1999). This should not be thought of as a one-time occurrence. Agitation in Tamil Nadu against the imposition of Hindi, despite its status as the national language, has a long history. In 1965, when the 15 years were over in which English had been an associate language (see previous section), the time had come for Hindi to be the sole national language. The Indian Prime Minister, after Nehru’s death, Gulzari Lal Nanda, ‘initiated some pro-Hindi moves’ (Rai, 2001: 117), which on reaching Tamil Nadu were met with violent demonstrations, riots and even self-immolations. In response, the 1967 amendment to the 1963 Official Languages Act retained English as an ‘associate additional official language’ with the assurance that Hindi will not be imposed ‘so long as even a single non-Hindi state demurred’ (Rai, 2001: 117).

8


However, it has been suggested that the opposition to Hindi among Tamil speakers is only a political issue. In one of the examinations administered by the Central Hindi Directorate in the early 1990s, there were almost 6000 Tamil-speaking students out of a total of over 17,500, i.e. about onethird. Despite public protest, in other words, the situation below the vociferous surface seems to show a different reality (Dua, 1994: 128). A similar situation to that which occurs in Tamil Nadu – however without the violence that has occurred in that state – may be seen in Maharashtra. This is a huge state to the north and northeast of Goa (with a population of over 96 million); its principal city is Bombay and its official language Marathi. The state government decided to make English a compulsory subject in schools from the first grade and not from the fifth grade as was the case previously. A school principal claimed that his school had originally been Gujarati-medium but had changed some years previously to being an English-medium school. An Urdu-medium school in Bombay (serving the Moslem population) teaches English from the first grade as a second language. ‘We are all realising the importance of English’, the principal was quoted as saying (Times of India, 11 December 1999). In a letter to the same newspaper several days later, a correspondent claimed that teaching English from the first grade will provide an opportunity to students from different backgrounds and could truly serve as the much-needed bridge between the rich and poor in Maharashtra. (Times of India, 16 December 1999) This means that children of rich families are at an advantage, for they go to private English-medium schools, while children from poor families cannot afford to do so. They have to go, therefore, to government schools in which instruction, at least up to the fifth grade, is in the vernacular. So, allowing for English to be taught early may lead to a partial closing of the social and educational gap. What these two cases illustrate are features of the linguistic situation in India which will emerge again and again in the course of this work. We can pick out themes which have been mentioned first in the discussion of the Indian Constitution and then in the discussion of press reports and which will be central to the topic forthwith. The themes that can be enumerated on the basis of the discussion given here are: (1) the status of Hindi, the official language and attitudes towards it (especially in southern India); (2) the status of regional languages and attitudes towards them; (3) the status of English and attitudes towards it;


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(4) the language in administration (government), law, education in primary schools, secondary schools and colleges and universities. It will be seen that the third and fourth themes can be rolled into one but before we come to that, let us take a look at the first two.

Hindi Attempts by the central government to establish Hindi as the effective national language have not been successful apart from the Hindi belt in the north, where Hindi is either the mother tongue of the local population or one of the languages spoken by a bilingual, if not multilingual, population. The number of people who claimed in the 1991 census that Hindi is their mother tongue was more than 337 million, which makes Hindi speakers by far the largest language group in India (see Chapter 2, note 4). Other languages central to our discussion number a mere 62.4 million for Marathi (the state official language of Maharashtra), 32.7 million speakers of Kannada (the state official language of the state of Karnataka) and 1.7 million speakers of Konkani. Hindi is a compulsory language in government schools but private schools can simply bypass that requirement. In the south, there is general antagonism against Hindi and in many schools it may not be taught at all or may be taught but is not compulsory. This was seen in the pro-English agitation in Tamil Nadu reported in the press, discussed earlier. However, to say that Indians who are not native speakers of Hindi, or who do not live in the Hindi belt, are not acquainted with the language is far from the truth. First, readers of languages other than Hindi that use the Devanagari script do not find it difficult to make some sense out of Hindi texts. This would be the case for most of the scheduled languages spoken in the northern and central states. This includes Goa (since Konkani, the state language, is written officially in Devanagari – but that is only half the story, more to come later) but excludes the four Dravidian states in the south – Andhra Pradesh (where Telugu is the official language), Tamil Nadu (Tamil), Kerala (Malayalam) and Karnataka (Kannada). Second, many Indians have learned or are learning Hindi as part of the school curriculum, although in many cases the situation may be similar to the status of Russian in Eastern Europe when the countries were under communist rule till 1990–91. Russian was compulsory in schools but the number of people who could speak the language at a reasonable level was small.5 Third, the Indian entertainment industry – cinema, broadcasting and popular music – is primarily in Hindi. The huge film industry, based mainly in Bombay (popularly known as ‘Bollywood’), produces Hindi films. There are more locally produced films, in Tamil and Bengali

10


(Calcutta) for example, but the Hindi films are, without a doubt, the most successful. The film industry, which has been for decades producing a fairly fossilised genre of romantic musicals, provides many of the popular songs for mass consumption. Even in Goa, we find a Hindi film song festival. The Navhind Times of Goa reported that participants had been selected for the ‘sixth All Goa Hindi Film Songs Singing Competition’ to be held in Mapusa in January 2000. The participants were divided into three groups – junior, ‘gents’ and ‘ladies’ (Navhind Times, 14 December 1999). We shall see that college and university students from Goa and to the south claim that they have some knowledge of Hindi (see Chapter 10). A distinction has to be made between the Hindi taught in schools both in the Hindi belt and elsewhere and the Hindi of popular culture, a form of Hindustani (see later, and Southworth (1991: 54)). Hindi does not have an easy path to be accepted as an all-Indian language; it is far from being accepted everywhere. In the imperial past, a Moslem version of the language – Urdu – was favoured. The differences between Hindi and Urdu are not considerable enough to call them separate languages. The scripts are different. The Indian language used by the British administration was written in the Perso-Arabic script, quite unsuitable for an Indo-Aryan language such as Hindi.6 Hindu groups argued for a change to writing the language (Gandhi and others called it Hindustani) in Devanagari script. But they also advocated the elimination of many Persian words from the language and their replacement with words derived from Sanskrit, the Indian classical language. However, it was argued by Raja Shiva Prasad, an official in the imperial education department in a memorandum to the government in 1868, that these Persian words have become our household words and which are now used by all our women, children, and the rustic population, as well as the urban. [The Hindi protagonists] wanted to use unintelligible and difficult Sanskrit words. (Cited by Rai, 2001: 40) Rai distinguishes between ‘Hindi’ (within quotation marks) and Hindi (without). The first is not the language of the masses but a construct by scholars who claim its lineage from Sanskrit (see also Southworth, 1991). Another commentator wrote that ‘the short effective sentences of Hindi became long and stilted’ (Gargesh, 1995: 89). It is a difficult language to learn – it is the subject matter of the school subject called ‘Hindi’ in which even Hindi speakers fail: The large numbers of students who fail in Hindi in the Hindi belt itself are grim testimony to the fact that ‘Hindi’ has robbed them of their mother tongue. (Rai, 2001: 105)


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The situation is similar to the teaching of classical Arabic in schools with an Arabic-speaking population but here, despite the difficulties of the language, it has spiritual value, which cannot be said for Hindi (despite its Sankritisation).7 More than a decade after the passing of the Official Language Act of 1963, a department of official language was set up in the Ministry of Home Affairs to encourage the expansion of the use of Hindi in central government offices throughout the country. There is a staff of 80 in the New Delhi office but only eight field officers in the entire country, which does not herald success.8 If Hindi is the official national language, then a look at the linguistic landscape (Landry & Bourhis, 1997) will come up with what we, in fact, expect – government offices and national concerns such as banks all over the country have their signs in Hindi. But a word of caution is necessary here. Signs written in the Devanagari script could very well be in Hindi but they could also be in Marathi, Konkani or some other northern Indian language that uses the Devanagari script. They could also be written in Devanagari script but are, in fact, a transliteration of English. The branch of the Bank of Baroda, for example, in Panaji (the capital of Goa) has its name written above the door both in English and in Devanagari. However, the Devanagari is simply a transliteration of the English ‘Bank of Baroda’ and not ‘Bank of Baroda’ in Hindi! Likewise, the oil tanks in the Goan port town of Murmagao have written on some of them ‘Indian Oil’ in English, while on others the English words ‘Indian Oil’ appear in Devanagari. In other states in the south, where the Devanagari or similar script is not used for the local language, names of government offices appear on the wall or above the door in English, Hindi and the regional language. This is also true for banks, although again what is in Hindi tends to be, in fact, English transliterated into the Devanagari script. One exception seems to be branches of the Bank of India; the Devanagari usually reads ‘Bharatiya bank’, Bharatiya being the adjective derived from Bharat ‘India’ in Hindi. But even the name of the institution in the official language of the state may often be a transliteration of the English. For example, in Kolkota (the modern name for Calcutta), the sign above the local branch of the Bank of Rajasthan Ltd is written in English and below in the Devanagari and in the Bengali script (which is fairly similar to Devanagari) but both read ‘Bank of Rajasthan Ltd’ and not the Hindi and Bengali translations. Similar cases may be seen in the south, too. The shopping mall on Anna Salai in Chennai (formerly Madras) is called Spencer Plaza and this is written on the side of the building in a Tamil transliteration, not in Tamil. We may give a very long list of such cases but the point is that often Hindi does not mean the language but only the Devanagari script. Apart from government and other official and semi-official offices, signs

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are of course, used extensively on shop fronts. Again, in the north such signs are in Hindi and in English, although in New Delhi, English seems to dominate (see also Ladousa (2002) on the use of Hindi and English in school advertising in Varanasi). But in Goa, Hindi is not used. Shop signs are in English and only occasionally in Konkani (in the Devanagari script). In the southern states, shop signs tend to be in English and the regional language, although at times, only one language is used – either the regional language or English. This causes problems to people who cannot read Kannada, for example, or one of the other scripts. Important information for tourists, such as bus timetables, is sometimes found only in Kannada and Hindi in the state of Karnataka, although the situation is improving. In other cases, a third language, which is not Hindi, may be used; for example, in Moslempopulated parts of Hyderabad (the capital of the state of Andhra Pradesh), around and in the old town, Urdu (written in the Perso-Arabic script) is used in conjunction with Telugu and English.9 In the Hindi belt, there is a totally different linguistic situation. In the Hindu holy city of Varanasi (on the River Ganges in Uttar Pradesh), most of the shop signs and street signs are in Hindi only, so people who cannot read Devanagari are in difficulty, having to rely on tourist guides or local rickshaw drivers to help them round the city. Regional government offices tend to be in Hindi and the medium of instruction in most of the educational institutions up to college and university level is Hindi, too. Parents who want their children to receive English-medium instruction have to send them to private, fee-paying schools. Since English is generally studied as a second language only, school students in the north are at a disadvantage in relation to pupils in the south where English is used from the fifth grade (if not from the first grade) as the medium of instruction. In the north, television programmes, for example, are more likely to be dubbed into Hindi. In Varanasi, the Discovery channel on Channel TV is in Hindi, while in many other places in India it is in English.10 We shall see that central government efforts to encourage Hindi in non-Hindi-speaking areas have failed through the educational system (see earlier) but it is popular culture – films and songs – that has led to the spread of Hindi in Goa and in the south. But before we look more extensively at the status of English, we have first to take a look at the status of regional languages, the official languages of the states of the Indian Union.

Regional Languages According to the Indian Constitution, each of the states in the Union has the right to select one or more than one language as the official language of


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the state. Several years after independence, states became structured on a linguistic basis by the Seventh Amendment to the Constitution in 1956 (see King (1998) for a discussion of Nehru’s part in this policy change). The boundaries of the states were set up with the express policy of including within their respective domains the population which speaks the dominant language of the region. So, Marathi is the dominant language of the region covered by the state of Maharashtra, although other languages (and sometimes many other languages) are spoken by large groups of the population, e.g. Gujarati by Indians coming down south-east from their state looking for employment or Indian Moslems who claim to use Urdu as their mother tongue. While Hindi is both a regional language spoken by a very large population in the north and the national language, Urdu is not a regional language, since there is no state in which the majority of the population speak it (but it is one of the scheduled languages). The most predominant Moslem state, Kashmir, selected Kashmiri as its official language, although both Punjabi and Hindi are also strong there (King,1998: 120). A major reason for the claim among Indian Moslems that Urdu is their mother tongue seems to be, in many cases, simply because the language is written in the Perso-Arabic script, more or less the same script in which the Koran, the Moslem holy book, is written. Urdu is, in fact, historically the same language as Hindi – often called Hindustani. Mahatma Gandhi, one of the prominent leaders of the Indian independence movement, tried, in vain, to fight for Hindustani as the language of all-India. Hindu speakers of Hindustani use many Sanskrit roots in developing the vocabulary, while Moslem speakers use Arabic and especially Persian as the source of development. But essentially, we are talking about two dialects of the same language. On independence, the government of Pakistan decided that Urdu should be the official language of the new state. The languages that were ignored were Punjabi and Sindhi, both spoken by large sections of the West Pakistani population, and Bengali spoken in East Pakistan, which following the 1971 war became the newly independent state of Bangladesh.11 Since then, the two dialects – Hindi and Urdu – have followed different linguistic and political paths, one in India and the other in Pakistan. (For a discussion of the Hindi–Urdu conflict during British rule, see Rai (2001).) In each state, there tend to be groups of the local population that do not speak the state language as their mother tongue (but still may speak it as a second language). One such example is the state of Karnataka. There, Kannada in its own script is the state language. There are many speakers of other languages, including Konkani around the city of Mangalore. In fact, according to the 1991 Census, there are more Konkani speakers in Karnataka than in Goa, where it is the official language (just over 700,000

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Karnataka as against 600,000 in Goa). In Karnataka, we also find over a million speakers of the Dravidian language, Tulu, which is not one of the scheduled languages (Tulu speakers, however, do well in the TOEFL, see Table 1 in the Introduction and Chapter 11), and there are also, among others, about 100,000 speakers of the Coorgi or Kodayu language. Some militant members of this latter speech (and cultural, too) community have been agitating for a separate Kodava state, demonstrating near the Karnataka legislative assembly, the Vidhana Soudha, in Bangalore. One of the organisers of the rally expressed his hope that by the following Republic Day (in January 2000) they would ‘witness the consummation of our cherished dream’ (New Indian Express, 9 November 1999). Needless to say, that did not happen. According to the Constitution, regional government should be run in the official language of the state, if so decided by the legislature. In the educational field, the mother tongue, in most cases the state language, is the medium of instruction at least until the fifth grade and often until the tenth grade, especially in the north. There is an extensive press in regional languages and radio broadcasts tend to be solely in the state language, while this is less so as far as television is concerned. Doordarshan, the allIndia broadcasting authority, transmits radio programmes in the various vernacular languages for most of the day. They also transmit television programmes but here the number of programmes in the vernacular may vary from place to place. Many of the programmes are made in the north in Delhi, so they are in Hindi. These may be broadcast in Hindi without subtitles or dubbing but, in various places, Hindi programmes are dubbed in the local regional language. It was reported in the Hindustan Times (28 November 1999) that Doordarshan ‘plans to woo its audience in the South with a 24-hour channel in Tamil’. The aim of the channel was also ‘to take on the two principal channels, viz. Sun TV and Raj TV, in the South’. Some three weeks later (19 December 1999), the Goan Sunday Navhind Times reported that Doordarshan will soon launch 24-hour regional channels in five Indian languages as part of the new comprehensive broadcasting bill drafted to regulate private broadcasting. The five languages are Bengali, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil and Telugu, all but the first, Bengali, being Dravidian languages. The government broadcasting authority plans to combat the proliferation of private television channels in vernacular languages. Since the focus of this study is the linguistic situation in Goa, these topics will be elaborated upon when we discuss the languages of that state.


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English There are many reasons why English has such a dominant role in Indian society. Historically, we are talking of extensive trading with England since the days of Queen Elisabeth I, followed by the era of the East India Company, and then about 150 years of British rule; India was the ‘jewel’ of the British Empire. But it was not due merely to the British presence in India and the use of English in the administration that led to the dominance of English in modern India. There were conscious decisions on the part of the British imperial administration that ensured the widespread use of English in government, law and in education. Here, we are referring to the activities of Thomas Babbington (Lord) Macaulay, who became the government secretary in India in the 1830s at a time when there was a debate between Orientalists and Anglicists. The argument appears in what is known as Macaulay’s Memorandum, written in 1835, which settled the issue once and for all. The orientalists supported the native use of Indian languages; they also encouraged the study of Sanskrit, the classical Indian language, in which the sacred Hindu texts were originally written. It was their belief that the local population should depend on their own resources in education. In fact, some 40 or so years earlier, in 1791, with the encouragement of Jonathan Duncan, the East India Company resident, and Lord Cornwallis, the Governor General, a Sanskrit College was established in Varanasi (the Hindu holy city in Uttar Pradesh), to be housed half a century later in a building that is reminiscent of an Oxford University college. The College eventually became the Varanasi Sanskrit University in 1958 and then the Sampurnanand Sanskrit University in 1974. However, in his Memorandum, Macaulay diminished the significance of Indian culture and languages, again with reference mainly to the education of Indians and more than condescendingly compared European culture to Indian culture, with the latter having, in his opinion, nothing to offer but superstitions. Several extracts from the Minute illustrate Macaulay’s attitude, and the attitude of the English as a whole. His disdain for local Indian culture may be illustrated as follows: All parties seem to be agreed on one point, that the dialects commonly spoken among the natives of this part of India contain neither literary nor scientific information, and are moreover so poor and rude that, until they are enriched from some other quarter, it will not be easy to translate any valuable work into them. (Macaulay, 1972: 240) The following illustrates the type of argument he put forward against the Orientalists’ approach:

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I am quite ready to take the Oriental learning at the valuation of the Orientalists themselves. I have never found one among them who could deny that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia. The intrinsic superiority of the Western literature is, indeed, fully admitted by those members of the [General] Committee [on Public Instruction] who support the Oriental plan of education. (1972: 241) All this is from an influential person who admits, without any shame, that he has ‘no knowledge of either Sanscrit or Arabic’ but he has done what ‘I could to form a correct estimate of their value’ (p. 24). Macaulay’s aim was to educate a class of Indians who could assist the British in the capacity of clerks in running the colony and who would have a good enough knowledge of English to perform their appointed tasks. With Macaulay’s help, the pro-English lobby won the argument and an educational system was set up to educate, in English ways, native Indians who would eventually become the native Indian élite. What was important in the schools and colleges was not the Gitas, the Vedas and other Hindu texts but the works of Shakespeare, of Milton, of Wordsworth. Even cricket, the English national summer sport, was introduced into India and is today played and supported with enthusiasm by large parts of the population. It is a common scene to see crowds standing outside an electrical goods shop during crucial stages of a test match shown on television in the shop window. The situation in relation to English, to a certain extent, persists until today. But changes have occurred. For example, in school subjects like history, while instruction and examinations are all in English, the topics mainly revolve around Indian history, as we may see in the following example of an examination for the sixth grade: Write a few sentences on: (1) The Varna System. (2) The Four Ashramas. (3) Early Vedic Religion. (MBD Digest 1998 for VI grade) Moreover, the use of English, not only in the administration but also in the law courts and in educational institutions, created an entity that was lacking in the entire Indian sub-continent – a lingua franca. Again, this situation is still valid at the beginning of the 21st century. With the very many languages, and with the division between the north, where a large part of the population speak Hindi as a first language or as a second language, and the south, where Dravidian languages are spoken, English has filled a gap. Attempts by Indian nationalists before independence to standardise Hindustani (see previous section) came to naught, partly


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because of the creation of the Moslem state of Pakistan. The native Indian élite took up the challenge, eventually sending their sons to study at prestigious universities in Britain. Both Mohammed Jinnah, the founder of modern Pakistan, and Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of independent India, were educated at Oxford University, and so was Mahatma Gandhi, the leader of the Indian Congress Party, the main political body which fought for independence. Education in English was undertaken mainly in missionary schools, including Jesuit institutions. These schools were private institutions. This situation has been maintained up to the present time. Parents who want to send their children to English-medium schools in most places in India have to send them to private schools, where the principal in many cases is a Jesuit priest. However, in today’s secular India,12 these schools do not teach religion (although there are Moslem schools – madrasa – where only religious studies and Arabic are taught). Government schools in the Hindi belt, in the north of the country, tend to be Hindi-medium until matriculation, while in the south such schools use the official language of the state until the fifth grade, when English takes over (see the case of Tamil Nadu described earlier). So, it is the state school that ‘caters for the vast majority of learners of English’ (Tickoo, 1996: 226) but normally the time allotted is merely 30–35 minutes (one lesson) per day. As previously mentioned, English is the language used in the courts. It is the language used in most of the colleges of higher education. It is also the lingua franca where two people or two bodies or more communicate with each other and they do not speak the same Indian language. A Kannada speaker, who knows no Marathi, will speak English with a person coming from Bombay or from some other town in Maharashtra. Here, we are referring to meetings on an official or semi-official level, of course. Meetings in the street, in the market, among people who have had no education or not much more than minimal education, may be conducted in another lingua franca which could be some form of ‘pidgin Hindi’ (a possible definition of Hindustani). After all, Hindi-medium films and songs are highly popular all over the country. Market-sellers in Panaji (the capital of Goa), for example, come mainly from neighbouring Karnataka. They have picked up sufficient Konkani to converse with Goans or to trade with Goans. Since such traders have had very little formal education, their knowledge of English is minimal, probably just enough to understand what a tourist wants but they are unable to answer in English.13 The leading newspapers in India are those that are published in English. Here, we can list The Times of India, the Hindustan Times, the New Indian Express, The Hindu and more locally based newspapers. Indian language newspapers are published and do sell but the market tends to be fairly

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local. Of course, ‘fairly local’ may refer to an area where there are millions of speakers of that particular language. However, the circulation of Hindi newspapers is higher than that of the English-medium press (Kachru (1983: 218) states that 23.8% of all newspapers are in Hindi, while 22.1% are in English). So, English-language newspapers take second place in the country as a whole but they are way ahead in circulation of Indian language newspapers other than Hindi. As for television, cable television companies, contrary to the practice of the Indian broadcasting authority, tend to broadcast their programmes in English – not dubbed into Hindi or into another Indian language and without subtitles. This is true generally speaking in the south. However, as we have previously noted, in Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh, one of the popular science channels Discovery is dubbed in Hindi. It may be thought that cable television programmes are in English to cater for foreign tourists. However, the annual number of foreign tourists to India is just over two million14, which does not indicate that India has a thriving foreign tourist industry. Most of the tourism is internal, i.e. Indians travel from their homes in one part of India to another part for purposes of vacation or business. Hence, the fact that cable television programmes are in English is yet another indication that English functions as a lingua franca among Indians themselves, certainly much more than Hindi, the ‘official’ language. It has to be remembered, moreover, that internal tourists are those who can afford such luxuries; these are the élites who may have been educated in Englishmedium institutions and who send their children to the same type of school. The general pattern of language as the medium of instruction is English after a certain grade, usually the fifth, although in the Hindi belt, Hindi is much more widespread throughout the school system than elsewhere. The same may be said of colleges and universities. There are institutions in which the vernacular is used or even Sanskrit, e.g. in the Sanskrit University in Varanasi mentioned earlier. But English has for long held the place of the library language. That is, English is the language in which most of the academic material is published. The number of Indian publishing firms makes the country one of the leading publishers of English-language books in the world. According to Kachru (1983), India in the 1970s was the third largest producer of English books in the world after the United States and Britain. In India itself (again in the 1970s), the largest set of books published were in English (followed by Hindi and then Tamil). But the proportion of English books in relation to books in other Indian languages had dropped (47.23% in 1974 to 38.42% in 1978 (Kachru, 1983: 218)). To be educated tends to include the ability to speak fluent English. Any chance meeting with an academically educated Indian will naturally be conducted in English.


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Internal migration among different states of the Union further strengthens the status of English not only as a library language or a link language but as an all-Indian language, more so than any other language spoken in India apart from Hindi. However, this is not a felicitous situation as far as the regional and local languages are concerned. As Tickoo (1996: 331) points out, in the context of Asia in general, the English language has been assigned roles and responsibilities some of which are best assigned to the nation’s own literary languages. In being thus made to serve roles which are best served by other languages, English not only works displacively but does not (inside the mainstream systems of education) get fully utilised for those other roles which it is best equipped to perform. The situation discussed here goes a long way to explain why Indian languages, especially Dravidian languages, appear high up on the list of native languages of those who attain among the highest grades in the TOEFL examinations. What it does not do is explain why Konkani speakers consistently do the best in those examinations. There must necessarily be further factors that lead to such results – either factors that may appear in other parts of India but not to the same extent or factors that are peculiar to Konkani speakers. The first set of factors would mean a repetition of the discussion so far but with more detail, while the second set means that special focus must be placed on Konkani speakers, especially those living in Goa. Notes 1. There have, of course, been numerous amendments ever since – 84 until 2002. Schedule VIII was amended – by adding languages to the list –in 1967 by the 21st Amendment and in 1992 by the 71st Amendment (when Konkani was added). 2. The same article also deals with the numerals, giving sanction to the use of the international form of Indian numerals but allowing the President and/or Parliament to ‘authorise . . . the Devanagari form of numerals’. 3. Brought in as part of the Seventh Amendment to the Constitution in 1956 (Section 21). 4. Much of the discussion concerning the linguistic situation in India today comes from press reports. All newspapers cited are published in English. 5. For example, when I was in Hungary in 1989 just before the sudden collapse of the communist regimes of Eastern Europe, I asked some passers-by for street directions. English did not help nor did Russian but finally I found an elderly Budapest resident who still remembered some German, which functioned as a lingua franca among the élite of central Europe before the Second World War. 6. Another case in point is Turkish. Atatürk changed the writing system in 1928 from the Arabic script used to write Ottoman Turkish to a roman script used today. The Arabic script was not suitable for writing Turkish in but Atatürk also

20

7.

8. 9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

Where East Looks West used this change as part of his secularisation programme in Turkey. The script used to write Urdu is the Perso-Arabic script, which is basically the Arabic alphabet with additional diacritics to cover phonemes that are not found in Arabic but are found in Persian and in other non-Semitic languages. It has to be added that this alphabet is unsuitable for non-Semitic languages; for example, vowels are not indicated, while in Devanagari vowels are marked by letters or diacritics (King, 2001). One can add many other languages to the list, where there is a considerable difference between the spoken language and the written language. It may not necessarily indicate a diglossic situation. Certain patterns of Hebrew verbs, for example, are never used in the modern language but are tested in the matriculation examinations. In diglossic situations today, especially where creoles are spoken, the problem is different. The question may be asked whether the creole is a mesolect on its way to becoming the acrolect – the original colonial language, i.e. decreolisation, or whether the acrolect is a standardised creole. Haiti Creole versus French on the Caribbean island is a case in which the Creole is gradually winning the battle but English-based creoles on other Caribbean islands may not have such an outcome. The entire set-up is based on gentle persuasion without any sanctions. It cannot be compared to the language police that roam around the streets of Quebec Province in Canada, as has been reported in the press. But even in cases of Urdu, transliteration – and not translation – is rife. In Chennai (Tamil Nadu), there is a mosque called the Governor’s Bodyguard Mosque, where the Moslem guards of the governor during British rule used to pray. The signpost to the mosque is written in English, and in Urdu and Tamil scripts with just the word for mosque written in the respective languages, while the English phrase ‘Governor’s Bodyguard’ is transliterated. But not exclusively so. The question to dub or not may very much depend on whether the tourism is from abroad or Indian. The Discovery Channel was dubbed in Amritsar (Punjab) in the hotel I stayed in, while the National Geographic channel in one of the New Delhi hotels was also dubbed in Hindi. The refusal of Pakistan to recognise Bengali as the language of East Pakistan, imposing Urdu on the entire country, led to riots in February 1952 in the streets of Dakha, when five demonstrators were killed by the police. This may be seen as the first shots of the 1971 war which resulted in the break-up of Pakistan and the establishment of Bangladesh. Violent pro-Bengali demonstrations also occurred in May 1961 in the Indian state of Assam, when 11 demonstrators were killed by the police after Assamese was declared the sole regional language of the state, ignoring the claims of Bengali speakers (Hindustan Times, 21 February 2002). Still secular. There have been attempts by the so-called saffron league to increase awareness among the population of their Hindu heritage. So far, these attempts have been engineered by political parties on the right wing. The best known event took place in 1992 when Hindus, encouraged by certain politicians, pulled down an apparently disused Moslem mosque in Ayodhya, planning to build a Hindu temple in its place. Rumours circulated nationwide that there was a plan to rebuild the temple in February 2002, which led to riots in Gujarat, when more than 600 people lost their lives. In my own experience, these traders, especially the women who probably did not have any education at all, understood some of the words for fruit and vege-


21

table, and understood the question ‘How much?’ but they could not answer in English. They either showed how many tens of rupees by putting up the required number of fingers or asked another trader, invariably a male, to give the sum in English. Despite the technical and other advances in Indian society, in rural areas, especially, tradition abounds and girls are not sent to schools. 14. The Statistical Outline of India 1996–97, published by the Bombay-based Tata Services Ltd. states that, in 1995, the number of foreign tourists was 2.123 million and the approximate foreign currency earnings from tourists in the same year was just over $2000 million, i.e. each tourist spending on average less than $1000.

Chapter 2

The Status of Konkani Introduction Konkani is an Indo-Aryan language, the eastern branch of the IndoEuropean language family and it is probably more closely related to Marathi than to any other Indo-Aryan language. Like other languages of the Indian branch, Konkani is an SOV language, meaning, among other things, that not only is the verb found at the end of the clause (as the initials SOV indicate) but also that modifiers and complements tend to precede the head and postpositions are far more common than prepositions (if they exist at all). In terms of parameters in generative syntax, therefore, Konkani may be considered a head-last language. In contrast, English, for example, is an SVO language. Let us take a look at the following examples (from Almeida (1991) and personal communication (2000)). The first illustrates the SOV word order of Konkani: Example 2.1 mhajÌ bhayn gharyafudÅ tijÅ pustak vªctª my sister house+near her book reads My sister is reading her book near the house We can see that the subject mhajÌ bhayn ‘my sister’ is in initial position, followed by the postpositional phrase ‘near the house’ (gharyafudÅ), functioning as adjunct of place. Since SOV languages have head-last structures, the head of a PP (in this case fudÅ) follows and does not precede its complement. The object (tijÅ pustak = ‘her book’) comes next, followed, as expected, by the present tense verb (vªctª) in final position. The second example would involve the use, in English, of a relative clause: Example 2.2 ravin dille peiše mhaka Ravi + INSTR sent money me + DAT I received the money which Ravi sent 22

Where East Looks West The Status of Konkani

melle received

The Status of Konkani

23

Since Konkani is an SOV language, what would be a post-modifying relative clause in English occurs as a pre-modifying phrase in Konkani. Hence, we have ravin dille ‘Ravi sent’ ( = ‘which Ravi sent’) preceding the head noun peiše ‘money’. There are, moreover, other features not found in English. For example, the subject of a transitive verb in the simple past tense is not in the nominative case as expected in languages with case systems but in the instrumental case (ravi à ravin), for in Konkani the subject of a transitive verb in the past tense is in the instrumental, and number and gender agreement is between the object and verb, and not between the subject and verb, as in other tenses and with intransitive verbs. This is what Dixon has termed the split-ergative, a verb + argument structure in which the (real) object occurs in the nominative case, and the (real) subject of a transitive verb in the instrumental, but this occurs only when the verb is in the past and perfect (Dixon, 1994: 190). In other tenses, Konkani (and several other Indo-Aryan languages) has the regular subject of a transitive verb in the nominative case with the regular subject–verb agreement (see later, and note 12). In the matrix sentence in Example 2.2, the subject is again not in the nominative but is in the traditionally named dative case, since it functions as the benefactor (Almeida, 1991: 113). Moreover, there is agreement in the matrix clause between the object peiše and the verb melle, instead of the expected subject–verb agreement: the noun peiše is masculine plural and the verb has the masculine plural past tense ending -le. In two short sentences, it may be clearly seen that the structure of Konkani is quite different from that of English, despite a common origin several thousand years ago. The vocabulary of Konkani comes from a number of sources. The main source is the Prakrits, the spoken languages that derived from Sanskrit. It has been noted that there are many indications that Konkani is closer to Sanskrit than some of the more widely spoken Indian languages. This will emerge as a factor, albeit minor, to understanding the status of Konkani, discussed later (see also Chapter 6). Other sources of vocabulary are Arabic, Persian and Turkish. Part of this may be due to influences from other parts of northern India which underwent Moslem domination. In the 16th century, for example, the Moslem ruler of Bijapur (in modern-day Karnataka), Adhil Shah, reached Goa and even managed to erect a building in Panaji, which is used today as the administrative offices of the state government of Goa (the Secretariat). However, Arabic, Persian and Turkish words may have entered the language before this era, when Konkani speakers served as interpreters to various Arab rulers around the Indian Ocean. For example, we find in Konkani words such as tªrikh (from Arabic

24


tarikh ‘date’), kh∂b∂r (from the Arabic akhbar ‘news’) and shªr (from Turkish êehir ‘city’). Because of the Portuguese occupation and colonisation, many Portuguese words entered the language, especially those in the domain of the church and (Christian) religion, such as ig∂rj (from Portuguese igreja ‘church’), pªdri (from Portuguese padre ‘father’, ‘priest’) but not only in this domain.1 We also find j∂nel (from Portuguese janela ‘window’), b∂lk±u (from Portuguese balcão ‘balcony’), bâldi (from Portuguese balde ‘bucket’) and tuªlo (from Portuguese toalha ‘towel’). Although many English words may have been borrowed into the language before and since Goa was integrated into India in 1961 (e.g. hospithal (‘hospital’), goli (‘goalie’, ‘goalkeeper’)), English today tends to be used in conjunction with Konkani in the form of code-switching, e.g. an item in a Konkani newspaper (my thanks to R.S. Bhaskaran for this example): Example 2.3 Fonde hamgacha pornya bus standakadlyan vavmpi volanth sanvara Ponda of this old bus stand+near flowing in a canal Saturday sanjevela 5.00 varancha sumarak eka vidyarthiyak budoon maron aaylem evening 5 o’clock about one student drown to death came A student was drowned in a canal flowing near the old bus stand of Ponda at 5.00 evening on Saturday in which the English phrase ‘bus stand’ is used in a Konkani sentence. This may not, however, be considered code-switching by many scholars, since ‘bus stand’ is a phrase that has not only been borrowed into Konkani and has been fully assimilated. It is subject to declension, too, viz. the suffix -a marking the oblique case2 required by the postposition kadlyan ‘near’. Finally, Konkani has a different phonological system, e.g. like other Indian languages, it has retroflex consonants, aspirated in contrast to unaspirated plosives, and it also has fairly pronounced nasal vowels. One of the conclusions that we can draw from these general features of the Konkani language is that Konkani speakers cannot draw directly on their language as the principal aid to the learning of English. English cannot be considered a language which is, by its very nature, easy for Konkani speakers to learn. Evidence of the learnability of languages in relation to the native language is fairly minimal. This may be due to theories of language learning which, in the main, do not relate to the difficulties of learning language X as opposed to language Y among speakers of a given native language.3 In a table produced by the United States Foreign Service Institute, which trains diplomats in various languages which they may have to use in their particular missions, the languages which are


25

among the easiest for native speakers of English include Afrikaans and Dutch. ‘Easiest’ here means less time to achieve the goal of ‘general professional proficiency’. No Indian language, of course, appears in the first set but the four Indo-Aryan languages considered to be the official language of each of the republics of the sub-continent (Hindi in India, Urdu in Pakistan, Nepali in Nepal and Sinhala in Sri Lanka) may take up to double the time to learn than the first set of languages (James North, personal communication, 2000). We may assume that the inverse is also the case – to a certain extent. If there is nothing in the Konkani language that makes it easy for speakers of that language to learn English, reasons for their success must be found elsewhere. In this chapter, we shall take a look at the history, not of the Konkani language as such, but at the history of the status of Konkani, especially in Goa. This will be followed by a discussion of the status of the language today.

History of Konkani and its speakers Konkani is spoken in pockets along the Konkan coast, on the west coast of India. Groups of Konkani speakers left Goa in the 11th and 12th centuries and moved southward. Since this migration took place some 400 years before the Portuguese invasion, we are talking of the migration of Hindus. Hence, we find Konkani-speaking Hindus in the state of Kerala around Kochi (Cochin) on the southwest coast of India. To this population was added a further wave of Hindu Konkani-speaking migrants after the Portuguese invasion to escape the persecution which the Portuguese were carrying out in the territory under their control (velhas conquistas – ‘the old conquests’). A further migration of Konkani speakers took place during the first century of Portuguese occupation (i.e. the 16th century). But there are two major differences between this migration and the one at the time of the Portuguese invasion. First, this second wave of migration consisted of Catholics and second, they went to Mangalore, some 400 km south of Goa on the coast. They were obviously not escaping persecution, since they or their parents had been converted to Catholicism. The reason for this wave of migration was economic. There were major employment problems in the colony; hence, they left to look for work. They went south, but not to Kerala with which they had no connection since they were Catholic not Hindu, but to Mangalore, where there must have already been a Christian community. There was, nevertheless, a Christian community in Kerala, also under the influence of the Portuguese, e.g. Vasca da Gama had landed near Calicut in May 1498 and the church of St Francis in Fort Cochin was originally built in

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Table 2.1 Number of Konkani speakers per state (1991 Census) Goa

602,626

Karnataka

706,397

Maharashtra

312,618

Kerala Subtotal Elsewhere in India Total

64,008 1,685,649 74,958 1,760,607

1503, even before the Portuguese occupation of Goa. Mangalore, however, is somewhat nearer to Goa than Kochi. The net result of these migrations may be seen in population data concerning mother tongues (or first/native languages). Unless stated otherwise, population data in this study come from the 2001 Census.4 The total number of Konkani speakers in the whole of India was given in 1991 at 1,760,607. Table 2.1 shows the breakdown according to state. It can be seen that, in fact, there are more Konkani speakers in the state of Karnataka (especially around the city of Mangalore) than in Goa. The remaining 75,000 or so Konkani speakers apparently live in pockets in the big cities and in a small union territory between the states of Maharashtra and Gujarat, north of Bombay, called Dadra-Nagar Haveli. But there is some confusion concerning the name of the language which some of the population in Dadra-Nagar Haveli speak. Although the 1991 Census names the language as ‘Konkani’, in other sources, we find names such as Kokna, which may indicate the Konkan origin of the population but not the linguistic origin. The Portuguese set foot on Goan soil at the end of the 15th century.5 They were beaten back by Adhil Shah (the ruler of Bijapur; see previous section), but finally in 1510 under Afonso de Albuquerque they seized a foothold in Goa, occupying and colonising the districts on the coast (Ilhas, Bardez, Salcette and Mormagao). Some 20 years later, they also occupied two small areas in Gujarat – Daman and Diu. Until recently, Goa was administered jointly with the two enclaves. Apart from developing the spice trade (and possibly trade in precious metals), which may have been the original reason for western interest in India, the Portuguese regarded their colonization as a crusade: one of their aims was to convert the natives to Catholicism. What they saw among the local population was paganism: temples in which were placed idols to which the Hindus paid homage. One of their early tasks was to destroy these temples and to destroy what they


27

saw as a pagan religion, which was anathema in their eyes.6 They also went on a campaign of mass conversion. Those who opposed such conversion fled to the hinterland, which the Portuguese did not conquer until some 200 years later, or fled southward to their kinsmen in Kerala. Goans who were converted did so en masse village by village. The method used by the Portuguese, especially the Jesuit priests who arrived in Goa in the wake of the soldiers, was to persuade the community leaders to convert to Catholicism. If this was successful, then the entire community would follow suit. The community leaders at that time were either men belonging to the highest Brahmin or priestly caste or to the second caste in the Hindu hierarchy, the Kshatriya or warrior caste. It was believed that once the members of the highest castes became Christian, the rest of the castes would follow. This strategy was successful in many cases (on castes in Goa, see Chapter 5). Moreover, the prevalence of Portuguese surnames in Goa (e.g. Almeida, Borges, D’Souza, Sequeira) originated in the conversion ceremonies. The residing Portuguese officer or the local Portuguese priest, who functioned as the converts’ godfather, would give his surname to the new converts at the ceremony. Evidence of early texts in Konkani is controversial, although there seems to be sufficient proof that the language was written in a form of the Kannada script in the middle ages. Olivinho Gomes (personal communication, 1999) maintains that in pre-Portuguese times Konkani was written in the Kandovi script, related to the Kannada script (of neighbouring Karnataka of today). The first Konkani inscription is from 1187 (Kamat, 2000). There are also extant village commune records in Konkani written in Kannada script. The Portuguese initially destroyed all works written in the language because of the pagan contents of existing documents. But the Jesuits, in their drive to convert the population, realised that the best way to persuade the local population that the truth is to be found in the Catholic catechism was to speak to them in their own language. With no Konkani texts, the priests began to learn the spoken language. When Konkani texts written in Kannada script became available, these were read out to the priests who transcribed them into the roman alphabet. In 1541, the first university St Paul’s – originally the Seminary of the Holy Faith – was set up at in Old Goa, where Konkani, Gujarati and Aramaic were studied. The first works produced were religious in nature. For example, while the English Jesuit, Thomas Stephens, wrote Kristpuran (Story of Christ) in Marathi with a huge dose of Konkani words ‘so that it could be understood by his local audience’ (Gomes, 1994), we find catechisms and other religious texts translated into Konkani in the roman script. One of these catechisms, Doctrine of Christ, was written by Stephens himself and was subsequently printed in 1622 on the first printing press that was brought to

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India in 1556 by the Portuguese. It is often said that this was the first printing press in the whole of Asia. The printing press, of course, printed in roman script only, so neither were the Kannada script nor an early version of the Devanagari script of north India used at all in official, educational and religious circles in Goa. Stephens, too, was the first person to write a grammar of Konkani (Arte da Lingua Canarim (da Cunha Rivara, 1958: 222)). The most monumental original work in Konkani in this early period is Miguel de Almeida’s Onvalleancho Mallo (Shepherds’ Garden (Pereira, 1992: 31)). Konkani texts from this time, then, were written solely in roman script and this is still found today in Goa among much of the reading material of the Christian population, including the church liturgy. Konkani in the Kannada script, as mentioned before, may be found prior to the invasion in the form of village records but there is no evidence of Konkani written in Devanagari during most of the colonial period. Konkani began to be written in Devanagari only in the latter half of the 19th century as part of the reawakening of the Indian national identity. Today, the language is written in Devanagari in Goa and in Kerala,7 in roman in Goa among many, but not all, of the Catholics and still in Kannada script in Mangalore and environs. Kamat (2000) adds the Perso-Arabic (Urdu) and Malayalam scripts as possible ways of writing Konkani and Jorge de Abreu Noronha in an article in the monthly magazine Goa Now (September 2001) lists the Gujarati script, too. Let us return to the historical development. The situation in which Konkani was the language of communication between the authorities, and especially the church, and the local population continued until the inquisition began its work to root out what they saw was heresy. The first victims of the Portuguese inquisition were the nuevos christianos (‘New Christians’), recent Jewish converts to Christianity. The inquisition spread its wings to fight any type of heresy and to fight Hinduism, still prevalent among the Goan population under Portuguese control. Part of the fight was the suppression of Konkani. So, the work of the early Jesuits was undone and now Portuguese was declared to be the sole language of the Christian population, a move supported by the Franciscans. Knowledge of the language was a prerequisite to any contact with the colonial authorities or to any job under the Portuguese. It was decided by church edict in 1684 that within three years the entire local population would speak Portuguese. Of course, such language policy, especially prior to modern times, was very difficult to carry out with much success. It was also unrealistic. Speaking Portuguese to a congregation or community who either did not speak the language or had difficulty in learning it does not spell success in communication. This edict, however,


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remained until more enlightened times in the middle of the 18th century when the Marquis da Pombal became the chief minister in Lisbon. The situation further improved in the 19th century. Portuguese schools were set up to which the Catholic élite sent their children or at least the élite that remained in Goa. Many Catholics also moved to British India for their livelihood, turning into English speakers. But what of the Hindu population? At the beginning of the 18th century, the Portuguese decided to expand their control over more Indian territory, going further inland and colonising the remaining districts of Goa. Even today, a distinction is made between the old conquests (velhas conquistas), those areas on the Arabian Sea coast conquered at the beginning of the 16th century, and the new conquests (nuevas conquistas), the hinterland areas, where the majority of the population was Hindu. With the suppression of written Konkani – Konkani was still spoken in the home – the Hindus, under the influence of their important neighbours,8 used Marathi translations of the sacred Hindu texts. This was helped, too, by the import of Marathi Brahmin priests to serve in the temples instead of Saraswati Brahmins who were not trusted, since, many claimed, they were not genuine Brahmins (see Chapter 5). These are important factors, as we shall see, in the determination of the status of Konkani and of Marathi among the Hindu population of Goa today. There had been very little interest in the Konkani language throughout the Portuguese period. But, occasionally, we do find a grammar or dictionary produced, in the main, by Jesuit and other priests. We have already mentioned Thomas Stephens’s grammar. Further examples of such works are Gaspar de S. Miguel’s Sintaxis Copiosissima, which is a 17th-century grammar of Konkani, written in Latin, and in the 19th century, we find Angelo F.X. Maffei’s Grammar of Konkani, originally written in Italian (translated into English in 1882 and reprinted as Maffei (1986)). Both these authors base their Konkani on the roman script, although Maffei does give, in one of the Appendixes, examples from the book of Genesis in roman and in Kannada scripts (but not in Devanagari), with an English translation. Early in the 20th century, with attempts at reviving Konkani as a literary language, V. P. Chavan wrote his Konkani Language in English in 1924, in which he presents examples of Konkani in the Devanagari script (Chavan, 1995). As we shall see, since liberation in 1961, interest in the language has slowly been growing. In the 19th century in Goa, then, we find Portuguese-medium schools, training mainly the Catholic élite not only to be administrators in the colonial administration but also professionals. Goa may boast the first medical college in the entire continent of Asia, founded in 1842. But on the whole, very little was done to improve the lot of most of the population.

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Among the Hindu population, Marathi-medium schools sprung up, English-medium schools were beginning to emerge in the private sector, while the Konkani language – the mother tongue of the population – remained relegated to the home. Dialects of Konkani emerged, each of them vying to be considered the Konkani of the reviving Konkani culture. In the absence of a standard Konkani, even on the horizon, literary works were written in a variety of them. The anti-Konkani movement had surprisingly left the hands of the Portuguese authorities many years before, and now it was the turn of the Hindu population to see in Konkani a language not to be taken seriously. Marathi, was the language of the Hindu sacred texts. This forms the basis of the language controversy, which turned later into a language war (see the following section and Chapter 3).

The 20th Century Even into the 20th century, the situation on the ground was allowed to continue in the same fashion. The Portuguese lyceum had a student population of 652 in 1920–21 (Varde, 1977), Marathi-medium schools numbered eight, with 228 pupils in all (Varde, 1977). There are no figures available for the number of private English-medium schools functioning at the same time (for later figures, see later) but what is important is that there were no Konkani-medium schools. Goans who wanted to continue their education had two choices: either to go to one of the universities in Portugal or to go over the border to British India to one of the colleges or universities, in all of which English was the medium of instruction. Apart from the medical school and one or two other colleges of higher education, the Portuguese colony had nothing to offer as far as higher education (among many other things) is concerned. Portugal had virtually become bankrupt a few hundred years before – it could not afford an empire and did not know how to pluck the economic fruits of their conquests. It could not undertake the upkeep of its colonies in the same way as the English, the Dutch and, later, the French did – all, however, to a limited extent. Goa was a poor colony and remnants of that heritage may still be seen there today. The situation towards the end of Portuguese rule in the late 1950s was such that 19,000 students attended government Portuguese-medium schools of all levels, while in primary school education only there were 13,000 pupils in both Marathi- and in English-medium schools (Pearson, 1987: 156). Likewise, of the 92 secondary schools in Goa in 1959 (with a total of 14,290 pupils), only four were Portuguese-medium schools; the rest were English-medium (Correia-Afonso, 1987: 209). Again, Konkani (and also Marathi in this context) was not used in secondary (and obviously tertiary) education. The Marathi schools catered for the Hindu population,


31

as discussed earlier, while the English-medium schools catered for betteroff Goan families, both from the Catholic and the Hindu populations, although the schools were run, in the main, by Jesuit priests and carried (and still do) such names as St Brito, Don Bosco, St Mary’s, St Xavier, and Rosary (a name of a college of arts and commerce as well as several schools). But the moment the Portuguese were forced to leave the colony and Goa was incorporated into India as a union territory in December 1961, Portuguese was dropped as a medium of instruction and English took over. The same thing happened in the field of administration and law. As soon as the Portuguese left, the Portuguese language ceased to be used except among the Catholic population, and not all of them could speak the language. Today, of course, very few Goans – mainly older people – speak the language. In Wherritt’s (1985) research on the use of Portuguese in Goa, the subjects whose details were given were aged between 47 and 75. Of the 170 or so Goan college students that took part in the study described in Part 2, only nine claimed an average or good understanding of spoken Portuguese, and eight an average or good speaking knowledge of the language. Overnight, English took over as the language to be used in the public sphere and this is the situation that exists today, as we shall see. Marathi is, no doubt, a language with a long and rich literary history. It was considered with reverence by all Marathi speakers as the language into which the Hindu religious texts were translated as far back as the 14th century, if not earlier. To this was added a persuasive linguistic argument: Konkani is only a dialect of Marathi, so speakers of Konkani are, in effect, speakers of a Marathi dialect, which makes them Marathi speakers. This position found support not only among several Indians, e.g. Anant Priolkar, but also among European linguists, including John Leyden, Richard Burton and George Grierson, the author of the monumental multivolume survey on Indian languages, and his collaborator Sten Konow, who produced the volume on Marathi in which Konkani is depicted as a Marathi dialect, having branched off from the common parent Prakrit at a relatively early period although they do admit, somewhat contradictorily, that Konkani has in many respects, preserved an older stage of phonetical development, and shows a greater variety of verbal forms than Standard Marathi (Grierson, 1967 [1927]: 164). Although Grierson and Konow were aware of the arguments concerning Konkani and concerning, too, the problematics of defining ‘language’ and

32


‘dialect’, their decision is, in the final analysis, based on the existence of a national literature in Marathi, which was not case with Konkani. The pro-Konkani camp included, at different times, J.H. da Cunha Rivara (1958), whose essay on the Konkani language provides considerable information about the language in the first three centuries of Portuguese rule in Goa, Angelo Maffei, whose grammar has already been mentioned, Rafaelle Pescetti, Sumitra Kantre, the French linguist Jules Bloch and even back in the late 18th century, the English scholar John Wilson (for a full discussion of the controversy until liberation, see Pereira (1971)). The war between pro-Marathi groups and pro-Konkani groups was fought initially in pamphlets. It eventually took to the streets in the 1960s when Goa was liberated from Portuguese control and elections were held to appoint a legislative assembly and, again, in the second half of the 1980s when the question of an official language of the state was being debated and fought over. Konkani won these particular battles but the victory, as we shall see, has never been complete. Konkani was not taken seriously as a potential official language, except by a small group of stalwarts. But Konkani did enter the fray indirectly when discussion was focused on the future of liberated Goa. There were people who supported Goa as a separate entity in India but opposing them were supporters of the incorporation of Goa into the large state on its northern and northeastern border, Maharashtra. A political party, the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP), was formed, which was in favour not only of a merger with Maharashtra but also in favour of the adoption of Marathi, the official language of Maharashtra, as the state language of Goa. As a result of the first elections in Goa after liberation, it became the largest party with 14 seats in the 30-seat Assembly, two short of a majority. Party leader Dayanand Bandodkar became Chief Minister (Fernandes, 1997: 6ff.). He was, however, pragmatic, deciding to ‘go slow’ on merger (p.15). Their main rivals were the anti-merger Congress Party (which was, at that time, the leading party in the country as a whole). There was also another anti-merger group indicating the ‘Karnataka factor’ because of ‘historical, geographical and linguistic ties’, lending support to the other opposition party, the United Goans Party, consisting mainly of Goan Catholics (Fernandes, 1997: 17). Union Prime Minister Nehru declared that the merger decision should be delayed: there was a large Catholic population opposing it. On 16 January 1967, a referendum (or ‘opinion poll’ as the Indians call it) on the merger issue took place and 54.2% of all Goans preferred Goa as a separate entity within the Indian Union (as a Union Territory). Even though this seemed a defeat for Bandodkar and the MGP, in the elections held two months later, he was swept into power with a majority of 16 seats.


33

It may seem that after the referendum the question of Konkani had also been settled but since Marathi was, and may still be, the language read and written by sections of the population, the Konkani/Marathi controversy came immediately to the fore when a committee was appointed by Bandodkar to examine ‘the feasibility of declaring Marathi as the official language of Goa’ (Fernandes, 1997: 39). Attempts by MGP members and a splinter group to pass a Goa, Daman and Diu Official Language Bill in 1966 ‘were diplomatically countered by Bandodkar’ (p. 47). The central government in New Delhi did not understand the linguistic problems that the Goans were creating for themselves. Prime Minister Nehru was quoted as saying that he did not understand the agitation for Marathi, since Konkani is ‘widely spoken in Goa’ (Navhind Times, 3 July 1963). In 1970 Bandodkar was able to win a vote of confidence and two days later, on 22 August, he declared Konkani written in the Devanagari script as the state language alongside Marathi. It has been suggested (Frederick Noronha, personal communication, 2000) that the motive behind Bandodkar’s policy was to erode the dominance in Goan official life of the Catholic and Saraswati Brahmin élites (see Chapter 5). Bandodkar himself came from the Gormant Maratha Samaj (or Devadasi – temple prostitute caste) and looked for support among caste groups in Goa that belonged to the second level of the caste hierarchy. Bandodkar died in 1973 and was succeeded – in typical Indian fashion9 – by his daughter, Shashikala Kakodkar. Immediately after taking office, she gave active support in favour of Marathi, deciding – with her government – on making Marathi compulsory in all English-medium primary schools while excluding Konkani. This was met with considerable criticism, not only from within Goa but from Konkani organisations outside the state, too (Fernandes, 1997: 62). So, before the 1977 elections she promised support for Konkani as the official language alongside Marathi, and the MGP won 15 seats and the Congress Party 10. This indicated the rise of the strength of Congress in Goa, for in the following elections in 1980 they won 20 seats and began to govern Goa. In their election manifesto, Congress promised that once statehood was achieved (as a state within the Union, not as a Union Territory as it was then) Konkani would be recognised as the official language and demands would be made to include it among the Schedule VIII languages (see Chapter 1). The Congress Marathi-speaking chief minister, Pratasing Rane, despite promises, procrastinated on the official language issue (Fernandes 1997: 104), which led to violence in 1986–87. The language controversy, then, became the language war. The violence came to a halt when a compromise bill was presented to the legislative assembly. The bill was finally passed (21 against 8) on 4 February 1987; it declared Konkani as the official language, but also provided for Marathi and

34


Gujarati (Gujarati was included because it was spoken in Daman and Diu; see Appendix for the full text of the law). Almost four months later, on 30 May, the State of Goa was declared. One of the features of a state in the Indian Union is that there should be at least one official language. Konkani finally won – on paper. The leading and highly influential academy in the country – the Sahitya Academy in New Delhi – declared Konkani as a fully fledged language, paving the way for the decision in 1992 to make Konkani one of the Schedule VIII languages.

Konkani in Goan Education Today What does this mean for Goa of today? In the educational field, the situation is such that secondary, and higher secondary schools, colleges and the university are in the English medium and government elementary schools teach in either Marathi or Konkani until the fifth grade, when the switch is made to English throughout the system. There is a handful of private and government schools that use another language as the medium of instruction, such as Urdu in both north and south Goa and Kannada in south Goa, but even in these cases, the switch to English occurs at the fifth grade. Private schools, apart from a handful of Moslem religious schools (using Urdu), tend to be exclusively English-medium schools from the first grade on. Some private schools even have a kindergarten section in which English is also the medium of instruction. With regard to Konkani in the educational system, the number of schools in which Konkani is used as the medium of instruction till the fifth grade is very small compared to Marathi. The increase in Marathi-medium schools was the result of a policy of the Bandodkar government after liberation. Attempts to reduce the number of English-medium schools were made in the early 1990s, when Shashikala Kakodkar, this time as minister of education, tried to block grants to English-medium primary schools. The motivation behind this was not the language issue but an attack on the Catholic élite, which preferred English-medium education. In fact, of the 957 government primary schools in Goa, according to figures released by the Goan Directorate of Education for the school year 2000–01, 848 were Marathi medium, 38 schools used both Marathi and Konkani as the medium of instruction, and only 33 primary schools were Konkani-medium schools. The remaining 38 schools used Marathi with another language, e.g. Kannada, or used languages other than Marathi and Konkani. And of course, when we look at the figures of middle schools and above, the figures change dramatically. Forty-eight of the 68 government middle schools use both Marathi and English (for the higher grades) and only 11 schools use Konkani as one of the languages of instruction. Among the 69


35

Table 2.2 Private schools and medium of instruction in Goa Type of school Higher secondary schools

No. 71

Medium of instruction all English

High schools North Goa

169

101 English 46 Konkani and English 18 Marathi and English 4 others

South Goa

119

48 English 61 Konkani and English 6 Marathi and English 4 others

18

11 English 6 Konkani and English 1 Marathi

North Goa

41

18 English 11 Konkani 10 Marathi 2 Marathi and English

South Goa

36

17 English 13 Konkani 4 Marathi 2 others (Urdu)

Middle Schools

Primary Schools

government secondary schools, more than 80% (57 schools) are in the English medium, and another eight use both Marathi and English, while in the nine higher secondary schools (similar to sixth-form colleges in Britain) that are run by the state government, seven are English medium. As for private schools, the relevant data appear in Table 2.2. We can see that English is the major language of instruction, although Konkani is used in a proportionally higher number of private schools than government schools.

The Media Apart from the field of education, which is central to the study being set out here, we may take a look at the use of Konkani in other walks of life.

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Here we also find a situation similar, but more extreme, to the rest of India, and more specifically to the south. Let us first, look at the press and the media. If Konkani is the state language of Goa, then we would expect Goans to read Konkani-language newspapers, to listen to Konkani on the radio, to watch Konkani-language programmes on television and to read Konkani books. The principal Konkani-language newspaper published in Goa (in Margao in the southern part of Goa) is Sunaparant, whose editor, Uday Bhembre, claimed that between 8000–10,000 copies are sold daily (personal communication, 1999). Other estimates gave figures which were less than 10% of the official ones, with many of the copies being given away as complimentary copies. Bhembre admitted that Goan Hindus have become used to reading Marathi, so moving over to a Konkani newspaper would mean changing their reading habits. In conversations with Goans in Panaji, it was generally admitted that although they spoke Konkani at home, when it came to reading, if it was not English, then Marathi was the language in which they read. In fact, Marathi newspapers sell more copies in Goa than Konkani newspapers. For example, the distribution figures for Gomuntak are 20,000 copies on weekdays and 22,000 on Sundays, according to Laxman Joshi, the editor of the newspaper (personal communication, 1999). This particular newspaper is published in Goa itself. There are several other locally produced Marathi newspapers but other Marathi newspapers come from neighbouring Maharashtra. The same publishing firm produces a daily English newspaper, the Gomuntak Times, with 5600 copies sold daily, and 10,000 on Sundays. It is the smallest of the three English-language newspapers in Goa (see Chapter 4). There is official encouragement for writing in Konkani. In November 1999, for example, two Konkani writers were invited by the Sahitya Academy in Kochi in Kerala to give papers at a seminar on Konkani (Navhind Times, 22 October 1999). A public meeting was held in December 1999 in Panaji on the occasion of the publication of the first volume of a twovolume Konkani–English dictionary (the second volume appearing over a year later). This meeting was attended by about 100 people. This is, of course, not the first Konkani–English dictionary. Attempts had been made many years previously but in those earlier dictionaries Konkani was written in roman script. This is the first bilingual dictionary in which the Devanagari script has been used. It was reported in The Herald on 1 February 2001 that a medical dictionary, edited by Dr Bicaji Ganecar, had been published. It contains more than 1200 terms which are translated from English into Konkani in both the roman script and in Devanagari. What is happening in the field of written Konkani also occurs in the field


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of broadcast Konkani. Doordarshan, the all-Indian broadcast authority, broadcasts most of its local radio programmes in Konkani. Some of the programmes are translations of Hindi programmes sent from New Delhi but the radio station tries to encourage local Konkani productions (M. Borkar, Goa Radio, personal communication, 1999). When it comes to television, however, the picture is radically different. Most of the programmes are transmitted from New Delhi in Hindi and several are transmitted from the Bombay area in Marathi. For one hour a day from Monday to Friday, the state television broadcasts a programme in Konkani (Yusuf Sheikh, Assistant Director of Indian Television, Goa, personal communication, 1999). One reason for not expanding Konkani television broadcasts is economic. With such a small population (over 1.3 million with only half of them speaking Konkani), local advertising is not feasible. When an original work written in Konkani was to be broadcast on television, this was news worthy of press coverage. A play, Ushni Vokoll, written by Meena Kakodkar, was presented on local television during the Konkani hour in November 1999 (Navhind Times, 20 November 1999). In the same month, it was also reported that a Konkani television film, Tyaag (The Sacrifice), had been produced and would be shown at a film festival (Navhind Times, 13 November 1999). Local Konkani culture is encouraged. The various song and dance forms are put on in shows throughout Goa. In December 1999, the all-Goa mando festival was held in Salcete, Goa, an occasion on which the principal guest was the then Chief Minister, Mr Francisco Sardinha. The mando is a traditional Konkani song with four-line stanzas and chorus. According to the chief minister, such songs were constantly sung at celebrations among Goans (marriages, festivals). He maintained that keeping up such traditional art forms would enhance the ‘survival and enrichment of the Konkani language’ (Navhind Times, 14 December 1999). He also asked singers not to integrate English words in the mandos, for that ‘destroys the purpose the mando serves’. There are also a number of internet sites, not only for research purposes but also for those interested in Goan and Konkani culture. Moreover, in a lecture in May 2001, K.V. Kamath, the managing director of an Indian investment corporation, saw Goa’s future in the hi-tech industry because of its English-speaking population.

Administration In the official world, as in many other areas of India, English seems to be used almost exclusively. In the law courts, English is the medium in which proceedings are conducted (as laid down in the Constitution). In govern-

38


ment, despite the official status of Konkani, proceedings of the Legislative Assembly tend to be in English. Documents issued by the state government are in English. Ministers speak in English at meetings, on the telephone. They would speak Konkani only when they know that the audience is Konkani speaking. Two ministers were interviewed for the purposes of this study. One, the then minister of industry, also held the official language portfolio: he is a Catholic and a speaker of both Konkani and English. The second was the then current minister of transport but had held the official language portfolio some years before; he is a Hindu. Both ministers insisted that Konkani had been given a considerable amount of support as the official language. Its use had gradually increased, not only in speech among Goans, but also in its written form. Typists have been trained to reply in Konkani to letters sent by citizens to government offices concerning state affairs. However, for practical purposes, despite the lip service paid to the language by these and other politicians, English is the unofficial ‘official’ language of Goa. The minister of transport even related his reply to the question of Marathi, although I had not brought up the topic. While he believed that Konkani is the official language, he held that Marathi should have equal status, again returning to the ‘struggle’ between the two languages among Goan Hindus. The Catholic minister of industry, however, had no doubt about the real status of Marathi. Many Hindus state that they can read and write Marathi but when it comes to practice, they find difficulty in translating Marathi into Konkani or into English. He had asked some Hindu workers in his factory to translate a newspaper report about him in one of the Marathi newspapers: he claimed that they were unable to read the passage, suggesting that as much as Goan officials pay lip service to Konkani, Hindus pay lip service to Marathi, probably because of the religious texts in Marathi used in Hindu temples.

Culture and Research Konkani, it seems, has a very hard time being accepted as a written language in Goa. It is only the work of some zealots who try to create a language and to produce original writings in the language. Apart from a university department, whose main interest is in the field of Konkani culture, there are two institutions in Goa that deal with the language. One is government financed, the Goa Konkani Akademi, headed by Uday Bhembre, the editor of the Konkani newspaper Sunaparant. This body publishes some guides for teachers of Konkani but its main purpose is to encourage Konkani literary composition. The second body is the privately run Thomas Stephens Konkani Centre, headed by two Jesuit priests, one of


39

whom, Matthew Almeida, has a doctorate in Konkani phonology and morphology. Their interest is in the language itself and they organise seminars to train teachers for the schools. Neither body was directly involved in the publication of the Konkani–English dictionary mentioned earlier, and so far, apart from short publications on, for example, advice to teachers, no one has published a grammar of Konkani or a modern textbook for nonKonkani learners. An English-speaking learner of the language may avail himself or herself of one or the other of two books on the language written in Devanagari, which are available in Goa (Almeida, 1991; Borkar, 1997), but still needs considerable help from a Konkani speaker. In March 2001, a self-learning guide to Konkani, Spoken Konkani, written by Edward de Lima, was published. It is intended for second- and third-generation Goans who live abroad. However, the Konkani to be learnt is in the roman script not in Devanagari. Moreover, it is really little more than a phrasebook. Goa is not the sole place where research on Konkani is being carried out. In Kerala, there is a Konkani academy. There, Konkani is written, as in Goa, in the Devanagari script but the Malayalam script may also be found. However, in Karnataka, which has more Konkani speakers than Goa, there is a thriving Konkani Institute on the grounds of St Aloysius College in Mangalore. But the Karnataka Konkani speakers insist on using the Kannada script for the language, claiming – partly with a certain historical accuracy – that it was in the Kannada script (or the Kandovi script derived from Kannada) that Konkani was originally written. Another grammar book on the Konkani language is P.B. Janardhan’s Higher Konkani Grammar (1991). The author is a retired chemical engineer originally from Kerala, whose love for his native language, Konkani, is reflected in his extensive description of the language. However, the work is marred by the ignorance the author shows when dealing with linguistic matters: he is not a linguist. For example, Janardhan calls the study of language ‘linguology’ and he often uses the term ‘poposition’ instead of the conventional ‘postposition’. These are just two examples of Janardhan’s terminological confusion which pervades the more than 500 pages of the book. Needless to say, when it comes to analysing certain structures, Janardhan’s descriptions lack the necessary linguistic sophistication. He notes the use of the instrumental case for what would be the subject of transitive verbs in the past and perfect tenses but the term ‘ergative’ is not known to him; instead, he talks of ‘a hybrid of active and the passive voices’ (p. 243).10 He then compares the Konkani structure with that found in Sanskrit (‘the past tense syntax is of direct statement’, p. 243). This type of comparison he constantly uses throughout the book, arguing for the close kinship between Konkani and Sanskrit, which assumes that the reader is

40


familiar with the classical language. He does, however, insist on the Devanagari script for Konkani. The lack of serious attention paid to Konkani among Goans, the lip service paid by politicians, the lack of unity among Konkani speakers in India as a whole – these are some of the reasons why, among states that have an Indo-Aryan language as their state language, Goa has a problem with its language. It behaves somewhat like states in the south of India, except that the vernaculars there are not necessarily looked down upon. Konkani has yet to gain legitimacy among its speakers. This is achieved, according to Luke et al. (1990: 34) in the context of Australasia and Oceania but may be considered relevant in the Goan situation, by attributing ‘apparent value and use within the cultural traditions and social practices’ of the community. The language must ‘serve a political structure; and it must be congruent with the demands of the economic system’ (p. 34). In such a situation, all that is needed is another language that can fill the gap. In Goa, it is English. At the end of March 2000, the language controversy over Konkani and Marathi flared up again, this time over a High Court of Goa decision with regard to recruitment rules of employment in Goan government service. The court declared that Konkani is a requirement, since it is the sole official language of the state, while Marathi does not have such a status; hence, it is not a required language. The immediate reaction was protest from proMarathi groups, which demanded a change to the Official Language Act; this had been passed in 1987 establishing Konkani as the official language with Marathi having a semi-official status. For example, citizens writing to the authorities in Marathi could expect the answer in Marathi, too (leaving aside the unofficial status of English in such circumstances), in keeping with the Constitutional provisions (see Chapter 1). This controversy is the subject of the following chapter. Notes 1.

The transcription is not completely phonemic. The letter ‘j’ is used, as it is used in Portuguese, to refer to the voiced palatal fricative /d/. The letter ‘n’ indicates nasalisation, while a line above a vowel indicates length. 2. This is Almeida’s (1991: 46, 57) term. Maffei (1986: 11) calls it the Original case or stem form. Janardhan (1991: 107) calls it a ‘masked desinence’, one of his many invented terms (see later). It seems no more than a base form vowel, which varies according to the class of noun. 3. Such evidence was implied in contrastive analysis. 4. India holds censuses every ten years. Results used to begin to emerge two to three years afterwards. Figures in this study are, however, mainly from the 2001 census, when some of the data were published very quickly, although linguistic data (e.g. number of speakers of any given language) were not available at the time of writing; such data come from the 1991 census, as may be seen from Table 2.1.


5. 6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

41

The Indian population in 1991 was 844 million, and today’s population is just over 1027 million: There has been an increase of 21.34% in the population in the decade 1991–2001. However, population growth in Goa and in other states in south India is at a much lower rate than in the north, so the population increase is far from uniform over the whole country. For example, in the decade preceding the 2001 census, the growth of population in Goa was 14.89%, in Kerala 9.42%, in Tamil Nadu, 11.19%, while in Rajasthan it was 28.33%, in Uttar Pradesh 25.8% and in Bihar 28.43%. Interestingly, there has been a gradual decrease in the growth rates in Goa since liberation. In the first decade after liberation (1961–1971) the growth rate was 34.77%, which may also be due to internal migration; the rate was far higher than the average for the whole of India (28.4%). This dropped to 26.74% in the following decade and then in 1981–91 it was 16.08%, for the first time lower than the Indian average (23.86%). Many of the historical events set out in this discussion come from Alden (1996), Pearson (1987), Pereira (1992), among others. There does not seem to be evidence of this in Goa itself, for the Portuguese carried out a comprehensive cleansing operation. But an example of the damage they caused to Hindu places of worship is on Elephanta Island 10 km offshore from Bombay, a favourite tourist site. However, in 1970 it was claimed that because Konkani was only a spoken language without a script, it could not be recognised as a minority language by the Kerala state government. This decision was reversed in 1974 (Mallikarjun, 1995: 71). Important and powerful? For from the Marathas arose a Hindu leader, Shivaji, who succeeded in putting a stop to Moslem invasions in the 18th century. The Goan newspaper The Herald (17 February 2001) reported the coming celebration of Shivaji Jayanti (‘anniversary of Shivaji’) over all the state on 19 February 2001, when the Goan Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar and some of his Cabinet colleagues would offer floral tributes to the Maratha king at his statue at Farmagudi. For example, Jawarharlal Nehru was succeeded by his daughter Indira Gandhi on his death, who in turn after her assassination in 1984 was succeeded by her son Rajiv Gandhi. Rajiv’s widow, Sonya Gandhi, is leader of the Congress Party, and their candidate for premiership. Of course, the term ‘ergative’ would not be expected in any of the older grammars of Konkani. Among the textbooks consulted, only Almeida, whose Basic Course was published in 1991 (the same year as Janardhan’s book) talks of an ‘ergative construction’ in the context of a grammar note commenting on the lack of the passive (Almeida, 1991:35), while much earlier he points out the case/ agreement peculiarity of the Konkani past tenses of transitive verbs (p. 29). It should be added that Almeida is a trained linguist. Maffei discusses this structure in terms of the passive voice (1986 [1882]: 275–7), while Chavan (1995 [1925]) does not deal with syntax; his main interest seems to be in establishing Konkani as a language separate from Marathi. The other Konkani textbook for learners, Let’s Learn Konkani, merely states that in the present perfect, simple past and past perfect, the subject of transitive verbs is in the instrumental case (Bakar, 1997: 91–2).

Chapter 3

The Konkani–Marathi Controversy – the 2000–01 Version

Introduction On 30 March 2000, the Panaji Bench of the Bombay High Court decided that the language requirements for recruitment into public service in Goa should remain as they were. That is to say, the minimum language requirement for candidates applying for employment is that they should be able to use the official language, which for Goa means Konkani. There has apparently been no legal problem concerning Konkani in its official status since the Official Language Act was passed in 1987 (for text, see Appendix). In the Act, Marathi, the official language of the neighbouring state of Maharashtra, is given some official notice in that government employees should use Marathi in answering citizens’ applications to the government authorities, if they are written in Marathi. The reaction to the court decision was not only linguistic; in fact, as we shall see, the linguistic – or sociolinguistic – side of the argument was shunted aside by the more vociferous opponents of the court decision. The focus shifted very quickly to the political arena. As explained in the previous chapter, Marathi came to be used as the written language of the region during the course of many centuries from the time of the Portuguese invasion. It was introduced by Marathi-speaking Brahmin priests as the local liturgical language, since the sacred Hindu texts had been translated into it. This occurred at the time when Goan Brahmins either converted to Catholicism or escaped to the south. The Hindus in the Goan hinterland needed priests and these were imported from the Marathi-speaking area to the north and northeast of Goa. These Brahmins did not accept the caste status of Konkani-speaking Saraswati Brahmins of the Konkan region (see Chapter 5); hence, Marathi was able to take a very firm hold among literate Hindus. The presence of Marathi speakers in Goa was noted early on by Jesuits working in the region. Thomas Stephens, for example, learned both 42

Where East Looks West The Konkani–Marathi Controversy

The Konkani–Marathi Controversy

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Marathi and Konkani and his religious texts in Marathi were full of Konkani words, so that the local population could understand. After the failure of the universal imposition of Portuguese on the Goan population, leading to the end of any attempt to prohibit the use of Konkani, the latter language returned to its use as a liturgical language among Christians. Konkani was spoken by the entire Goan population, Christian and Hindu alike, but a written version of the language in roman script was adopted by the Jesuits in the 16th century and this script is still in use today in Catholic liturgy and in secular texts. For example, there are several occasional magazines written in roman Konkani. The roman script used is basically the Portuguese adaptation of the West European (or roman) script, e.g. the letter ‘x’ is pronounced /š/ as in Portuguese and not /ks/ as in many of the other western European languages.1 Nasalisation, however, is normally shown by the occurrence of the nasal consonants /n/ and /m/ after vowels but in one version of the roman script, diacritics do appear above the nasal consonant to indicate the nasalised syllable. For example, the second person singular pronoun tñ (‘you’) is written by Maffei (1986: 4) as ‘tññ’. Konkani was not written in the prevalent north Indian Devanagari script until the Konkani revival towards the end of the 19th century (for further details, see Chapter 2). The literate Hindu population, although Konkani speaking, read and wrote in Marathi. However, as far as the present population is concerned, the picture has become much more complex because of the immigration of Indians from other states with their own array of languages. This immigration does not concern only the Konkani–Marathi controversy, for many of the newcomers come from the neighbouring state of Karnataka, where the Dravidian language Kannada is spoken.2 Though Konkani speakers still make up the largest linguistic group of the population of Goa, it is followed by a large group of Marathi speakers, and then probably by a growing Kannada-speaking population.3 The linguistic controversy in Goa is a matter for the veteran residents, those that have roots in the area. In an opinion poll taken by the leading English-language newspaper in Goa, the Navhind Times, in July 2000, towards the end of the controversy, readers were asked to respond to the following question: Should migration from other states into Goa be restricted? The results, published on 19 July, showed that there was a majority of 68% in support of immigration restrictions, 27% against and 5% undecided. During the debates that were going on at this time, the fear of an influx of unemployed Marathi-speaking youth from Maharashtra was often expressed and this was reflected in the results. However, we must keep in mind that in these newspaper polls the number of respondents is very

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small (with one exception, see later). By the way, the same arguments have been employed elsewhere in India. With regard to Karnataka, Mallikarjun (1995: 77) writes: When the employment gates are closed at the national level based on language competence, at the regional level too, the regions try to close their employments [sic] for the people of languages other regions. (1995: 77) The political conflicts in the first years after liberation have been described in Chapter 2, but with the High Court decision in 2000, the arguments and political positions were allowed to emerge once again. Groups of Goan Hindus, speaking both Konkani and Marathi, have over the years set up cultural organisations promoting Marathi literature and have organised conventions and conferences on Marathi culture. These have flourished extensively and have not only escaped criticism, but given no cause for concern at all. There was nothing sinister about these organisations. In fact, many of the members were highly respected residents of Goa, including politicians and academics. However, the court decision of March 2000 reopened the controversy and found these pro-Marathi groups on the defensive and their reaction was highly vocal.

The Court Decision and Reaction The original writ petition to the High Court was filed by the heads of two Marathi organisations, Marathi Rajya Bhasha Prasthapan Samiti (‘Marathi State Language Promotion Organisation’, led by Mr Jaisingrao Rane) and the Gomantak Marathi (‘Goan Marathi’, whose president, Mr Shashikant Narvekar, had died before the court hearing) They challenged the notification dated 7 November 1996 over recruitment rules for employment in Goa, in which knowledge of Konkani was essential and that of Marathi only desirable for recruitment in the state government. The petition asked for equal status to be bestowed to both languages, for the distinction between Konkani as the required language and Marathi as desirable contravenes, they claim, Section 3 of the Official Language Act of 1987. The Act does give Marathi some status but not as the official language, proclaimed the court. The President of the Konkani Bhasha Mandal (Konkani Language Organisation), Mr Raju Nayak, welcomed the High Court verdict which, he said, finally laid to rest the long drawn-out controversy over the official language in the state. Nayak urged the government ‘to implement the Act in letter and spirit since Goa has now became a one language state’ (Navhind Times, 31 March, 2000).4 So, the first steps in the language controversy were taken by members of cultural organisations but politicians


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very quickly entered into the fray. Ramakant Khalap, a senior Congress leader and the member of the Goan Legislative Assembly from Mandrem, expressed shock at the verdict and called upon ‘language protagonists of both Konkani and Marathi to sink their differences and fight against imposition of English, which had threatened the very survival of regional languages in India’ (Navhind Times, 1 April 2000). Khalap was a member of the faction of the Congress Party that was the senior partner in the Goan state government – the Goan People’s Congress (GPC5). The party had split in November 1999 over the leadership of the party (and of the government), so the other half of the Congress Party was in the opposition – the Pradesh Congress Party (PCP). The chief minister, Francisco Sardinha, was a member of the Goan People’s Congress and the other partner in the Goan government was the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the right-wing nationalist party, the same party that led the national government under Atal Behari Vajpayee in New Delhi. This discussion of local Goan politics is central to the present controversy, for we find that politicians finally took over the matter. The BJP eventually expressed support for a change in the Official Language Act, while many members of Congress opposed it. The Goan Prime Minister, Francisco Sardinha tried – fairly successfully, as it turned out – to manoeuvre himself among the different factions.6 The religious differences mentioned earlier also enter into the picture but not openly. The BJP is a Hindu party, so its support for equal status for Marathi (as the liturgical language) is clear, but Sardinha and many other Congress politicians are Christian to whom Marathi is not known (see report of an interview with the then Goan minister of industry in Chapter 2). In contrast to the announcement of the Konkani Bhasha Mandal, one of the Marathi organisations that had petitioned the High Court, the Marathi Rajya Bhasha Prasthapan Samiti, expressed shock over the verdict. A press note released by the committee said that the politicians of Goa were to be blamed for the deplorable state of the Marathi language. Very quickly, however, the cultural organisations began to be involved in politics. The outgoing president of the Konkani Bhasha Mandal, Mr Raju Nayak, accused the BJP of hijacking the institution clandestinely with the help of some senior Konkani activists. ‘The interference of political elements causes a severe threat to the Konkani movement’, said Mr Nayak. The war of words continued the next day over the election process of the organisation (Navhind Times, 27–28 April 2000). This was no longer a separate issue.

Public Opinion Another stream of reaction to the High Court decision was public opinion, as generated, for example, by questionnaires appearing on the

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front page of the Navhind Times (see earlier). This may be public opinion of sorts but it must be remembered that respondents to the questions asked concerning local matters send their answers in by e-mail. That is, we are dealing not with the population as a whole but with an élite – Englishspeaking since the e-mail as well as the newspaper itself are in English and sufficiently well-off to have access to, if not to buy, a personal computer. Despite this limitation in the validity of the questionnaire, it is still worth relating to it, because the people involved are from the same middle and upper classes as the regional decision-makers. Although we have no affirmative data concerning the religion of each respondent, from the Portuguese surnames it seems that the majority are Catholic; hence, the overwhelming pro-English, pro-Konkani and anti-Marathi stance. In the first stages of the language controversy, on 8 April, the following question was asked of newspaper readers: Should Marathi be given equal status with Konkani in Goa? The results were 2% affirmative answers and 98% objected. That is, out of the 794 respondents, 778 said ‘no’ to the question. The numerical results were accompanied by verbal comments, including one against the use of Hindi, and another forecasting – quite correctly as it turned out – that the controversy would be taken over by politicians for their own interests. A month later, another question relevant to the present study was asked: Should English be made the medium of instruction from standard I [i.e. first grade] in schools? There was an overwhelming majority in agreement with the proposition in the question (88%) but here the total number of respondents was far lower than the April poll (71 in all). In an e-mail message, a Goan living in the Gulf state of Bahrain expressed the dominant ‘schizophrenic’ attitude towards Konkani: We all Goans love Konkani. It can be taught as a compulsory language at all levels but not as a medium of instruction in schools. When our children pass out of schools they are not able to speak properly even a few words of English. So how can they compete with the others for jobs? or even for higher studies? (Navhind Times, 6 May 2000) Lip service seems to be paid to Konkani as a necessary preface to any comment concerning the official language of Goa but then the focus of the response is on English and its important function in the modern world. Later that month, on 23 May, a further poll concerning language was published. The question asked was:


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Is enough being done by the government to promote Konkani as a language? Again, we find an overwhelming negative reaction to this question, that not enough is being done about the status of Konkani. Of the 81 who responded, 60 (74%) gave ‘no’ as their answer.

Politicians Take Over As previously mentioned, the language controversy very quickly became a matter of politics. Five political groups were involved, the three parts of the Congress Party, one in government (Goan People’s Congress, GPC) and two groups in opposition (Pradesh Congress (PC) Party and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP)), the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP), which had been in power in Goa after liberation and had supported, unsuccessfully, the integration of Goa into the Marathi-speaking state of Maharashtra (see Chapter 2). On 6 April, the BJP joined the fray when they declared that they would move an amendment to the state’s Official Language Act during the monsoon session (beginning in late June) of the state legislative assembly to give equal status to Marathi along with Konkani. The BJP spokesman and leader of the party in the legislative assembly, Manohar Parrikar, along with its North Goa MP to the Lok Sabha (national parliament) in New Delhi, Shripad Naik, told a press conference that the party would examine all aspects pertaining to the state’s Official Language Act and would propose necessary amendments to correct any deficiencies. Parrikar said Marathi was no threat to Konkani, adding that English might damage Konkani more. Marathi could act as a medium for growth of the Konkani language. He further said that those who learnt the Devanagari script could read Konkani as well and pointed to the low number of students in Konkanimedium schools which, he said, clearly indicated the growing pressure to switch over to English (Navhind Times, 7 April 2000). The pro-Konkani camp pointed out that if a large state such as Karnataka has one state language (Kannada in that case), why should a small state like Goa give an ‘associate state language’ status to Marathi . . . when Marathi has a giant state like Maharashtra committed to its progress? (Navhind Times, 8 April 2000). The president of Konkani Bhasha Mandal, Raju Nayak, asked whether Goa’s resources could afford the luxury of a two-language state. He then gave the example of Bombay train stations. Once the names had been written in Marathi and in Gujarati but it was decided that in spite of its being a metropolitan city, Bombay is a Marathi city and Gujarati names

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were removed. If, Nayak, continued, Bombay with its vast population cannot accommodate two languages (English aside), why should a small state such as Goa try to do so? The coalition partnership between the GPC and the BJP came under pressure because of the support the BJP would give to an amendment to the Official Language Act of 1987. While the BJP openly gave their support to such a move, the GPC did not clarify its stand. On the other side of the barricades, the Pradesh Congress president and former chief minister, Luizinho Faleiro said that there would be no change in the Congress Party’s stand and policy towards the official language of Goa. The issue of Konkani as the sole official language of Goa had been settled after the Bill had been passed by the state legislative assembly. Two weeks later, it was reported that a joint meeting was held between the Goa Pradesh Congress Committee and the Congress Legislature Party (CLP),7 when it was decided not to rake up an issue over the Goa Official Language Act. According to the two bodies, the BJP’s decision to move an amendment to the Goa Official Language Act to bestow official language status to Marathi was a ploy to create a wedge amongst Goans in order ‘to seek political mileage out of the language row’. The Congress Party challenged the BJP, a coalition partner in the government, headed by the Chief Minister, Francisco Sardinha, to table an amendment to the Official Language Act in the Goa assembly and reverse the popular mandate of the people of Goa, if they had the political courage to do so (Navhind Times, 26 April 2000). Towards the end of April 2000, Churchill Alemao, a senior vicepresident of Goa Pradesh Congress Committee, admitted that the official language ministers could not do their job due to the frequent toppling of the government. As we have seen (see Chapter 2), two official language ministers, when interviewed about the language policy, paid lip-service to Konkani. Another opposition Congress leader, Wilfred de Souza (Nationalist Congress Party), said at a press conference that some bilingual states had to be divided to make them monolingual, and gave a historic example of the formation of Andhra Pradesh, which was formed by putting together the Telugu-speaking parts from what was once Madras state (see also King, 1998: 115). A similar suggestion was made at that time by former chief minister of Maharashtra, the late Morarji Desai, to settle the issue of Maharashtra’s official language for the formation of the Marathi-speaking state (Navhind Times, 30 April 2000). Hence, the controlling principle was one state–one language. In view of the opposition to any change to the Official Language Act, especially from the Congress Party, the Goan chief minister, Francisco Sardinha, left his own position somewhat murky. Although the state gov-


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ernment was not in favour of making any change to the existing Official Language Act 1987, since the Official Language Act had taken due care in protecting both the languages, he would disclose his stand the moment the BJP tabled their amendment. In the middle of May, the BJP proposed an amendment to the Goa Official Language Act, 1987 for bestowing official language status to Marathi without altering the basic structure of the Act (Navhind Times, 15 May 2000). This was immediately criticised by Konkani writers, artists and activists at a meeting in Margao, in the southern part of Goa. Uday Bhembre, editor of the Konkani daily Sunaparant (see Chapter 2), said that the local organisation of BJP showed callous disregard for the youth of Goa by attempting to add to their difficulties in the matter of employment. Marathi was not a language spoken by Goans nor was there any Marathi-speaking area in Goa; therefore, there was no reason for making Marathi an official language (Navhind Times, 16 May 2000). Luizinho Faleiro (of the opposition Congress Party) said that his party had safeguarded the interest of Marathi in the Official Language Act, which allowed for the use of Marathi for official and non-official purposes in Goa. Without naming the GPC, he said the time had come for them to sever relations with the BJP and to rally behind the Congress for safeguarding the interest of Goans. Instead of addressing issues affecting the common man and the state, the BJP chose to create a rift among Goans by inciting the people’s sentiments on the language issue. Faleiro himself had drafted the employment policy after he had found that a large number of people from other states were migrating to Goa to find work. He said that, in order to prevent this, he had made working knowledge of Konkani mandatory and Marathi desirable, for this was necessary to protect the interest of the local youth (Navhind Times, 18 May 2000). There was some historical justification for such an opinion. After liberation, the Bandodkar government had brought in over 1000 Marathi-speaking civil servants from Maharashtra, even though suitably qualified Goans had been available (Rubinoff, 1995: 46). In an article in the Navhind Times on 15 May, Aravind Bhatikar (exchairman of the Mormugao Port Trust) expressed his difficulty in understanding how the BJP, which was relatively free from corruption, allied itself to the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP). He wrote: One fails to understand how this marginalised party seeks to revive its fortunes with an issue that could not arrest their fall into oblivion. The hypocrisy lies in the fact that the MGP never tried to make Marathi the official language of Goa, when it was in power for 18 years. He too related to the problem of unemployment if Marathi were made the official language with Konkani; this would open up government employ-

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ment in Goa to thousands of unemployed youth from Maharashtra. He went on to address the future of Goa if it were to merge with the large state. Such a merger, he writes, ‘can spell economic doom for Goans’. Ten days later, Bhatikar’s stand was countered by Ashok Desai, in an article in the same newspaper (‘BJP stand on language issue is faultless’; Navhind Times, 24 May 2000), who claimed that Konkani was not a developed language. He registered support for a larger state with Goa as part of it to ensure economic survival. Moreover, support for the BJP in the preceding elections did not come from the outside, from Maharashtra; the ‘BJP followers are originally from MGP and Congress’, i.e. from long-established parties in Goa itself. A day later (25 May), the status of Konkani was also discussed by Ramnath Naik, a columnist and trade unionist. In his article, he expressed his lack of understanding that if ‘the language of the hymn books on the church desks must get official status,’ so ‘must be the language of my Gods’. That is, if Konkani of the Catholic liturgy is an official language of Goa, so must Marathi, the language of Hindu sacred books, be made official. This religious distinction, which underlines much of the discussion in the press without often being brought out into the open, is made explicit by Naik. He argued against Konkani written in the Devanagari script. He had no objection to the roman script of Konkani but ‘what has happened to Devanagari Konkani?’ he asked. He then answers his own question: ‘Less said the better. Only Roman Konkani has a tradition, religious, literary or cultural.’ He believes that Christians understand the importance of Marathi. ‘Every Christian neighbour of a Hindu family’, he writes, ‘knows the place of Marathi in their hearts, for religion, literature, culture, etc.’ He reminds the reader that Thomas Stephens (see Chapter 2) ‘in his Marathi Kristpuran (in praise of Lord Jesus) called my language [i.e. Marathi] to be the best among jewels and best amongst flowers’. Arguments continued to evolve around the one language–one state concept. ‘States in our country’, wrote Nilesh Sawant in an article in the Navhind Times on 20 July, ‘are formed on the basis of the language people speak and not on the basis of the language they learn’. The only exception is Sikkim, where English is the official language, while Nepali is spoken by the largest ethnic group. Even Marathi in Maharashtra is spoken by only 58% of the population, while – he claims – 90% of the population of Goa speak Konkani. However, according to the 1991 census (see Chapter 2), there are far less Konkani speakers in Goa than assumed. Sawant also finds justification for the status of Hindi as the national language. Most of the Indian population ‘speak’ (Sawant’s punctuation) Hindi. About 37% of the Goan population – Christians and Moslems – do not know Marathi at all (partly supported in the survey in the present study; see Chapter 10), while


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only 20% speak some Marathi (probably an underestimation even though he calls it ‘a proven fact’). Things have changed, writes Sawant, in Goa. Once Marathi was necessary for public speaking. Now, it is Konkani as well as Hindi and English.

The Monsoon Session of the Legislative Assembly The monsoon session of the Goa legislative assembly at the end of June 2000 was considered the arena in which the language controversy was going to be decided one way or another. Any amendment to the 1987 Official Language Act should be tabled in the Assembly before the beginning of the session. Ramakant Khalap, a senior Congress leader, the member of the Legislative Assembly for the constituency of Mandrem and one of the supporters of Marathi, said the time had come for the party to rethink and correct its language policy to avoid any trouble of losing its support in the state, since both the BJP and the MGP had extended its support to the Marathi language as the official language of the state (Navhind Times, 2 June 2000). Wilfred de Souza (NCP) challenged the BJP to bring in the bill for bestowing official language status on Marathi in the forthcoming state legislative assembly. He added that the official language issue was dead and alleged that the BJP was trying to raise the issue to corner the MGP. The issue had been laid to rest 13 years before by the adoption of the Official Language Act, which declared Konkani to be the sole official language, and allowed for the use of Marathi for all official purposes in the state. Finally, on 7 June, Pandurang Raut, an MGP legislator, served a notice to the legislature secretariat moving an amendment to the Goa, Daman and Diu8 (GDD) Official Language Act, 1987, for bestowing official language status to Marathi. Raut tabled an amendment to Section 3 of the Act by submitting the draft of the GDD Official Language Act (Amendment) Act, 2000, proposing equal official language status to Konkani and Marathi. The BJP ‘turned the tables on’ Khalap, asking him to take the lead in moving the amendment to the Official Language Act, assuring its full cooperation to have it adopted on the floor of the House. The leader of the BJP legislature party and spokesman, Manohar Parrikar, ‘welcomed Mr Khalap’s initiative in uniting the Congressmen supporting the Marathi language in Goa’. As to the question of a bilingual state, Parrikar remained non-committal (Navhind Times, 8 June 2000). Since the BJP at that time had not proposed any amendment to the 1987 Act, some of the members of the MGP condemned the BJP leadership for withdrawing their support to submit an amendment to the official language bill. But then, on 16 June, on the last day for submitting the business for the monsoon session, the BJP proposed an

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amendment to the Act, granting equal status to Marathi along with Konkani (Navhind Times, 17 June 2000). The proposed amendment (for the text of the original Act, see Appendix) states that the government, by notification, declares that in Goa, Marathi be also used with equal status for all official purposes under sub-section (1) with effect from the same dates or clause as mentioned in the same sub-section. An amendment was also proposed to Section 4 of the Act, which deals with the use of English for official purposes in the state. The existing Act states that the use of English language shall continue for all official purposes, ‘[n]otwithstanding anything contained in Section 3’, which lists the official languages. The BJP proposed the deletion of that phrase, and its replacement by ‘English may also continue for official use. The BJP move was met by condemnation from the Goa Hit-Rakhan Manch (GHM, ‘The Movement for the Defence of Goan Interests’), which criticised the party for working against the interests of Goa and Goans, in bringing in the amendment bill. The reason was that the new law would grant equal status to Marathi and would make it mandatory for the government to make knowledge of Marathi essential in jobs, if not Konkani. This would open the floodgates to all the Marathi-speaking unemployed youth from the neighbouring states to take up jobs in the state by producing fake domicile certificates. The GHM also appealed to all Goans not to become misguided under the pretext of religion and culture. They welcomed the firm stand taken by the Chief Minister, Francisco Sardinha, not to allow any amendment to the Act (Navhind Times, 17 June 2000). Sardinha himself reiterated that there was no need to rake up the language controversy in the state, which would pose a hurdle to Goa’s development. Religion and language are means to unite people and not to divide them. Without naming anyone, Mr Sardinha said that some forces were stirring up the language controversy to create a rift in Goan society (Navhind Times, 19 June 2000). On 20 June, Ramakant Khalap (GPC) alleged that the BJP had demonstrated its pseudo-love towards the Marathi language by bringing an amendment to the Goa Official Language Act which denied the official language status to Marathi, while allowing the use of Marathi for all official purposes. He said if the BJP were genuinely interested in bestowing official language status to Marathi, it would have taken all pro-Marathi members of the legislative assembly into its confidence. He said that Parrikar, the leader of the BJP in the Assembly, was playing a ‘mere political game’ in the name of the official language. At a public meeting organised by the GHM in Mapusa, a town north of Panaji and a pro-Marathi stronghold, Datta Shripad Naik, a veteran writer, claimed that the BJP ‘is heading towards


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political suicide by trying to make Marathi the official language’ (Navhind Times, 23 June 2000), adding that ‘the sinister designs of “Maharashtrawadi elements” would never succeed after facing miserable defeats during the Opinion Poll [or referendum; see Chapter 2] in 1967 and the language agitation in 1987’. The GHM, he maintained, was not struggling against the Marathi language but against making it an official language. So, by the time the monsoon session of the Goan legislative assembly began, on 26 June, there were two amendments to the 1987 Official Language Act but both focused on different matters. Pandurang Raut’s (MGP) amendment proposed giving equal status to Marathi, while the BJP amendment called for the use of the Marathi language for official purposes alongside Konkani. Since the GPC opposed any change to the 1987 Official Language Act, there was no united government policy on the issue. Hence, the BJP had to propose a private member’s bill, which was also the case with Raut. The support for an amendment from the Congress member, Ramakant Khalap, caused a temporary split in the opposition. As an amendment would have required a simple majority of 21 members (out of a total of 40 legislative assembly members), it is of importance to examine the voting strength of each of the parties. The ruling coalition had 21 members, 11 belonged to the GPC and ten to the BJP. Opposing them were 15 Pradesh Congress (PC) members, two MGP members, one nationalist Congress Party member and one independent. However, the PC had one less effective member, for Pratapsing Rane (PC) held the office of Speaker of the Legislative Assembly; hence, he had no voting rights. Of the effective 14 PC delegates, four expressed support for an amendment in favour of Marathi. The ruling GPC issued a whip to all its 11 members to vote against the amendment (Navhind Times, 26 June 2000), so on paper the amendment did not have enough support. The most the pro-Marathi lobby could muster was 16 votes (10 BJP, four PC and two MGP), five short of the majority needed. However, there was still fear among Konkani activists that the coalition might introduce the BJP amendment bill and, later, refer it to a select committee. This would keep the language controversy alive until the next general elections, which would have, they claimed, an adverse impact on the Goan social environment. This fear was also expressed by PC leader, Luizinho Faleiro, who claimed that Chief Minister Sardinha was ‘responsible for continuing the language controversy by moving two amendments to the Official Language Act’ (Navhind Times, 29 June 2000). The political manoeuvrings continued when the session of the assembly finally opened at the end of June. But a technicality, in fact, prevented further discussion of the two amendments. Speaker Pratapsing Rane announced to the assembly on 21 July that the bills could not be introduced

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since the Governor of Goa, Mohammad Fazal, had not yet given his assent. According to the law, any bill that involved ‘financial implications’ required the governor’s approval, because ‘funds to be provided for its implementation need to be . . . [taken] from the consolidated funds of the state’ (Navhind Times, 22 July 2000). In response to the speaker’s announcement, Pandurang Raut (MGP) said Marathi had to be made an official language since this was demanded by a majority, adding that even the Pradesh Congress member, Churchill Alemao, understood the language. Alemao denied this, saying that Christians did not know how to read Marathi (see Chapter 2 on the difference between Catholics and Hindus as to Marathi), and the only knowledge of Marathi he had was the first line of a poem.

Aftermath There was a spate of pro-Marathi articles in the press after the amendments to the Official Language Act had to be withdrawn. G.R. Dhavalikar, the president of one of the Marathi cultural organisations, the Gomantak Marathi Bhasha Parishad (‘Goan Marathi Language Organisation’), and a retired teacher, wrote an article to the Navhind Times claiming that Marathi being the cultural, religious, literary and correspondence language of Goans for the last millennium, it was naturally expected by the majority that it would be the official language of Goa after the liberation from Portuguese. (Navhind Times, 3 July 2000). The Goan government issued two notifications in December 1987, after the passing of the Official Language Act, one of which sanctioned the use of Konkani ‘for the purpose of replies by the Government whenever communications are received in Konkani language [sic]’ and the second allowed for the use of Marathi ‘for the purpose of replies by the Government whenever the communications are received in Marathi language [sic]’.9 Hence, Dhavalikar argues, ‘both Konkani and Marathi were given official status’. On 7 November 1996, an amendment to the notification was issued by the then Congress Party government saying ‘[k]nowledge of Konkani was essential, knowledge of Marathi was desirable, for jobs in government’, which clearly shows that Marathi had not been given official status. Dhavalikar then turned to the religious background to the controversy. Politicians were playing ‘the dirty game of the British – “divide and rule”’ among Hindus and Catholics alike. A pro-Marathi stand was also taken by Vivek Novore on 10 July. He first reiterated the anti-Marathi arguments:


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(1) When there is already the Marathi language for Maharashtra, why there should [sic] be Marathi for Goa. (2) Marathi is the language of Maharashtra and is being imposed on Goa. (3) Marathi for Maharashtra and Konkani for Goa. But then, he goes on to claim that ‘Goa is much more “Marathi” than Maharashtra’. Reasons include Goa having a larger number of Marathi daily newspapers (including local editions) and the sale of these newspapers in relation to the total population is much higher in Goa than in Maharashtra. Moreover, in one of the remote villages of Goa, periodical ‘Natya Sammelan’ (a convention of Marathi plays) were being organised, and they had recently celebrated their 75th anniversary. ‘Can any small village in Maharashtra boast of such cultural activity?’, he asks. The report of an interview with the president of Marathi Yuva Sangharsha Samiti, Vishnu Wagh, appeared a week later. He said that ‘Marathi is not the monopoly of Maharashtra and Maharashtrians just as Konkani cannot be the monopoly of Goans alone’ (Navhind Times, 17 July 2000). He reminded the readers that Marathi had been in Goa right from the time of writers such as Thomas Stephens who wrote Kristpuran (see Chapter 2). The entire issue, he argues, had been unnecessarily politicised since it is the legislators who had to decide finally about which bill to support. Pro-Marathi members of Congress ‘are not ready to join hands with the BJP’, while the BJP did not trust Khalap and his colleagues of the Goan People’s Congress. He went on: Marathi belongs to Goa also as much as it does to Maharashtra, some parts of Karnataka like Belgaum, Nipani, some parts of Andhra Pradesh like Hyderabad and the southern district of Tanjoor in Tamil Nadu. In the same way, Konkani belongs to Goa as much as it does to Sawantwadi, Malvan, Karwar, Bhatkal, Supa, Udupi, Mangalore and Cochin. (Nahvind Times, 17 July 2000) He failed to add, of course, that if such multilingualism does exist, then a language such as Kannada should be officially recognised in Goa. The Marathi Rajya Bhasha Prasthapan Samiti (the Marathi State Language Promotion Committee, one of the two organisations that had originally turned to the court for a decision in favour of Marathi) appealed to the national Supreme Court against the Mumbai High Court decision of March but their petition was dismissed on 2 August. Another pro-Marathi body, Marathi Rajyabasha Kriti Samiti (MRKS Committee for the Repute of the State Language Marathi), was reported to be ‘seriously considering challenging the Constitutional validity of the Goa Official Language Act, 1986, before the High Court’ (Navhind Times, 3 August 2000). On the other side,

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Aravind Mhatikar, in an article on employment and the official language, argued: No government in Goa can afford to make knowledge of ‘Konkani and Marathi’ compulsory for government jobs, since this would straight away bar the non-Marathi knowing [sic] population in Goa (which constitutes about 65 per cent of the population) from government jobs. (Navhind Times, 4 July 2000) The GHM, of course, welcomed the Supreme Court decision (Navhind Times, 4 August 2000), while Goan chief minister, Francisco Sardinha, called for more support to the Konkani language (Navhind Times, 6 August 2000). This controversy still does not have an end. With the newly established BJP government in Goa in October 2000, attempts could again be made to change the Official Language Act of 1987. Konkani groups are forever on their guard (as are Marathi groups). For example, the Gomuntak Times published a news report entitled ‘Konkani Insulted’ (16 February 2001) according to which the Konkani Bhasha Mandal (KBM) censured the ‘Sahyadri’ channel for telecasting a Marathi quiz Aaz, Atta, tabadtob, in which one of the questions was: ‘Which of the three languages – Telugu, Kannada and Konkani – has no script?’ A contestant replied ‘Konkani’ and this was accepted as the right answer. The KBM chief Damodar Mauzo found this to be a deliberate mischief by the Marathi lobby. However, politically the BJP-led government spent most of its energy on other issues, leaving the language controversy to be dealt with by the various cultural organisations as before.

The 2001 Census Another mini-conflict broke out in February and March 2001 over the ten-yearly census, which was taking place at the time. The conflict was over Question 10 on the census form, which asked for the mother tongue of respondents. In an article in the Navhind Times on 14 February 2001, the term ‘mother tongue’ was defined as the language spoken in childhood by the respondent’s mother to the respondent. In a case, however, where the mother had died while the respondent was an infant, the mother tongue is the language mainly spoken in the respondent’s home in childhood. Another possible definition of ‘mother tongue’ as the home language may be sufficient (Fasold, 1984: 28), without bringing the mother literally into


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the picture. It should also be pointed out that a mother tongue need not have a written form. It has also been pointed out by Fasold (1984: 23) that the census may be unreliable because people often state a prestigious language as their mother tongue instead of an unwritten language. The enumerator who records the answers may make a report to the supervising officer if s/he thinks that the answer given by the respondent is not true (Navhind Times, 14 February 2001). Pro-Marathi groups published advertisements in the Goan press showing people how they can truthfully give Marathi as their mother tongue (The Herald, 10 February 2001). It was even argued before the Chief Census Commission in Goa that Konkani cannot be recorded as a language, since it is only a dialect of Marathi (Herald, 27 February 2001), a return to the 19th century linguistic controversies (see Chapter 2). Notes 1. Apart from Portuguese, probably only Maltese uses ‘x’ to represent the palatoalveolar fricative, as in ix-xemx (/išemš/ ‘the sun’) but the latter is a Semitic, not a European language. 2. There has been contact between Konkani speakers and Kannada speakers for hundreds of years, which has led to mutual linguistic influence. Konkani speakers in Goa, for example, are able to identify Konkani speakers from Mangalore. Nadkarni (1975) has noted the occurrence of two types of relative clauses among Konkani-speaking Saraswati Brahmins, one a native Indo-Aryan form and the other, which is being used more and more frequently, a structure derived from Kannada. 3. The figures according to the 1991 census are that for every 10,000 Goan residents, we find 5152 Konkani speakers, 3336 Marathi speakers and 464 Kannada speakers. But this latter figure seems to be growing, because of the constant influx of new residents from Karnataka. We will know the results of this immigration only after the results of the 2001 elections are fully published. In the middle of the Konkani–Marathi controversy described in this chapter, the Kannada Academy, situated in Karwar in Karnataka, demanded that Kannada also be made an official language of Goa, since there is, it claims, a larger Kannada-speaking population than Marathi-speaking (The Navhind Times, 26 May 2000). Again, only the 2001 census results may give us an indication of the present demographic composition of Goa. 4. This entire discussion, unless indicated, relies on the news sections of the daily English-language newspaper Navhind Times (abbreviated Navhind Times; see Chapter 4 concerning English newspapers in Goa). 5. Political and cultural organisations are often referred to by their initials. I will use the appropriate initials in the vicinity of the full name but I will not burden the reader. So, I will return to the full name once in a while; hence, the discrepancy in the use of initials. 6. As a footnote to the political maneuverings at this time, Sardinha’s government, which had come into power following the split in the Congress party on 24 November 1999, lasted for only 11 months. On 24 October 2000, with the resig-

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nation of the BJP ministers and several of the Congress legislative members, too, Sardinha resigned and Manohar Parrikar, leader of the BJP, became the new chief minister of Goa. Prakash Velip, one of the Congress supporters of the amendment to the Official Language Act, was given, among other things, the official language portfolio. At the end of May 2002, a new general election took place, giving Parrikar the mandate to form again the government, this time with 17 BJP members of the Legislative Assembly, two MGP members and two members of the United Goan Democratic Party. 7. Not a separate party but the group of Congress members in the legislative assembly that support the Congress Party at the national level (Tony CorreiaAfonso, personal communication, 2000). 8. It must be remembered that Goa was historically and administratively linked to Diu and Daman, two ex-Portuguese enclaves in Gujarat occupied in the 1530s. Much of the constitutional legislation concerning Goa since liberation in 1961 until Goan statehood in 1987 relates to these two places, as well. 9. The notifications concerning Konkani and Marathi (1-1-87/OL&PG) were ratified on 15 December 1987.

Chapter 4

English in Goa Introduction We have looked at the function and the status that Konkani has in Goa and, by extension, we have also noted that Konkani is spoken in areas in the neighbouring states of Karnataka and Kerala. We have also examined the cultural and especially political controversy over Konkani and Marathi and have come to the conclusion that because Konkani is not accepted as the ‘real’ official language, another language is used in all official and semiofficial communication – English. In this chapter, we shall focus on the status of English in Goa. It may not seem so different from the status of English in other parts of India, especially in the south. But the Goans’ attitude towards their own language – which can be expressed as ‘it’s OK for home, but we don’t read it’ – may be placed at one end of the following continuum, which represents the use of languages for official and semiofficial purposes in India: English

English and regional

Hindi and English

Regional and Hindi

Hindi

The cases discussed in the previous chapters are found to the left of the continuum. The middle of the continuum reflects the position in the Hindi belt where English is the medium of instruction in private schools. In the south, however, the regional or state official language has an important place in society. But when it comes to education, English has priority. So, the southern states (Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu) are found in the region of ‘English and regional’ language. Goa seems to be placed on the left, since English is the sole language used in most administrative fields and in higher secondary schools and in tertiary education. The right end of the continuum relates to regions in northern India where English is given far less focus, not out of choice but out of economic necessity; here I am referring to the poorest states, especially in the north and northeast of India, e.g. Bihar. In Goa, the vacuum which is left by the non-use of Konkani in areas 59

Where East Looks West English in Goa

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where a widely spoken regional language is normally found is filled by English. In education, as we have seen in Chapter 2 on Konkani, English has become, even in the state system, the major, if not the only, language. The same situation is found in the press. Let us look at the distribution of daily newspapers in Goa. It should be remembered that the numbers given are those supplied by the publishers themselves, who give their own evaluation of their own newspapers and of the newspapers of their competitors. As we have seen in the case of the Konkani newspaper Sunaparant (Chapter 2), where there is a significant discrepancy between the figures given by the editor and those given by other sources, the figures given here must also be taken with a pinch of salt. There are somewhere between 500 and 10,000 copies of the Konkani newspaper distributed daily – distributed because many of them are complimentary copies, while Gomuntak, a Marathi newspaper, sells around 20,000 on weekdays and 22,000 on Sundays. These figures can be compared to the three English-language newspapers published in Goa: · Navhind Times: 23,000–35,000 on weekdays, 38,000–40,000 on Sundays. · The Herald: 11,000–25,000 on weekdays, 40,000 on Sundays. · Gomuntak Times: 5,600 on weekdays, 10,000 on Sundays The lower of each set of numbers was given by the editor of one of the rival newspapers, while the higher was given by the editor of the newspaper himself. It should be pointed out, too, that other newspapers in English are sold in Goa, especially The Times of India, published in Bombay and in Bangalore, and the New Indian Express from Bangalore. The oldest of the three newspapers is The Herald, which began its life as the Portuguese newspaper O Heraldo in 1900, and only in 1983 did it begin to be published in English, probably in the light of the dwindling population of Portuguese speakers (20 years after the Indian takeover). The Navhind Times is the principal English newspaper, the first issue being published in 1963, while the Gomuntak Times has been in circulation only since the late 1980s. The importance of the Navhind Times in comparison to The Herald and especially to the Gomuntak Times may be seen in the quantity of advertising in the three newspapers. The Navhind Times has the largest number of advertisements, including official notices and classified advertisements of births, deaths, etc. On one day (12 February 2002), in its 16 pages, there were 27 commercial advertisements of different sizes, more than a full page of classified advertisements, six public notices, two half-columns of appointments and seven obituary notices. In The Herald, on the same day

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(14 pages long), there were only 12 commercial advertisements, almost a page of classified advertisements and 16 miscellaneous notices – obituaries, public notices and congratulations. In contrast, in the Gomuntak Times (on the same day), there were in its ten pages only three commercial advertisements, and the same number of classified advertisements. There were also two birthday greetings, and eight public notices. On the basis of such a comparison, one may wonder how a newspaper such as Gomuntak Times can survive with so little advertising. Its ‘big brother’, the Marathi newspaper Gomuntak and the owners, the large multi-faceted company of Dempo, seem to cover any losses the English newspaper makes. A further comparison may be made with the Konkani-language newspaper, Sunaparant. In one issue (on the same day, 12 February 2002), there were only two small commercial advertisements on the front page (both in English!) and two public notices (also both in English). Moreover, this newspaper consists of four pages only. From this discussion, it may be seen that the readership of English newspapers is fairly high, certainly far beyond the readership of the Konkani newspaper and on a par with Marathi newspapers (one of which sells around 20,000 copies daily). As for radio and television, we have a different picture. There is no local radio station in English; most of the programmes are in Konkani. On state television, Doordarshan, the programmes are either in Hindi or in Marathi. One hour a day is devoted to programmes in Konkani. If the television set receives other Indian stations, those are in the regional languages, e.g. Malayalam from Kerala and Bengali from Bengal. Cable television, in contrast, is mainly in English. This covers movie channels, sport channels, news channels, apart from one produced in India which uses both Hindi and English, and several entertainment channels. Popular science channels are also in English (cf. the case of Hindi on cable TV in various hotels in northern India, described in Chapter 1). In Goa, because of its past and still present links with Portugal, there is also a channel from Portuguese television. In the official world, English rules not so much in spoken communication but certainly in written documents. That is to say, government officials and politicians may speak Konkani among themselves but when it comes to what the public is to be exposed to in the way of government communiqués, then English is used. This is true for government notices in the newspapers. As previously mentioned, even in the Konkani newspaper, the two government notices were in English. Most of the notices appear in one or more of the English newspapers. But not only in the world of state government does English reign supreme. In the commercial field, most of the billboards are in English. On the 30-km drive from Dabolim airport in Goa to the capital Panaji, there

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was (in February 2002) only one poster in Konkani, concerning health services, while all the others were in English, including one relating to road safety (the need to wear helmets while riding scooters and motorbikes).1 As we have previously stated, advertisements in the Konkani press are in English. Shop signs are almost always in English, as are the invoices and receipts issued by commercial enterprises. Hotel registration forms are also in English but this is true, too, for many hotels in the country. Most of the books in the central lending and reference library in Panaji are in English (while books and manuscripts in the historical archives are mainly in Portuguese). This is, of course, a direct result of English being the medium of instruction in schools and in colleges. Many of the users of the library are school students, who have to be able to read English for their own academic purposes, and only English. Hence, there is no need for books in other languages. English has, after all, been called the library language (see Chapter 1).

English in a Portuguese Colony However, behind the present high status of English in Goa (which may not be different, in essence, from its high status in other parts of India), we find an interesting history. Goa was a Portuguese colony for over 400 years. Portuguese was the official language until 1961, when India took over the colony. Portuguese was spoken by about 2% of native Goans, those who considered themselves and were considered part of the élite. It was the stepping stone to success and career opportunities in the Portuguese administration. But the Portuguese occupation was not the most benign there could have been. Through a lack of funds from Portugal itself, things were allowed to flounder, although the colonial power managed to hold on to its territory for so long. There were two periods during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars when the Portuguese even had trouble holding on to their Indian possessions, and succeeded in doing so only with British help. The first period was very brief. It occurred even before Napoleon took complete control of France – 1797–78, when England, in effect, blockaded Goa. This and other English actions around Goa were also due to problems the English were having with the state of Mysore to the south of Goa and its leader Tipu. In 1799 the English succeeded in defeating the Mysore forces in a battle in Mysore itself, where Tipu himself was killed. But the second period, 1802–13, was much longer, for England feared possible invasion of India by France; for some of this period, large parts of Spain and also of Portugal were either occupied by French forces or were subject to French incursions. The soft point of any French incursion into India (apart from

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Pondicherry on the east coast – in modern-day Tamil Nadu – which the French had controlled from 1673) would be Goa and other Portuguese possessions. Although the English occupied the colony for several years as a military force, and in April 1813 finally left – ‘terminou o pesadelo’ (‘the nightmare was over’), writes da Silva Rego (1970: 244) – the local population began their contact with the powerful colonial power over the border, which controlled a large part of the India sub-continent, either directly or indirectly through various maharajahs. There were a number of famines in colonial times. In the early days, this led to the migration of Goans southward, as I have discussed in Chapter 2 (and will be further discussed in Chapter 5), leading to Konkani-speaking areas not only in Kochi (in Kerala of today) but also around Mangalore in Karnataka, where many of the Goan Catholics settled. With the establishment of English rule in India and in the wake of the contact set up during the English occupation of the Portuguese colony, Goans went northwards, to the large towns or to the developing towns, which later on became the metropolitan cities of India, especially Bombay, Calcutta and Karachi (the last named city has been in Pakistan since partition and independence in 1947). The presence of an English administration, and the migration of Goan families to those areas, resulted in a growing interest among many Goans to learn English. We have records of the first English lessons given in Goa in 1881 and then several years later, in 1886, a Father Lyons was reported to be giving English lessons (Correia-Afonso 1987: 213). The first Englishmedium school was set up in Arpora in 1895, followed by one in Pawa; both were church schools (Pereira, 1979: 32). The spread of English among the Goan élite facilitated their entry into the English administration in India. But the situation on the ground in Goa deteriorated. Since the colonial purse was fairly empty, very little money was spent on education. As we have seen, by the end of colonial rule, most of the secondary schools in Goa were English-medium schools, which allowed their students to take the Maharashtra school certificate examinations (Correia-Afonso, 1987: 209). Compared to the 19,000 Goans who attended Portuguese schools at all levels in the academic year 1958–59, we find 26,000 pupils attending English- and Marathi-medium primary schools (Pearson 1987: 156). Similar figures may be produced for various periods during the 20th century, with the same general picture. Portuguese was taking third place behind English and Marathi primary schools, and second place, but way behind, when it came to secondary schools, for there were no Marathi secondary schools in Goa. However, this does not mean that the Portuguese were not worried by the situation and that they allowed things to deteriorate. In 1916 the first

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Provincial Congress of Portuguese India was held.2 The position of English in the educational system of the colony was a central point of discussion. The authorities recognised the presence of English-medium schools in the colony but in the private sector. The fear that was prevalent was that English schools would lead to the ‘denationalisation’ of the Portuguese colony. The term ‘denationalisation’ means – in the context of Portuguese India – alienation of the native population from the colonial authorities. In this case, it meant the alienation of Goans from Portuguese India (CorreiaAfonso 1987: 214). One speaker at the congress, Noyar Prudente Lourenço (Primeiro Congresso, 1916), suggested that some governmental aid should be given to the private English schools, on condition they teach Portuguese. This would be an attempt to stop the emigration of Goans. If the standard of English improved in the colony, it may also be possible that emigrant Goans would return. But setting up some inspection over English schools, however, would only mean more sinecures in the administration, due to the ‘indiscipline and incompetence’ of the Portuguese colonial powers. This was supported in part by Antonio Maria du Cunha (da Cunha, 1924), who suggested that ‘we have everything to fear from the direct intervention of the state’. Neither did he see any problem of ‘denationalisation’, for even if the Goans were living far from their homeland, they still maintained their cultural institutions, etc. In his words: They [ex-Goans] become anglicised without, however, losing their love for the country where they were born. It is possible that everything is over for them, that they have nothing more to do [in Goa]. But there they have their national church, charity associations, organs of the press, religious festivals, festive commemorations of patriotic anniversaries. Our sons abroad do not lose the opportunity of strengthening the link. (da Cunha, 1924) The Portuguese may have spoken frankly at this time, criticising Portugal’s colonial administration. But several years later, from 1928 with Oliveira Salazar’s rise to power, such criticism was no longer heard and the situation was left to deteriorate even further. The Portuguese also expressed surprise at the lack of interest in Portugal and things Portuguese among Goans. As late as 1956, a few years before the end of Portuguese rule, a Portuguese geographer, Orlando Ribeiro, visiting Goa, could not understand how Guinea, which had been ‘pacified’ (‘pacificada’; Ribeiro’s word) in 1912, was more Portuguese than Goa, which had been under Portuguese rule for 450 years. The Goans showed ignorance of the (Portuguese) language and had an indifferent, if not hostile, attitude to Portuguese presence, ‘closed like a cyst on the flank of

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reborn Hinduism’ (‘encerrada como um quisto no flanco do hinduismo renascente’ (Ribeiro, 2000: 65)).

Attitudes to English Despite the success of Konkani speakers in English, as reported in the Introduction and throughout this study, there is much local criticism of the level of English of students. This has also been reported in other parts of India. While the private schools, which use English as the medium of instruction from the first grade, take advantage of relatively recent linguistic and language learning theories, in state schools students ‘still learn English through the grammar-translation method and prescribed texts’ (Agnihotri & Khanna, 1997: 46). The general opinion in India holds that English is ‘a source of career building and academic advancement in India’ (p. 85). But culturally speaking, Indians prefer their mother tongue. Hence, despite the widespread use of English in education, law and in the administration, there is no significant music, film and other forms of art in English (p. 115). The only exception seems to be literature, where there is an array of world-renowned Indian authors writing in English, e.g. Arundhati Roy who won the Booker Prize in 1997 for her novel The God of Small Things, the short-story writer and newspaper columnist Shobha Dé and the recently discovered author Raj Kamal Jha, whose first novel. The Blue Bedspread, has been very successful. On the whole, English is seen as the language suitable for higher education. Attempts in Bengal, for example, to introduce Bengali in university teaching were a disaster (Agnihotri & Khanna, 1997: 137). The type of comments prevalent in Goa concerning the level of English may be judged from a survey carried out by the Navhind Times among its readers or, more precisely, I have to add, those readers who are linked to internet. This survey was carried out in the midst of the controversy ranging in Goa over the Konkani–Marathi conflict (see Chapter 3). One reader stated categorically: The English of the students who speak Konkani is really pathetic. (Navhind Times, 1 April 2000) This was supported by another reader on the same day. He used the same word ‘pathetic’ to refer to the level of English but then added an allusion to a well-known Hans Christian Andersen story: The English of our local Konkani speaking kids is quite pathetic to say the least. This is not to say that Konkani is a ‘useless language’. It is just important to give each language its rightful place and as of now, it is English that is being treated as the Ugly Duckling in our classrooms.

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One may wonder what kind of swan English will eventually turn into. But the gist of the message here is that although Konkani does have a place in Goan society, it is English that reigns supreme. In a survey published in the Navhind Times in early May 2000 concerning the language of instruction in Goan schools, a large majority were for English as opposed to any other local Indian language, be it Konkani or Marathi. Eighty-eight percent of the respondents voted for English as the language of instruction, while only 12% voted against. But, unlike the earlier vote concerning Konkani and Marathi, when there were almost 800 respondents, in this survey only 71 people took part.

Diglossia Another way of looking at the linguistic situation in Goa (and perhaps in India in general) is to examine whether we are facing a diglossic situation. Unlike Ferguson (1959)’s original concept concerning dialects of the same language having high and low functions (e.g. literary Arabic versus Arabic vernaculars), the term ‘diglossia’ may be extended to cover the choice of different languages spoken and used in the same speech community. The choice of each language depends on the various functions of the specific language (Fishman, 1972; Fasold, 1984: 40ff). In Goa, the population has to be divided into two groups on the basis of religion: Hindu and Christian.3 The literate Hindus would hold conversations in Konkani (and English), while their reading material tends to be Marathi (and English). Among the Christians, in contrast, the language of everyday conversation is Konkani (and English), while the written language, apart from in liturgical texts, tends to be English. In order not to draw a picture which is too complex, and one which would prevent us from seeing the wood from the trees, we may ignore the use of languages such as Hindi, which may be increasing its functional value in the southern states of India. Furthermore, English has been placed above in brackets but this does not mean that this is marginal. As we have seen, it is English that holds the centre stage. So, we have among Hindus and among Christians the situation depicted in Table 4.1. Table 4.1 Possible diglossia in Goa I Religious group

Written language

Spoken language

Hindu

Marathi

Konkani

Christian

English

Konkani

The addition of English to the written language for Hindus will not basically alter this diglossic situation, so Table 4.2 may be seen as an ‘improvement’ on the situation.

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Table 4.2 Possible diglossia in Goa II Religious group

Written language

Spoken language

Hindu

Marathi/English

Konkani

Christian

English

Konkani

But even the situation depicted in Table 4.2 is not accurate. After all, as we have stated earlier, among the various élites, English is used extensively but far from exclusively, in conversation. If that is so, then we arrive at a situation which, as far as English is concerned, is not diglossic (Table 4.3). Table 4.3 Possible diglossia in Goa III Religious group

Written language

Spoken language

Hindu

Marathi/English

Konkani/English

Christian

English

Konkani/English

But what about Konkani? Among Christians, there is a written use of Konkani – in their prayer books and bibles and in several periodicals. Apart from such uses, and if we ignore the pro-Konkani activists among both Hindus and Christians, we probably have a diglossic situation. In order to depict such a situation, we have to distinguish formal and informal spoken language. Formal spoken language is used institutionally, while informal spoken language is used elsewhere. So Table 4.4 may represent this diglossia: Table 4.4 Possible diglossia in Goa IV Religious group

Written language

Spoken language Formal

Informal

Hindu

Marathi/English

English

Konkani

Christian

English/(Konkani)

English

Konkani

This may be as far as we may go, for matters become much more complicated. There are many Christian families (and probably many Hindu families, too) in which English is used for communication among family members and this is a clearly informal use of language. Konkani within the household would then be restricted to talking to domestic staff, trades

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people, etc. We have looked at differences between sections of the Goan population based on religion. A further sub-division has to be made, that of caste, which is the subject of part of the next chapter. The picture presented here may be used to depict the general Indian linguistic scene, although in a general form with many exceptions. On the surface, the situation is less complex because we are talking mainly of one religious group – the Hindus. The addition of Moslems, however, would make the picture more complex because they are scattered all over the country (although according to the 1991 census, only 40% of Moslems claim they speak Urdu – 40 million out of over 100 million). They would state that they speak and write Urdu and it is the Perso-Arabic writing system (nastaliq), similar to the Arabic of the Koran, which is used in Urdu. To communicate with non-Moslems, they obviously speak the local language, and educated Moslems would also speak English. It is possible, of course, that while a literate Moslem speaks Urdu, he or she does not read it but reads Hindi (in the Devanagari script). This may be shown by the presence of copies of the Koran I have seen in several mosques with the original Arabic on one part of the page, with a Hindi translation and a transliteration of the Arabic into Devanagari script on the rest of the page. Sikhs, although found all over India, speak Punjabi as their first language and most Sikhs still live in the Punjab. But in order to communicate with non-Sikhs outside the Punjab, they would again speak the local language and, if educated, English, too. But for the Hindus, the picture is fairly simple if we distinguish, as we have been doing, between the educated minority and the less educated or uneducated majority. Let us take the largest group: in the Hindi belt, it is that language that is used both in its spoken form and its written form for all intents and purposes. English would be used in the law courts, for example, but for most people they would not have anything to do with such institutions. Of course, for the illiterate, there can be no real diglossic situation, since diglossia seems to be a distinction between a given language for written, and especially formal, purposes and another language for everyday spoken purposes. For other areas, we would maintain the same socio-economic distinction but the spoken language may be the regional one as well as other locally spoken languages the individual has contact with. But again for the illiterate, diglossia does not exist. For the educated Indian, however, English very often plays the role of the high language, while the local vernacular is the low language. The Hindi belt seems to present an exception, where it is more likely that Hindi is used for both formal (or official) and informal purposes; hence, there is no diglossia as such. There may, however, be diglossia between the official Hindi (written as ‘Hindi’ – between quotation marks – by Rai (2000); see

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Chapter 1) and spoken Hindi, with its numerous dialects. Hindi speakers even within educational institutions may fail Hindi language examinations because of substantial differences between the language they speak and the language they learn with all its Sankritisation. The situation described in Chapter 1 concerning the south seems to depict a diglossic situation, although a diglossia which is dissimilar to Goa in its structure. In the south, English is the high and the local language the low language. Hindi may be encroaching here and there but so far it seems to be restricted to popular culture, a category that does not sit well with the diglossic situation of high and low languages and which shows the weakness of such an approach. Diglossia may not, then, be an appropriate model to explain the linguistic situation in Goa or in India as a whole. There are some indications of a diglossic situation but the constituents are far from the clearly diglossic situation found in Arabic, for example. Here, we have one written variety, with a more or less agreed upon spoken version (with some geographical variants), used in literature and in the media, for example. The low variety, as it were, is the local Arabic dialect, for which there is no writing system. Spoken Arabic is usually not written in the conventional Arabic alphabet. Any outsider wishing to learn it would find required textbooks written in Latin characters in Europe and in Israel for example, textbooks on Palestinian Arabic would use Hebrew letters to depict the local spoken variety.4 Notes 1. In other places in India, such advertising is in English where it relates to international or national business but posters concerning local matters and businesses tend to be in the local language. 2. The term ‘Portuguese India’ includes not only Goa but the two small enclaves in Gujarat, Daman and Diu. Many of the figures that refer to Goa before liberation in 1961, in fact, include these two enclaves (see Chapter 2). However, because of the small numbers of people involved in Daman and Diu, the overall figure still reflects, although not in absolute terms, the situation in Goa itself. 3. Although this is true for the population as a whole, we are, in fact, looking at the élite population (or élites). The proportion of Christians among the élites is higher than their proportion in the population. For most, the choice of language is probably dependent entirely on local circumstances, while the choice in a diglossic situation is more contingent on macro-factors. 4. However, in recent research, a diglossic situation between classical and literary Arabic, on the one hand and spoken Arabic, on the other, does not seem to be recognised by Arabic speakers (Amara and Mari, 2001).

Chapter 5

Caste and Migration as Social Phenomena in Goa Introduction So far, the discussion concerning the linguistic situation in Goa seems to be similar that to other parts of India, especially the southern states. In fact, some of it may sound like a repetition of what was said in Chapter 1 except for the differences in the names and places. However, the status of Konkani as the official language and the general attitude towards it is not a repetition of what was said about the official languages of other states. It has to be remembered that, as well as the general attitude held by its speakers towards the language, the number of speakers of Konkani is one of the lowest among the official languages (i.e. Schedule VIII languages, see Chapter 1) with 1.7 million speakers. Only Meithi (or Manipuri, as the name of the language appears in the Schedule), a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in north-east India has less speakers (1.3 million according to the 1991 census) and Nepali has half-a-million speakers more than Konkani (2.2 million).1 In this chapter, we shall deal with two social phenomena. One may be considered static – the caste system, while the second is dynamic – the demographic changes that have taken place not only within Goa but, more importantly, the effect of the movement of Goans out of their homeland.

Caste If we bring up the issue of caste, we also seem to be dealing with an allIndian phenomenon. Caste distinctions, despite efforts of central figures in the pre-independence freedom movement and the Indian government (e.g. Mahatma Gandhi), pervade Indian society. It is now forbidden to ask in the census what caste a person belongs to but those who do not belong to any caste – the untouchables and tribals – enter a ‘Catch–22’ situation, since they cannot obtain government help unless they declare that they are untouchables or tribals (these are what are euphemistically called the 70

Where East Looks West Caste and Migration

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Scheduled Castes and Tribes). While Question 7 on the Census of India 2001 questionnaire asks simply for religion (Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Sikh, etc.), the following questions (8 and 9) ask: ‘If Scheduled Caste (Tribe), write name of the Scheduled Caste (Tribe) from the list supplied’. There are religious communities which have succeeded in abandoning the caste system altogether. Some of these communities that sprang originally from Hinduism – Buddhists, Sikhs2 and those belonging to the Jain community – are still broadly considered Hindus. Then, there are those communities which have left the Hindu religion and adopted a different religion, for example the Moslems, who were converted during the period of Moslem hegemony, especially in the north, and the Christians (we have discussed Goan Christians in Chapter 2). We also find immigrants to India from other religious traditions, e.g. the Jews, who play, of course, no part in the caste system. But placing the Christians in the list in the previous paragraph of communities which have abandoned the caste system is not accurate, especially, but not only, in Goa. Whereas Buddhists, Sikhs, Jainists, Moslems, etc. do not have such social divisions within their society, among Goan Christians there is still an awareness of which caste the family belonged to and, in fact, still belongs to today. Although religious duties and rituals do not show any caste distinction, for many Christian families it still seems to be important when it comes to marriage that their children marry in the same caste or higher. Here is an example of a classified advertisement for matrimonials in the press: R.C. Working girl 27/155. Wheatish3 slim smart seeks well placed Groom . . . Caste No Bar . . . (Times of India, 31 October 1999) in which the very fact that it is mentioned that caste is not a bar paradoxically reflects the existence of castes among Indian Christians. Today, when caste is mentioned among Christians, this usually pertains to the upper, priestly caste of Brahmins, as in the following advertisement: Converted Roman Catholic (Brahmin) parents seeking alliance for daughter, . . . from any Christian community . . . (The Hindu, 17 February 2002) (For such classified advertisements among Hindus, see later.) The retention of caste identity among Christians becomes even more important when we look at the history of the Portuguese colony. When conversions began, Jesuit and Franciscan priests decided to convert the leaders of the particular community, whether they were Brahmin or Kshatriya, the warrior caste (see Chapter 2). They decided that if they were to be successful in

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converting the community leaders, the general public would follow their leaders. If the Brahmin were converted, the whole community would follow (Borges, 1987). And that is what happened. We find in Goa entire Christian villages, and villages with a Christian majority, while other villages are predominantly Hindu. Much of the population in the coastal areas, the velhas conquistas (Old Conquests) are Christian – these were the areas settled by the Portuguese invaders. Most of the population in the hinterland, the nuevas conquistas (New Conquests), are Hindu. This was occupied by the Portuguese later on in the 18th century, after the major waves of conversion took place. Moreover, Christian priests are mainly from the Brahmin caste. ‘Non-Brahmin candidates for priesthood’, states Miranda (1978: 85), ‘are known to have often received discouragement in the seminaries’. Although the Portuguese used a variety of methods to wipe out nonChristian customs of the Goans, there was no attempt to suppress the caste distinctions. The Portuguese saw in the caste system a social phenomenon similar to European class distinctions: Aware that working with the lower castes would demote them in the eyes of others, they sought converts from among the latter convinced they would establish the faith on a sounder footing. (Borges, 1987: 50) Rao’s (1963: 43) argument that lower classes of people more easily changed their faith to Catholicism, and that the Brahmins had ‘nothing but hatred towards the aliens and their religion’ cannot be taken at face value, for his book was written shortly after liberation and formed part of an anti-Portuguese polemic. This phenomenon was not peculiar to Goa. In other areas in the south where the Jesuits reached and began to convert the local population (but far less successfully than in Goa because there was no military force behind the church’s actions), the same approach to the Brahmin (and less to the Kshatriya) caste may be found. Zupanov (1999) describes the early 17thcentury conflict between Roberto Nobili, an Italian Jesuit, and Gonçalo Fernandes, a much older Portuguese Jesuit priest, over conversion methods in Madurai, in modern-day Tamil Nadu. Nobili became acculturated in order to win over members of the local population (with very limited success). He would wear Brahmin dress and even put sandalwood marks on his forehead, claiming that these were marks of aristocracy and did not have any religious significance. In fact, it may be claimed that Nobili’s methods had its roots in Loyola’s injunction: one starts at the top and lets the new ideas trickle down (Zupanov, 1999: 52). Brahmin Christians in Goa were even allowed by special dispensation of Pope Gregory XV in 1623 to wear the sacred thread and other caste markings (Shirodkar & Mandal, 1993: 9).

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As for the Hindu population, as is general with the rest of India, the caste system is central to their social structure. Again, we would expect that parents, in the matrimonial columns of the newspapers, would look for spouses of the same or higher caste for their children; and, just like the Christians, it is mainly the Brahmins who would state that they are looking for a prospective son- or daughter-in-law from the same caste. Among Hindus, the caste, and it is almost invariably one of the higher castes, is freely mentioned in matrimonial advertisements, as may be seen in the following two examples (for ‘GSB’, a Brahmin subcaste, in the second example, see later): Telugu Brahmin, M.Sc., Ph.D./Biochemistry . . . very fair, goodlooking seeks highly professionally qualified boy . . . (The Hindu, 17 February 2002) GSB parents invite alliance for daughter 26/5’3’ fair slim convent educated B.E.Computer working with . . . (Times of India, 31 October 1999) Christian Brahmins would be prominent among those Goans who support education in English and the unofficial use of English in all walks of life. That does not mean that they are English speakers only. They do speak Konkani, just like the rest of the local population. They use Konkani in their religious services, for prayer books and bibles are written in Konkani. But this Konkani is written in roman script, not in Devanagari. Christian Goans often say that they cannot read Devanagari or that they read it with difficulty. The transfer from reading Konkani in roman script to reading English does not seem to be difficult, assuming of course that the person knows English. There is no need to learn another alphabet. If they can read Konkani in roman script and understand it, it cannot be too difficult for them to read English in the same script if they speak English (despite the inconsistent spelling system of English). Many families speak English at home, using Konkani for daily routine outside the home, in the church services and to the domestic staff. But even in the case of religious services, there is an English language alternative. For example, in Panaji, the capital of Goa, apart from the Sunday services in regular churches such as the Church of the Immaculate Conception, which are in Konkani, there is a church, in the building of the Don Bosco School on the western side of town which holds Sunday services in English. The caste among the Hindus that is in favour of English education is also the Brahmins, especially the caste which is known as the Gauda Saraswati Brahmins (GSB), although they are also keen supporters of Konkani. The Brahmins are traditionally the priestly caste and hence, the caste of

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learning. This tradition has continued up to today. The GSBs are proud of their learning and are enthusiastic supporters of English education. They are also proud of their own traditions. Among the Goan Hindus, the Saraswatis are the élite and perhaps, many of the Goan Christian Brahmins may have come from this particular group. We also find GSBs in Kerala. There are a number of theories as to their origin, partly legend partly history. The Saraswatis have been identified with an ancient tribe flourishing in the Indus region in the north around 3000 BCE. Some people held that while some of them moved south to the Konkan region, others moved eastward to Bengal (Janardhan, 1991: 12–13). The movement (at least southward) was probably due to the drying up of the Sarasvati river, which ran in the north-west region of India into the Rann of Kutch. Recent research has shown that there are signs that a river did exist at one time but dried up probably as a result of severe earthquakes in the area. There might be no direct connection between the fate of the river and migrations but Indian legends seem to show that such a connection did exist. The move eastward seems to be used to show the closeness between Konkani speakers and Sanskrit, the classical Indian language, and thus, the superiority of this caste. No evidence, linguistic or otherwise, however, has been found that supports this eastward migration and Konkani connections with Bengali (Wagle, 1970; Saldanlin, 1904: 53). Saraswatis claim that they come from the Brahmin caste – hence their name – but others believe that they are usurpers, using some fake Brahmin ancestry to maintain their superiority (Wagle, 1970: 22–3). Part of the opposition to the Brahmin attribution of the Saraswatis arose from the legend, in the Indian epic, the Mahabharata, in which Saraswati survived a 12-yearlong drought by eating one fish a day. This drought may represent a reflection of the drying up of the river mentioned earlier. That Saraswati ate fish, and that he successfully persuaded his followers to do likewise in order to survive, is considered to be the source of the fish-eating habits of the Saraswati Brahmins. The eating of all flesh, including that of fish, is forbidden by those Brahmins who follow strictly the precepts of Hinduism. So, many Brahmins would not accept Saraswatis as Brahmins because they are not strictly vegetarian. However, the status of Saraswati Brahmins in Goa is of ‘a most progressive and influential community’ (Shirodkar & Mandal, 1993: 188). Just after the Portuguese conquest, Jesuit priests spoke of the ‘obstinacy, arrogance and unwillingness to reason’ of GSBs (Wagle, 1970: 21). Later, in the 19th century, we find in an article in the Bombay Presidency Gazeteer that spoke of the GSBs as ‘generally well off’, a ‘pushing and rising class’, ‘rising and prosperous’ and, of course, ‘they send their children to school’ (Wagle, p. 25) – not a regular occurrence at that time.

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Miranda (1978) is quite certain that the maintenance of Konkani is in great part due to the Hindu Brahmins. They have prepared much of the teaching material for primary schools in which Konkani has been introduced. As for Konkani dialects, it is their dialect that ‘shows clear signs of merging as the common standard literary dialect – at least in Goa’ (p. 80). Moreover, the ‘best of modern Konkani literature comes for the most part from the Hindu Brahmins of Goa’. We have, then, two groups of élites, one Christian, many of whom can trace their origins to a Brahmin family, and the elitist GSB, a Hindu caste. Both encourage their children not only to marry within the caste but before that time to study and to study in private schools where English is the medium of instruction. We also find the same phenomenon among politicians, be they Brahmins or not, be they Christians or Hindus, and the nouveaux riches. Politicians may speak about Konkani as the official language of the state of Goa, but this is mere lip service. They also send their children to private English-medium schools. The similar attitude adopted by the Christian and Hindu élite groups may be considered an ‘unholy alliance’. But within the normally tolerant Indian society, where ‘live and let live’ is one of the guiding principles, such a situation is acceptable. Another caste that has come up in this study is the Gomant Maratha Samaj, earlier called Devadasi, a temple prostitute caste. They had been discriminated against by the GSBs and there were allegations of sexual abuse, too. The Chief Minister after liberation, Dayanand Bandodkar, came from this caste and it may be assumed that part of the motivation behind his pro-Marathi and pro-Maharashtra policy was to destroy the Christian– Saraswati élite that was dominant in Goa. This caste has chalked up successes in Goa, while it is still downtrodden beyond the borders (Noronha, 1999). Readers may come to the conclusion that the status of the caste system in Goa, even though there are differences between Goa and the rest of India, still reflects the reality which exists outside the smallest state in India. The position of the Christians, they may continue, is interesting but only a local phenomenon. Let us, therefore, go on to the second topic of this chapter – Goan migration – which may also be considered a factor in the special set of circumstances that have led to the excellence of English among Goan students (or, perhaps more accurately, Konkani-speaking students).

Migration When we examine the influence of the west on India, we may point to various events in the distant past; for example, Alexander of Macedon reached the Hyphasis (now Beas) River in 326 BCE (in the modern states of

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Punjab and Himachal Pradesh). But such events were rare until we arrive to the early modern era. There was considerable trading among the nations on the coast of the Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean, e.g. Arabs and Persians. Rao (1963: 22) eulogises the pre-Portuguese contact in the following way: Under the Muslim rulers, during the 15th century, Goa made great progress. It became the meeting place of sailors of all eastern trading nations and also a focal point for all Muslims in South India. Muslim pilgrims to Mecca embarked from here. Contact with the west may be said to have been initiated in a meaningful way only when the Portuguese began their explorations around the world; the most famous explorer is probably Vasco da Gama, who landed near Calicut in modern-day Kerala in May 1498. A town on the Zuari River in Goa is named after him. The Portuguese reached Goa at the end of the 15th century but they were unable to land because of the resistance put up by the Moslem rulers of Bijapur, who wanted to make Goa capital of their Deccan empire (Rao, 1963: 22). However, finally, in 1510, the Portuguese general Afonso de Albuquerque landed and set up the cornerstone of a Portuguese colony in Goa (and in Daman and Diu – both in Gujarat – some 20 or so years later) which lasted for 450 years. However, Goan migration did not start as a result of the Portuguese invasion. It had started some few hundred years previously. The presence of Konkani speakers in Kerala, around the city of Kochi, is due to a wave of migration in the 12th and 13th centuries. This was Hindu migration, of course, well before the Portuguese or any other westerner, i.e. Christian, arrived as conquerors but probably in the wake of Moslem incursions into India, which were beginning at that time. There is also evidence of Goans acting as interpreters in the various kingdoms on the coast of the Arabian Sea and even working as sailors. Goans and other coastdwellers took up this means of livelihood despite a religious edict (the ‘kala pani’; Teotonio de Souza, personal communication, 2001) at the time forbidding Hindus from leaving Indian soil (Sinha, 1999: 31). When it came to work and survival, however, the realities of life were (and are) stronger. Among Hindus living in some of the coastal regions, including Goa, there are many fish-eaters, although strict vegetarianism seems to be the general rule (Robert Newman, personal communication, 2001; see also previous section). The Portuguese conquest of Goa, or at first only the coastal regions (velhas conquistas), led to forced conversions within the first 40 years. This convinced many Hindus who wanted to remain loyal to their ancient faith to escape into the hinterland and to the regions south of Goa. Hence, in the 16th century, we find Konkani-speaking communities developing around

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Mangalore and further migrations to the Konkani-speaking communities in Kerala. Then, during the Maratha troubles4 in the 17th and 18th centuries, came further expansion of the Portuguese enclave in 1763 and 1788, at the end of which the entire area which is today known as Goa came under their control; this convinced the new inhabitants of Portuguese Goa (in the nuevas conquistas) that the sooner they leave Goa the better. So, in such trying circumstances Goan Hindus moved southward to join the Konkani-speaking community in Kerala. In other circumstances, when there was a shortage of employment in the colony and when the Maratha raids were stepped up in the 18th century, some 60,000 Goan Christians moved southward, this time mainly to the Mangalore area in Karnataka, since at that time it was partly under Portuguese influence (as described in Chapter 2). However, some years later, when the situation calmed down, 10,000 Goan Christians returned to Goa. These migrations explain not only the spread of the Konkani language but also the problem of standardising the language today. There are at least three communities of Konkani speakers in different states, each of which have their own traditions, not to mention various dialects in each of the areas, and different orthographies (see also Chapter 2). Attempts, however, are being made today to unite the efforts but so far to very little avail. Emigration from Goa to India started even before the British became masters of India. The Portuguese at the time of their occupation of Goa did not land only there but also some landed further to the north and, as has been mentioned, to the south in modern-day Karnataka and Kerala. In the north, the Portuguese occupied what became to be known as the Bombay islands. In fact, the site of modern-day Bombay (Mumbai) was Portuguese territory until 1665, when the Portuguese king, Afonso VI, gave it to the English king, Charles II, as dowry on his marriage to Catherine of Braganza, the daughter of the late king, John IV. The English crown then transferred the territory to the East India Company three years later (Alden 1996: 195). But before that event, the Portuguese had sent priests to convert the Indians, and to serve their spiritual needs. These priests were accompanied by people who had to serve the priest and the Christian community. So, the ‘Goan cook and the sacristan followed the priest’ (D’Souza 1975: 200). Bombay offered more job opportunities to Goan Christians who did not see their future in agriculture, for only in the 20th century did industry begin to develop in Goa itself. A further ‘unofficial’ invasion resulted in the Goans being introduced to British India. In light of the general military and economic weakness of their Portuguese allies, during the Napoleonic Wars at the beginning of the 19th century, the British entered and occupied Goa in order to protect their empire (see Chapter 4). They found the Goan Christians more similar to

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them than the Indians they were used to, so on leaving Portuguese territory after the war, many Goan workers left with them, while the Goan élite (the batcaras – landlords, and decedentes – Euroasians) stayed behind (Pinto, 1962: 1–2). The economic factor, especially the lack of work, also contributed to further waves of migration. This began to take place in the 19th century. Goans, especially Christians, looked for work beyond the borders of the Portuguese colony – at first in British India. With the British developing Bombay as an important centre in the 19th century, educated Goans arrived to join the workforce, especially in the administration. The British seemed to have put their faith in the Parsi community5 and in the immigrant Goans to help them run their administration. Unlike the general Indian population, the British found the Goan Catholics closer to themselves, more ‘European’. This preference for outsiders or small minorities to staff the administration may be seen as a common occurrence in colonial regimes (Rustow, 1968). For example, in the Hapsburg empire, among the public servants were many French, Spanish, Italian and Irish officials. The same for the Ottoman Turks whose public officials were often Balkan Christians converted to Islam. But Goans did not only go to Bombay. Communities of ex-Goans sprung up in some of the other major cities of India. The following figures come from Karachi, which is now in Pakistan. In the baptism register of the Goan community of 1836, we find cooks, soldiers (although this may refer to bandsmen), musicians, a baker, a butler, as well as apothecaries and clerks.6 Of the 34 fathers whose names appear in the register, about one-third of them can be labelled as educated professionals. In 1896, in the register of St Patrick’s, we find the converse: two-thirds of the fathers can be called educated professionals, e.g. clerks, doctors, engineers (Haward, 1980: 301, 304). A Goan school report at the beginning of the 20th century addressed the importance of English among Goans, and the constant flow of emigrants to English-speaking India: [E]migration is . . . [Goa’s] only safety valve; and the powers that be would only enhance their claim upon the gratitude of the people by encouraging such of the English substitutions as enabled the youth to acquire the necessary baggage to emigrate. (de Sequeira, 1903) In fact, stated the report, the prosperity of Goans depended on emigration. Learning English helped Goans to find good jobs in British India once they emigrated, which then led to emigrants sending money back to Goa to help their families back home. The Portuguese colony was kept relatively prosperous because of these funds. This was recognised, too, by the Portuguese.

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Emigration especially to British India was seen as a way of stabilising the Goan economy A emigrão goesa, derramada por toda a India vizinha, era . . . um factor de estabilizão. Goan emigration, spilling into all of neighbouring India, was . . . one factor of stabilization. (da Silva Rego, 1969: 359) The partial dependency of Goans on money from abroad is still the case today. Mascarenhas-Keyes (1987), in her study of an unnamed north Goan village, noted that 85% of Catholic households in the village receive cash income from current migrants or pension benefits from returnees. There was considerable controversy concerning the type of emigrant leaving Goa. The Portuguese insisted that it was the unskilled worker who could not make a living in the colony that crossed the border to look for a better living. We have figures from various sources. Official Portuguese sources (da Cunha 1924: 253), written by apparent apologists of the regime, gave the data in Table 5.1 of registered emigrants from Goa, who belong to well-defined but lowly paid professions. However, the same writers (given as Froilano de Melo and Serborio C. Lobo (da Cunha, 1924: 252–3)) claim that the total of registered emigrants at that time was 31,336; that is in the detailed list they gave, they did not account for the other 47%. It may be assumed that these were either unskilled labourers or, more probably, in light of the pro-Portuguese position of the authors, educated professionals. Moreover, many of the Goans settling outside Goa claimed to be English speakers. Whether they left Goa as English speakers may be difficult to show but there is no doubt that once they arrived in Bombay and other cities, they adopted English, the language of the rulers, and used Konkani Table 5.1 Registered Goan emigrées in the 1920s, according to profession Labourers

6832

Servants

2208

Cooks

1692

Butlers

1446

Workers

743

Nannies

2274

Maidservants Total

1345 16540

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only for domestic matters. They also had to acquire a sufficient amount of the local language to communicate with the local Indians (in Bombay this would be Marathi). But according to Haward, they had no doubt that English was their native language: There was a conscious effort on the part of aspiring Goans to forego Konkani and learn English. (Haward, 1980: 310) English, Haward continues, is part of the Western cultural tradition that Goans insist they belong to. In all the reports so far, we have been talking of Goan Catholics. There were, obviously, Goan Hindus who emigrated to other parts of India but they did not seem to form a recognisable community, since their traditions and the language of the sacred texts were similar to the general population among whom they lived. There is very little information with regard to their numbers and subsequent development. Towards the end of the 19th century, we witness another wave of emigration – this time overseas, to the British possessions in East Africa (Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika). These Goans could have come from Goa itself or from British India. The opening up of the railways in East Africa offered many job opportunities, not in technical fields but as cooks and support staff. By 1915, Goans in East Africa were moving into whitecollared jobs (Albuquerque 1998). The colonial administration distinguished between Indians belonging to the Raj, and outsiders from Goa and from Pondicherry, the French possession on the east coast of India. They also distinguished other minority communities from the general population such as the Parsis (see note 5). When we take a look at the number of ‘Asians’ (in fact, former residents of the Indian sub-continent) that were living in East Africa, we find a vast majority of Hindus, as would be expected, a much smaller number of Moslems and a noticeable group of Goans. These Goans are Christians. Moreover, they were not even considered ‘Asians’ by the local authorities, unlike other Indians, Arabs and other much smaller ethnic groups (Morris, 1968: 17). Goan Hindus were probably included in the groups of Hindus because of their religious affinity with the majority. Figures available from the first year after Indian independence (1948) show that in Uganda, which was then still a British colony, there were 33,767 Indians and a separate group of 1448 Goans (Morris, 1968: 182).7 This separation is also seen in the number of trading licences issued according to caste/sect group and indirectly according to the Indian language spoken by the traders. There were 79 such licences issued to ‘Goan Christians’, as they were called (p. 185), compared to 3517 Hindu traders and 1862 Moslem traders. As for language, 84 traders registered Konkani or English as their native language

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Table 5.2 Number of emigrant Goans in 1954 (from D’Souza (1975: 203)) Bombay

80,000

Other parts of India

20,000

Karachi

10,000

Other parts of Pakistan

20,000

Kenya and Uganda

30,000

Persian Gulf

20,000

Total

180,000

compared, for example to almost five-and-a-half thousand Gujarati speakers who applied for trading licences (p. 182). Just as the British in India employed Goans in the imperial administration, emigrant Goans to East Africa found themselves in a favourable position as far as the local administration was concerned. These Goans were Catholic, were educated at English schools and had gradually become ‘so closely identified with the British administration that they had been classed as a separate “race” in the population censuses of East Africa’ (Morris, 1968: 142). So, Goan migration towards the end of the 19th century and into the 20th century were to two areas under British control – India and East Africa and in which English was by far the dominant language among the élite. An estimate of the numbers of Goans abroad in 1954 is given in Table 5.2. Jose Almeida (1964: 268) gives figures for emigrant Goans on the eve of liberation (in 1961). These data refer only to Goans living in India itself. He claimed that 128,501 lived in India, with the vast majority of them (78.9%) living in the neighbouring state of Maharashtra. With such a large proportion of emigrant Goans in Maharashtra, it may not be surprising that after liberation there was a strong movement to annex Goa to Maharashtra (see Chapter 2). Every Goan Christian, writes Pinto (1962: 3), high and low, rich and poor, batcar and mundcar [landlord and tenant], looked upon emigration as the only hope of their survival. Even for the Portuguese authorities, emigration was a blessing in disguise, for it became a profitable source of foreign currency earnings, from the remittances of Goans living abroad to their families still living in Goa (Almeida, 1964: 269). As we have seen (see above), this had been true for a very long time and it is certainly a way to help Goa today. The majority of emigrant Goans are living in English-speaking commu-

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nities, including communities in India and Pakistan where English functions almost officially as a lingua franca. The only exception is the Persian Gulf, where the language of the native community is Arabic. But even there, English, in fact, serves as a lingua franca through force of circumstances, as is also the case in many places on the globe. Goans (as well as Indians from other parts of the country) moved to the Gulf States especially during the oil boom in the 1970s, since their technical training which they had received in Goa or in Bombay was in demand by the oil-producing countries (Mascarenhas-Keyes, 1987: 90). Goans have claimed that they are English speakers and over a length of time they began to forget their original native language, Konkani. That seems to be the situation today – at the beginning of the 21st century – and had been the case for many years. The link between ex-Goans and Englishspeaking countries has continued ever since. After the East African states had become independent in the early part of the 1960s, not only were Goans no longer citizens of their adopted countries (Mascarenhas-Keyes, 1987: 88) but there was also a gradual increase in animosity to the British subjects of Asian origin, i.e. Indians. Ex-Goans started to leave, and the big push came in Uganda in 1972 when the Ugandan leader, Idi Amin, decided to expel the Indians. The principal haven that they went to, even though it was not as hospitable as all that, was Britain. But many went to other English-speaking countries, such as the United States, Canada and Australia. Much more recently we have witnessed, as previously mentioned, numbers of Goans, and Indians in general, looking for greener pastures in the Gulf States. Here, we may be talking more of a temporary move than something permanent, which seems to be the case of established communities in the other countries. However, that is speculation.

The Goan Diaspora The relationship between Goa today and its ‘diaspora’ abroad (or, as Mascarenhas-Keyes (1994: 154) calls it, the ‘international Catholic Goan Community’) can be illustrated by a convention of overseas Goans, which took place at the end of December 1999 at the Institute Menezes Braganza in Panaji.8 Around 100 participants were present, many of them from overseas, although a majority of the participants lived in Goa. Despite the efforts of the compère and one of the organisers, who began their addresses in Konkani, the mood of the participants was that the discussions should be in English, and so they were after a short time.9 The questionnaire that was prepared for the student populations analyzed in the second part (see Chapter 8) was also distributed among the convention participants. However, this was done informally and the number of returned forms was

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only 15; moreover, although they were asked to state where they live and how long they have been living in that place, very few actually gave this information. We do not know how many live abroad in English-speaking countries or in a Gulf state or how many in Goa or elsewhere in India. There is no basis for a statistical analysis but certain trends do appear from the little data we have. First, what we have seen so far concerning Goan emigration and relations with Goans overseas is that the main community that identifies itself as Goan is Catholic. Of the 15 who filled in the questionnaire, only two were Hindus. Both were women, and neither of them were Konkani speakers. One claimed Tamil as her native language and the second Malayalam (the official language of Kerala). Both claimed good English and one of them claimed good Marathi, since she had been living in Bombay (in Maharashtra). Among the Catholics, there were also two women and the rest were male. One of the women gave Marathi as her native language, while the other gave English. Both correspond with people overseas, using only English in their correspondence. This has been seen as an important factor in keeping up a high standard of English, for it is assumed that the relatives and friends abroad have either lost or have only a weak knowledge of what was once their native language (see Chapter 8). Four of the men claimed English as their native language, while one wrote both Konkani and English. One older man (aged 62) gave Portuguese as his native language. He added that he had lived for some time in Lisbon. Any correspondence he has with people overseas is in Portuguese. The other males gave Konkani as their native language but stated that they correspond mainly in English. There are Goan associations in several countries (which indicates the existence of an international Catholic Goan Community). It was on the basis of these associations that the Convention of Overseas Goans was organised. Most of the members in Britain came from East Africa in the 1960s and 1970s and are Christian. Konkani speakers are found only among the older generation, although younger people may pick up a few phrases in Konkani on visits to Goa. English is, of course, the language of education and of everyday communication (Eddie d’Sa, personal communication, 1999). The same may be said about Goan associations in Australia (Arlene da Silva, personal communication, 1999) and New Zealand (Mauricio Vis, personal communication, 1999). In Tanzania, the situation is not much different, even though the history of Goans in East Africa has followed a distinct track. The first Goans arrived in Dar-es-Salaam in 1892; they were mainly civil servants, tradesmen and artisans (Joe Pereira, personal com-

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munication). Today, they number around 500 families, including no more than 100 families that still speak some Konkani at home. We may look at the Goan diaspora as a set of communities spread over the world but ‘whose center is elsewhere’ (Taylor 1994, cited by Tambiah 2000: 169). Tambiah speaks of two sets of networks of such communities: (1) vertical networks, which reflect the relationship between the migrant community and the host country; and (2) lateral networks. The latter are of two kinds: (a) the interaction between the migrants and their communities of origin, which is reflected in people sending remittances home, returning to marry, etc.; and (b) transnational global networks, linking the locations of the diaspora, which ‘need not be articulated through a real or symbolic homeland’ (Tambiah, 2000: 172). Members of such a network would support the homeland at a distance but are more concerned with communication between various migrant communities. This type of network is helped by communication technology. If we place Goa against this background, at the moment we do not find a transnational diaspora but with the gradual loss of the native language among Goans living abroad, the type of migrant community may eventually change. It is the combination of the factors discussed here and in previous chapters which seem to lead to the dominance of English among educated and/or well-off Goans.10 What we have presented so far is an overview of the sociolinguistic situation in India, in general, and in Goa, in particular. We have also looked at the history of the Portuguese colony and its long history of migration. This has led to the creation of a Goan diaspora with which there is frequent contact. The next question to be answered is whether we see a similar situation on the ground in Goa (to be compared to two areas to the south where there are Konkani-speaking populations). The situation in Goa differs from the general Indian picture due to a number of factors which we have focused upon: the separate history of Goa in relation to the rest of India; the use of a European language, Portuguese, as the language of administration; the long tradition of migration which has naturally led to the adoption of new languages; and the present status of Konkani as the official language in Goa (a status which seems to exist on paper only). If we ask and examine Konkani speakers about their knowledge and use of English, and their attitude towards Konkani, will we get similar results? This is to be discussed in the second part of this volume. Notes 1. Nepali is, of course, the official language of Nepal but the figures here relate to India only. Nepali is the most widely spoken language in Sikkim and in Darjeeling and environs, in the north-east corner of India.

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2. Although Question 8 on the Census questionnaire does state further that a member of a Scheduled Caste ‘can be only among Hindus, Sikhs and Buddhists’. 3. In this classified advertisement and one of following the pair, the colour of the girl is an important factor in the description. The epithets ‘wheatish’ and ‘fair’ are synonymous with ‘white skinned’, i.e. Western-looking. The same can be said for the epithet ‘slim’ in both, another Western characteristic of female beauty. This is interesting but not relevant to our discussion. 4. ‘Troubles’ from a Portuguese (and even English) point of view. The charismatic hero of part of the Maratha uprising, Shivaji, is not only a hero in India and in Maharashtra, in particular, but also in Goa (see also Chapter 2, note 8). The statue of Sambhaji on horseback, Shivaji’s son, who eventually succeeded him, is found outside the Goan town of Ponda. Sambhaji defeated the Portuguese in 1683, but the capital (it was then Old Goa) was saved by Mughal forces attacking the rear of Sambhaji’s forces. They chased the Maratha leader until his capture and execution in 1689 (Alden, 1996: 203). 5. Followers of Zoroastrianism who hold, among other things, that fire, earth, water and air are sacred. 6. Although clerks may not be regarded as professionals today, it must be remembered that we are speaking of the 19th century, when there was no universal education. A clerk, although he was not paid well (we may have the picture in our minds of Bob Cratchit in Charles Dickens’ Christmas Carol, sitting on a high stool in Scrooge’s office), was still a member of one of the professional classes. 7. As well as other minority groups and, of course, almost five million Africans. 8. This convention seems to have turned into an annual event. 9. This is not true for internal meetings in Goa. At a celebratory function on the publication of the first volume of a Konkani–English dictionary in Devanagari, held in the same Panaji institute, the proceedings were entirely in Konkani. This, of course, is expected, for only those people enthusiastic about Konkani would think of coming to such a meeting and there is no need to insist on speaking Konkani. This would be done naturally. 10. The ‘and/or’ has to be explained. Not all educated Goans are well off and not all well-off Goans are educated. English is the dominant language among those who are educated, since education is in English from the fifth grade, if not earlier. English is also the dominant language among those Goans who can afford to send their children to private English-speaking schools.

Part 2

Field Study and Analysis

Chapter 6

Language Acquisition Introduction The discussion in the first part of this study was at a general level, in the realm of the sociology of language. Since the declared purpose of this work is to find reasons, if that is at all possible, why Konkani speakers attain the highest average scores in the world in the TOEFL examinations, we also have to take a look at the conditions that enable a person to acquire a second language to a near-native level (or in the case of India, to a level of competence perceived there as native). I do not propose a new theory of second language acquisition;1 this study is basically a sociolinguistic account of favourable conditions for language acquisition. I shall take Spolsky’s (1989) comprehensive study of such conditions as a framework for investigating how far the conditions in Goa, and among Konkani speakers, are optimal for the acquisition of English to the required level.

Conditions for Second Language Acquisition Spolsky sets out 11 sets of conditions, based on an extensive bibliography which deals with language acquisition. All in all, there are 74 conditions. Each of the sets focuses on one area of language acquisition. For example, there is one set of conditions relating to what it means if someone has knowledge of a language, another relates to the measurement of language knowledge and skills and a third to attitudinal factors, such as motivation, that are said to aid language acquisition. Spolsky also classifies these conditions according to whether they are necessary to language acquisition or whether they are typical but not necessary. Furthermore, all but two of the typicality conditions and a number of necessary conditions may be what Spolsky calls graded, which he defines as ‘a relation between the amount or extent to which a condition is met and the nature of the outcome’ (Spolsky, 1989: 14). However, our focus will be on those conditions that relate directly to the material discussed in the first part of this book and to the data gathered from the questionnaires distributed among students in Goa, Mangalore and Kochi, which form the basis of further dis89

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cussion in this part. In the present chapter, this means that we shall be looking at selective conditions; most of the conditions will be left out, as they are not of concern to the present study. All but two of the conditions discussed here may be classified as typical but not necessary for language acquisition to take place. What this implies is that we are looking at those conditions which enhance acquisition, not at the conditions necessary to acquisition that are found only among Konkani speakers. Acquisition of English, after all, is successfully accomplished by speakers of other languages, too. First, Spolsky’s Condition 2, which relates to the target of language acquisition. He calls this condition ‘Native speaker target condition’ in which the learner ‘aims to approximate native speaker language’. Although the nature of the English of the Konkani speaker is not central to this discussion,2 we are looking at a situation in the Indian linguistic panorama. In India, as in other places where English is not the native language of the local population (e.g. Singapore), a dialect of English has arisen whose speakers claim that it should be recognised as an acceptable version of the international language – an alternative standard English language in the particular country. In India, not only is there a literature written in English (including such prize-winning authors as Anita Desai, Vikram Seth and Arundhati Roy) but local laws and regulations are also in English and highschool and college-level education tends to be in English, too. The question here is which English? No longer is it necessary to emulate the English spoken in Britain. India has its own home-bred English and this is the target of acquiring English in India – English as a native language of fluent English-speaking Indians.3 Hayhoe and Parker (1994)’s collection of papers is appropriately titled Who Owns English! The answer is no longer the British and not even the Americans. Linked to this condition are two further conditions. Condition 23 of Spolsky’s 74 conditions relates to native pronunciation. Again, we have to look at the question of pronunciation from an Indian perspective. We are not expecting anything like BBC English4 or some standardised pronunciation of American English but a pronunciation that is recognisable as Indian English, including retroflex consonants. This condition is one of several that relate to individual psychological factors that influence language learning and addresses specifically the issue of age: at which age should one start teaching a second language? In the Indian situation, on the assumption that the vast majority of school students do not know English as a native language (see Chapter 2) but are fluent native speakers of one of the state or local languages, children come into the school system with the ability to communicate in their native language. The earlier they start to learn a second language, ‘the better chance [they have] to develop a native-

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like pronunciation’ (Spolsky, 1989: 19). We have seen that private schools have been set up to educate the children not in their native language but in English, because of the demands of society in general as well as the demands of the educational system at later stages. Whereas children in the government schools usually begin English at the age of 10 or 11 (either as a school subject or as the medium of instruction or both), children who go to private schools and even private kindergartens, if available, acquire a good English, since everything is in English. Their fluency and pronunciation become native in the Indian context. As I have previously pointed out, the aim of this study is not to study the English of Indian-born speakers but to explain their successful examination performance in the language. Let us deal, therefore, with sets of conditions that are more central to the questions asked. One issue that I have discussed at length is the structure of and especially the status of the native language, in this case Konkani. As to structure, one of the necessary and graded conditions for successfully acquiring another language (Condition 34) is the situation in which the native language and the language being learned are closely related. We may illustrate this with examples from Europe: speakers of Danish may not have much trouble with Norwegian or Swedish, speakers of Czech will not have any trouble with Slovak and perhaps not even with Polish. The Yugoslav situation where Serbo-Croat was the official language under the communist regime is another example of two closely related languages which do not offer any difficulty in mutual understanding (until the break-up of the Yugoslav Federation, when Serbian and Croatian have become ‘separate’ languages). But what about English and Konkani? They are related to each other: both are IndoEuropean languages but English belongs to the western branch of the Germanic family of languages, while Konkani belongs to the Indian subbranch of the Indo-Aryan branch of the same large family of languages. Related they are but not closely at all (see a comparative study of several structures in the two languages, and grading by the US Foreign Service Institute, in Chapter 2). Similarities between English (and other European languages, especially the classical languages Latin and Greek) and Indian languages such as the classical Indian language, Sanskrit, were observed even before William Jones published his findings independently in 1786. For example, Filippo Sasetti in the mid-16th century showed how some Sanskrit and Italian words are similar. In 1583, Thomas Stephens, whom we have already met as the first major compiler of a Konkani grammar among the Jesuits (Chapter 2), ‘declared that Konkani and Marathi were related to Latin and Greek’ (Pereira, 1992: 29). However, there are substantial differences between Konkani and English, as pointed out in Chapter 2.

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Therefore, we may conclude that there is no way we can relate to Condition 34 as one of the conditions that may shed some light on the issue. The status of Konkani also plays an important role in this investigation. Here, we may relate to a set of conditions that show that the low esteem in which Konkani is held can only help in the acquisition of English or any other language that may be of higher status in Goa (Hindi has not yet attained this status). We are referring to Condition 43 and Conditions 45–47 of Spolsky’s model. Of these four conditions, the first, Condition 43, is, according to Spolsky, necessary, while the others are typical and graded: · Condition 43. Standard Language condition: Formal teaching situations are possible only with standardised languages. · Condition 45. Official Use condition: Prefer to teach or learn a language which is officially used or recognised. · Condition 46. Modernised Language condition: Prefer to teach or learn a language which is standardised and which has been modernised. · Condition 47. Great Tradition condition: Prefer to teach or learn a language which has a desirable Great Tradition (including a religion) associated with it. (Taken from Spolsky, 1989: 136) All of these conditions address the issue of standard language. As we have seen, Konkani, despite its official recognition as the state language of Goa, and its incorporation into Schedule VIII of the Indian Constitution (see Chapter 1), is not regarded with much esteem by its speakers. It is considered to be the home language but not the language to be spoken in wider forums, where English dominates. Part of the process of standardisation is the acceptance by the speakers of the language as their language for all intents and purposes (Haugen, 1966). In the case of Konkani, we find only lip service paid to this criterion, while, in reality, English is given the position of the sole language that counts for anything that is of any real value. There are attempts by various bodies, including government-subsidised organisations, to standardise the language. But the chances that Konkani will grow in stature in the near future are fairly slim. We can posit many reasons for this situation. Konkani is written in five or six possible writing systems, three of which exist in Goa itself – Devanagari, roman and even Kannada (although the latter is used more extensively in Karnataka; see Chapter 2). The language has competing dialects with seven in Goa alone, although the Antruzi dialect of Goa has been gaining ascendancy in this area (Pereira, 1992). Official bodies and politicians pay lip service to the language (as mentioned above and in previous chapters). The language is


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being used as the medium of instruction at the primary level (until fifth grade) and books are being prepared to accommodate the need for teaching material in the language but the pressure to learn English is greater. An analogy to support this contention can be made with the situation in Tamil Nadu, where despite a language with a proven history of several millennia, speakers of Tamil still prefer English for purposes outside the home (see Chapter 1). The status of Konkani, then, explains why Conditions 43 and 46 favour the acquisition of English. Condition 45, too, is relevant despite the official position of Konkani in Goa. The recognition of a language as the official language does not seem to be a necessary condition for that language to be preferred to any other language. A historical comparison may be made with the loss of the central role of Latin in Western Europe towards the end of the Middle Ages. It may have been considered to be the language of learning, the language of diplomacy and, of course, the language of the (Catholic) church, but preference was gradually being given by the population, including, of course, the educated sections of it, to the vernacular languages. As for the Great Tradition (Condition 47), this has been discussed in connection with the controversy concerning Konkani in relation to Marathi (Chapters 2 and 3). One camp still claims that Konkani is a dialect of the literary language, Marathi, while the majority camp considers that on the basis of historical and linguistic data Konkani is a separate language. There is no extant Konkani literature prior to the Portuguese invasion of 1510. The only documents that have been found are village records, and various copperplates with land gifts inscribed on them. The writing system used was an early form of the Kannada script. Religious and other devotional writings in Konkani written in the roman script began to appear under the Portuguese. These works were, of course, Christian in nature. The Hindus, in contrast, turned to a language which had a rich extant literature of a both secular and religious nature; this was Marathi. With the Konkani–Marathi controversy breaking out at the end of the 19th century (see Chapter 2), eventually developing into the violent demonstrations in the 1980s over the official language issue in Goa and then the re-emergence of the controversy in 2000 (see Chapter 3), we have seen a very slow and gradual reawakening of a Konkani literature and of other cultural artifacts. So far, no Great Tradition has been successfully imposed on or accepted by the Konkani-speaking population. Goan Catholics consider that English is the major language of communication, leaving spoken Konkani to the home environment and written Konkani – in the roman script – to church services, while the Goan Hindus still see Marathi as the liturgical language and an advanced literary language. Hence, Konkani, as it is treated today,

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does not stand much chance, not of surviving – it has proved that it has the stamina despite centuries of suppression by the Portuguese, but of being accepted as the major language in Goa in all areas of communication. There is no argument, of course, concerning the Great Tradition behind the English language. Although things are gradually changing, the study of English, when it comes to literature, still tends to mean the Great English Tradition. It is difficult to imagine a Goan student walking to school across the short Portuguese-built Pato Bridge in Panaji, or more so on one of the bridges over the Mandovi River, reciting Wordsworth’s ‘Sonnet Composed upon Westminster Bridge’ in order to prepare for a test s/he has shortly: Earth has not anything to show more fair: Dull would he of soul who could pass by A site so touching in its majesty; This City now doth, like a garment, wear The beauty of the morning; silent, bare, Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie Open unto the fields, and to the sky . . . From the Mandovi River linking Panaji with the northern part of Goa, s/he would see perhaps one river barge, and some small fishing boats on the northern bank of the wide river but neither towers nor domes nor theatres. What may be visible are the spire of the Mahalaxmi Hindu Temple as well as the spire of the Church of the Immaculate Conception. But what Wordsworth is describing is not part of the experience of the Goan student and may be irrelevant.5 However, for matriculation, the Goan student may still have to read some English poems coming from the ‘Great Tradition’ in addition to Indian poetry written in English, but the English poems selected for the examination tend to have a more universal message, such as George Herbert’s ‘The Pulley’ (referred to in Sangati (1999: 83–5): When God at first made man, Having a glass of blessings standing by, ’Let us,’ said he, ‘pour on him all we can; Let the world’s riches, which dispersed lie, Contract into a span.’ So strength first made a way; Then beauty flow’d, then wisdom, honour, pleasure; When almost all was out, God made a stay, Perceiving that alone of all his treasure, Rest in the bottom lay.


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‘For if I should,’ said he, ‘Bestow this jewel also on my creature, He would adore my gifts instead of me, And rest in Nature, not the God of Nature: So both should losers be. ‘Yet let him keep the rest, But keep them with repining restlessness; Let him be rich and weary, that at least, If goodness lead him not, yet weariness May toss him to my breast.’ Its Christian or western religious contents may be meaningful to the Goan Catholic but perhaps less so for the Hindu. However, it cannot be considered alien by students in general. The next two conditions Spolsky (1989) calls the Linguistic Convergence condition (48) and the Linguistic Divergence condition (49), the second being some kind of converse of the first. The Linguistic Convergence condition states (p. 22) that it is preferable to learn a language when (1) you desire the social approval of its speakers, and/or (2) you see strong value in being able to communicate with its speakers, and/or (3) there are no social norms providing other methods of communicating with speakers of that language, and/or (4) your learning is reinforced or encouraged by speakers of the language. We have to remember that phrases such as ‘its speakers’ and ‘speakers of that language’ do not refer – in the present context – to native speakers of English in those countries in which English is the national language, e.g. USA, Canada, Britain, Australia, New Zealand, but to speakers of the Indian variety of English, many of whom claim native knowledge, within the framework of the linguistic situation in India. While everyone involved in a given communicative situation (or speech event) may speak Konkani, given the Indian – and, more specifically, the Goan – reality, it is generally preferred that everyone speak English. This is the accepted norm among members of a particular sub-population; that is to say, the population we are mainly talking about is the élite – the upper and middle classes and the nouveaux riches. People belonging to the lower classes (not necessarily correlated with caste) do not have the financial means to send their children to private schools and, after a few years, even stop sending their children to government schools, which are free, preferring that they go out to work to bring some food and money into the house.

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While the more affluent live in an English-speaking environment, the poorer classes may learn enough English to provide them with employment. This is an example of instrumental motivation. The porters in the hotels, shopkeepers, even shoeshine boys will speak a sufficient amount of English to enable them to make a living – at one time this was called ‘butler English’. The converse, Condition 49, states that it is preferable not to learn a language if (1) you wish to stress your continued membership of your own language community, and/or (2) you wish to stress your dissociation from speakers of the language, and/or (3) you wish speakers of that language to learn your language. To fulfil such a condition, a person must be highly patriotic, ignoring what is outside the community, and insist on using the local language only, without taking into consideration the many speakers of other languages with whom they may be in contact. There are situations in which a major language is ignored for patriotic and/or emotional reasons. A colonial language, such as English or French, may be ignored by most sectors of the population after independence but this did not happen in India despite 150 years of colonialism and its accompanying suppression. In comparison, even before the independence of Israel in 1948, Hebrew had been encouraged as the national language among the Jewish population of the British Mandate of Palestine as a step to standardising the language6 and English was eventually – after statehood – demoted to a school subject. Since then, of course, with the rise of English as the international language, Israeli attitudes have changed: Hebrew has not been replaced but English has taken up an important role inside the country (Spolsky & Shohamy, 2000).

The Contents of Part 2 What has been set out in this introductory chapter to the second part of this study provides theoretical support to several of the contentions presented in the first part. The second part of the book, in general, provides ground support to the general picture depicted in Chapters 1–5, for here we shall find data concerning language acquisition and the use and the choice of language among groups of students who were asked to undergo a short English test and who were also asked to fill out a questionnaire concerning their own use of languages. In the next chapter (Chapter 7), the TOEFL examination will be described, a short version of which was administered to the subjects of this


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study. This will be followed (Chapter 8) by a discussion addressing the questionnaire itself which the subjects filled out and the various parameters which explain their background and their use of languages. Chapter 9 takes a further look at English in Goa against the background of the results of the questionnaire, the test and previous research, to be followed by a chapter (10) on multilingualism in India, emerging from a discussion of the multilingualism of the students in the study. The concluding chapter examines whether reasons can be presented to explain why Konkani speakers constantly achieve the best results in the world in the TOEFL. Notes 1. Neither will I go into the difference – if any – between learning and acquisition. I shall use the term ‘acquisition’ throughout the discussion. 2. There is considerable literature on Indian English. See, e.g., Kachru (1983), Parasher (1983), Baumgardner (1996), and the recent survey, Agnihotri (1999). 3. Indian English, even in its published form, does have peculiarities. Words which are considered colloquial in British English are quite freely used in newspapers. For example, the verb to nab may be found in the Indian press, where the British press would use the standard capture (in the context of police capturing a wanted person), as in Vasco police today morning nabbed three men who were driving away in a car they had stolen at the Vasco Kadamba bus stand. (Navhind Times, 23 April 2001) The use of what would be considered colloquialisms in the standard language as the regular word in the dialect is also found in pidgins and creoles. For example, in Bislama, the English-lexified creole which functions as the national language of Vanuatu in the South Pacific, the English colloquial verb to chuck has become ‘standard’ Bislama sakem, as in sakem angka ‘throw, i.e. cast anchor’. 4. In a television advertisement for washing machines which appeared on Indian cable TV, a man, obviously Indian, speaks an extreme variety of Received Pronunciation known as the Oxford accent. This sounds very incongruous against the background of the Indian norm. 5. I do not want to enter into the entire question of relevance in education and in higher education as well. It is a topic for researchers in the field of education and for students who may go on strike because they do not see any value in learning a particular subject. But it is certainly a topic of constant public interest. For example, an article in an Israeli newspaper in October 2000 concerning the Israeli educational system stated that youngsters go through 12 years of education, studying material ‘that is not relevant to them nor to the world they live in’ (Ha’aretz, 17 October 2000). 6. It was also recognised by the mandate authorities as one of the official languages alongside English and Arabic.

Chapter 7

Testing the Students TOEFL The data that led to this study were published by the Educational Testing Service of Princeton, New Jersey, and relate to the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL). This examination is taken by students all over the world who plan to study at an American or Canadian university and who have not attended high school in an English-speaking country. This explains the fact that a number of native English speakers take the examination, too.1 The TOEFL in its traditional form consists of three parts. The first part is a listening comprehension test, the second part a test of style and structure and the third part, a reading comprehension test of several passages taken from academic writings. The entire test is multiple-choice: the examinees fill out an answer sheet, indicating which of the four or five possible answers they consider to be the correct one to each question. Each part of the test is timed – the listening comprehension lasts for about 30 minutes, the second part 25 minutes, and the reading comprehension test 55 minutes. There is an additional 30-minute Test of Written English (TWE) added to the regular TOEFL several times a year. The answer sheets (and the essay if there is a TWE at the session) are sent back to the main office in Princeton, New Jersey, and results are sent to the examinees about four weeks after the test administration. This was the situation worldwide until the year 1997–98. Since 1998, the test has been administered by computer. Examinees who have access to a designated computer centre are not restricted to a given number of test dates per year (seven) but book a session with the computer centre close to their home on the basis of availability. Furthermore, approximate results are given immediately following the test (the final score depends on the test of written English). However, where such computer centres are not available, the traditional TOEFL test is still administered. It is planned eventually to replace the traditional pen-andpaper TOEFL by the computer test but in a more advanced version – TOEFL 2000 (Kunnan, 1999: 241). The scoring system of the TOEFL is based on equal weight given to all 98

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Testing the Students

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three parts and the final score is an average grade. Of course, the scores take into account many other factors such as the number of examinees, so the test is ‘norm-referenced’ (Bachman, 1990: 73) in that the score is interpreted with reference to the performance of a given group. Scores should have a normal distribution. Furthermore, TOEFL is a proficiency test, as opposed to an achievement test, which is taken at the end of a prescribed course. It is a test neither of ‘academic aptitude [n]or of subject matter competence’ (Educational Testing Service, 1997: 25). Because no previous course need be taken before the TOEFL, instructions have to be given in detail. The TOEFL, as a proficiency test without previous institutionalised courses, is, therefore, concerned with predicting the future performance of examinees or, more specifically, predicting the future performance of the examinees when using English in their subsequent academic studies. However, preparatory courses for TOEFL are, in fact, held worldwide but these are not, of course, administered by the Educational Testing Service. The washback effect of such a course on the examinee’s success in the test is not at all clear, according to research in this area (Alderson & Hamp-Lyons, 1996). There may be techniques by which examinees do not have to read the complete text or even parts of it in order to answer the questions. A search for keywords which may also appear in the question and in the list of possible answers can provide sufficient information for an examinee to give the correct answer. Nevertheless, there are always a number of general questions in the TOEFL reading comprehension section which may demand a closer reading of part of the text or the entire text (Aschkenazi, 1997). An example of this type of question may be seen in Example (7.3). Since Konkani speakers consistently achieve the highest average score in the world, it was decided that some indication of the subjects’ performance in English would provide a further parameter to the overall study. The testing of the students in this study without any prior announcement would give a fair indication of their performance in English, if not an indication as to their performance in situations in which English is used. A note of caution, however, is necessary. Although the test is considered to be highly reliable, there is criticism concerning its validity (Chalhoub-Deville & Turner, 2000: 536), that is whether there is some correlation between the examinees’ actual performance in the TOEFL and their potential performance in other types of tests or even in real-life situations (Bachmann, 1990: 240). One obvious candidate with which to compare the TOEFL scores is the Test of Written English (TWE). Today, with the computer-based test, the essay test is part of the TOEFL. However, the Educational Testing Service states quite clearly that although there is a correlation between high score achievers in the TOEFL and similar results in the TWE, and the same correlation among low scorers, the data presented in the TWE handbook ‘do not suggest that

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TOEFL scores should be used as predictors of TWE scores’ (Educational Testing Service, 1996: 8). Moreover, it may be argued that the TWE measures aspects of English language proficiency which are distinct from those measured in the TOEFL. The same problems as to validity would relate to the tests administered in this study. However, this does not affect the current research, since whatever the validity of the TOEFL, the results according to the native language of the examinees seem fairly consistent. As we shall see, the tests were abbreviated versions of two of the three parts of the original test, since a listening comprehension section (apart from the students’ having to understand my spoken instructions) was not part of the test. In order to ascertain the accuracy of the results for the purposes of the present study, a problem arose concerning the registering of the native language of each of the subjects in this study (as well as the accuracy of such statistics as published by the Educational Testing Service). That is to say, potential examinees are asked to state on their form of application for the TOEFL what their native language is. The initial data (see Introduction) I have relied on are based on the answers to this question. The identification of the native language has no effect whatsoever on the results of the test and it is stated quite clearly that the information acquired is for statistical purposes only, as published in the annual Test and Score Data Summary and for purposes of the present study, too! It is possible that for a variety of reasons, examinees write down a language that is not their native language. One reason could be status. There may be a preference for writing down the high-status language in the country or in the community as opposed to some low-status language, even if it is spoken by millions of people. This seems to be the case in many instances in India and it has been found to be true in census taking, where more care should be taken in asking and noting down answers to questions (Fasold, 1984: 23). People may give the name of a high-prestige language, which they speak, to the ‘detriment’ of their own native language. Alternatively, they may give the name of the prestigious language, but not the name of the dialect of that language, which they speak. An example of this among Konkani speakers is the language of Malvani (or Kudali – an alternative name (Masica, 1991: 435)). Few people would record this as their language, preferring to register Konkani. Malvani may be considered a dialect of Konkani: it is not a written language, has no literature, while Konkani, despite its problematic status (see Chapter 2), is nevertheless a written language. Another reason for not giving an accurate answer to the question on native language is nostalgia. Though an examinee may not be a speaker of Konkani, or at least not a fluent speaker of it, s/he may still record it as his or her native language because s/he is Goan (or an ex-Goan) and Konkani is the language of the Goans.


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Table 7.1 Konkani speakers and testing locations (in raw figures and % (in brackets)) India

English-speaking Gulf states countries

Others

Total

1993–4

171 (73.1%)

32 (13.7%)

27 (11.5%)

4 (1.7%)

234 (100%)

1994–5

102 (59.7%)

33 (19.3%)

32 (18.7%)

4 (2.3%)

171 (100%)

1995–6

251 (70.5%)

51 (14.3%)

45 (12.6%)

9 (2.6%)

356 (100%)

1996–7

265 (66.3%)

62 (15.5%)

64 (16%)

9 (2.2%)

400 (100%)

1997–8

302 (67.9%)

73 (16.4%)

58 (13%)

12 (2.7%)

445 (100%)

1998–9

346 (72.7%)

76 (16%)

41 (8.6%)

13 (2.7%)

476 (100%)

346 15.7%

267 12.8%

51 2.5%

2082 100%

Average over six years

1437 (69%)

Since many Goans live outside Goa, and even outside India, there was some concern with regard to the validity of the data that most of the Konkani speakers who register for the TOEFL, in fact, live abroad. So, I faced another problem – the location of the regular TOEFL administrations themselves. India may not be the major centre where Konkani speakers take the test; these testees may take the TOEFL at centres in Englishspeaking countries. The examinees, therefore, declare Konkani to be their native language for reasons of nostalgia only and such a declaration does not reflect the actual linguistic situation of each and every examinee. However, from the data I obtained from the Educational Testing Service, it is clear that about two-thirds of the Konkani-speaking examinees took the examination in India. In Table 7.1, the testing locations are listed for the years 1993–98 (the main period under discussion) and the following year 1998–9, during which Konkani speakers still achieved the top results (for 1999–2000 and 2000–01, see Chapter 11), with the percentage among Konkani-speaking examinees at each location. It may be seen that there is a fairly constant distribution of examinees among the various locations where testing took place, with the vast majority taking the test in India (69% over the six-year period). Englishspeaking countries (England, USA, Canada2) come second, followed very closely by Goans living in the states bordering on the Persian Gulf, e.g.

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Bahrain, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. It should be pointed out that among the hundreds of thousands3 of examinees every year over the world, during the six years of the survey given in Table 7.1, only 2082 Konkani speakers were involved. So, despite the impressive figures among Konkani speakers taking the TOEFL, it is a very small group that is at the centre of this study. But, as can be seen, most of these examinees do not live in an English-speaking country, so we cannot say that they register Konkani as their native language for nostalgic and other less rational reasons. They are probably native Konkani speakers, although they may have been brought up and educated in a predominantly English-speaking environment. Although the purpose of TOEFL is ‘to evaluate the English proficiency of people whose native language is not English’ (Educational Testing Service, 1997: 7), it is more probable that many of the Konkani speakers are speakers of English rather than speakers of any other language. This is especially true of many Goan Christian families who live in Goa and who speak Konkani in everyday intercourse; when it comes to communication within the family (as well as at school), they are English speakers. In fact, I was told by members of such families that though they would register Konkani as their native language, they feel safer and more confident of themselves if they speak English. Their knowledge of English is at a far higher level than their knowledge of Konkani. This may also be due to the possibility of extensive reading in English in contrast to Konkani. The overall score, which covers all three sections of the TOEFL, is regarded by the Educational Testing Service as an accurate indication of English proficiency, for it ‘is commonly recognised that these skills are interrelated’ (Educational Testing Service, 1997: 33). Examinees attaining a high score in one of the sections tend to attain high scores in the other sections. In the far shorter test given to the students in Goa, Mangalore and Kochi in the present study, it was also found that there was a fairly high correlation between the scores in the first section (Style and Structure) and the second section (Reading Comprehension), as shown in Table 7.2.4 If this correlation Table 7.2 Average scores of the two sections of abridged TOEFL used in this study N

Mean

s.d.

Section 1 (Style and Structure)

318

70.32

20.46

Section 2 (Reading Comprehension)

318

63.04

20.39

Total

318

66.18

18.75

Spearman correlation coefficient 0.70482 (p = 0.0001)


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Table 7.3 Summary of TOEFL results per native language (for fuller table, see the Introduction) 1993–95

1995–96

1996–97

1997–98

1. Konkani

622 1. Konkani

615 1. Konkani

616 1. Konkani

621

2. Maltese

610 2. Dutch

609 2. Dutch

613 2. Dutch

610

3. Dutch

608 3. Danish

606 3. Danish

608 3. Tulu

608

4. Tulu

605 4. Tulu

604 4. Tulu

604 4. Danish

606

598 5. Marathi

5. Marathi

604 5. Marathi

601 5. Marathi

6. Danish

599 6. Kashmiri Finnish

595 6. German 594 6. Kashmiri Icelandic Malayalam

598

601

7. English

594

7. Kannada Finnish

595

8. Hindi

593 592 8. German Malayalam

does hold for the actual TOEFL, as is claimed by the Educational Testing Service, the administrators of the test, then we may extrapolate that in the test as part of the current research, the fact that there was no listening comprehension test does not significantly reduce the validity of the test. The average score attained by Konkani speakers, summarised from the Introduction in Table 7.3, should be interpreted, of course, in its proper context. The researchers at the Educational Testing Service state quite explicitly that one score should not be considered to represent ‘a significantly higher level of proficiency in English than another score unless there is a difference of at least 39 points between them’ (Educational Testing Service 1997: 31). For any given year, the difference of up to 39 points in the total grade puts all the other languages in the lists in the table – and many other native language groups – in the same category as Konkani. In fact, for the year 1996– 97, for example, any individual score above 577 would put the examinee in the same class as the average Konkani speaker. Native language speakers of Bulgarian, Cebuano, Hebrew, Romanian, Slovene, Tagalog and Tamil, therefore, would be in the same class in that particular year. But it may be seen (see Table 1) that apart from Tamil, which does appear in the list in 1995–96 and in 1997–98, the other members of the ‘top’ group may vary from year to year. What is remarkable is that Konkani speakers consistently attain, on average, the best overall marks. It is this consistency that is worth investigating.

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The Subjects The students were not informed beforehand what they would have to do. Each of the colleges and universities which were contacted was requested to provide a group of students (numbering between 28 and 42), a room for the test and completion of the questionnaire and about one hour in time. It was also requested that the number of students who majored in English should be reduced to the minimum, if at all. In some of the institutions, this presented no problem, for the particular institution does not teach English as a degree major, e.g. Salgaokar Law College and the College of Pharmacy, both in Panaji, Goa. Furthermore, while in Goa, where six colleges were selected, it was understood that the majority of the students would be Konkani speakers, a request was made to the three institutions outside Goa that a small group of Konkani speakers (about six in each institution) should be among the subjects in these places. The institutions outside Goa were chosen because of their location and linguistic make-up. The first was Mangalore University in the state of Karnataka, to the south and to the east of Goa. As described in Chapter 5, as a result of mass migration from poverty-stricken Goa under Portuguese rule, large pockets of Konkani speakers are found south of Goa along the Konkan coastal region. Moreover, today, there are more Konkani speakers in Karnataka than there are in Goa itself. Hence, no difficulty was met by the local contact at the university to set up a group which would fulfil the requirements. In fact, in both Mangalore and in Kochi (see later), the local organisers were both Konkani speakers. The second non-Goan location, therefore, was Kochi-Ernakulam, where two institutions were selected. The first was the Sacred Heart College and the second Cochin University of Science and Technology. It should be pointed out that in the Indian context, colleges are institutions where students study for the first – bachelor – degree, while universities are postgraduate institutions. Hence, students at colleges tend to be younger than those at universities. The exception to this rule is the college of education (two were selected, both in Goa: Nirmala and Ponda), where students are, in fact, graduates who are completing courses to attain a teaching diploma. Table 7.4 presents data concerning the number of students at each of the institutions and their average age. The question may arise how representative of the total student population the groups of students in the current study were. Obviously, the groups from Mangalore and Kochi cannot be considered representative at all, since only three small groups were selected. However, since Goa is the centre of this study, six colleges were selected. There were 220 students from the colleges (five in Panaji and one in Ponda). According to the available data


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Table 7.4 Institutions, number of students and average age a

No.

Age

Dempo

34

19.26

Dhempe

39

19.31

Nirmala

31

24.29

Pharmacy College

32

20.16

Ponda

42

24.88

Salgaocar

42

17.55

31

22.13

Sacred Heart

40

19.35

Cochin University

27

21.30

Goan colleges

Mangalore University Kochi

Total

318

20.83 (s.d. = 3.38)

aIt

would be fair to state that the subjects constitute a fairly homogeneous age group. There are exceptions. The oldest subject is a male Catholic from Ponda aged 53 and among the youngest there are a few subjects aged 16.

from the local department of education, there were in 1998/99 (at the time of this research), 16,472 students in tertiary education in Goa. So, the proportion of students in the study to the total student population in Goa is 1.34%. If we take only the five Panaji colleges, then the proportion of students to the Panaji student population is 4.88%. That is, 178 students were selected out of the total of 3675 students in all the colleges in Panaji and at the University of Goa in Taleigao (outside Panaji). In Table 7.5, the proportion of the number of colleges in this study to all Panaji colleges is presented.

The Test All subjects were asked to fill out a questionnaire (see Chapter 8), but before doing so, they were asked to take a test in English. Because of the conditions and time available, the test was not a full TOEFL test but a selection of questions from the second and third sections. Each section was strictly timed, as in the actual test. The time allotted them was equivalent in proportion to the time examinees are given in an actual TOEFL administration. In the first section, there were 16 questions of the type that is found in the style and structure section of a TOEFL administration. Examples of questions found in the first section are given here. In

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Table 7.5 Number of colleges in (a) Goa and in (b) Panaji, and the number of colleges in study No. in study

Proportion (%)

2

9.5

(a) Goa No. of general colleges

21

No. of professional colleges Total

20

4

20.0

31

6

14.6

3

2

66.6

9

4

44.4

12

6

50.0

(b) Panaji No. of general collegesa No. of professional colleges Total

b

aThese

are the University of Goa and the Dempo and Dhempe colleges, both of which are in the study. bIncluding colleges of education.

Example 7.1 _____ innate systems that all human beings are born with, notwithstanding the community the individual is born into and brought up in. (1) (2) (3) (4)

Having There are Although The

the student has to find the appropriate word or phrase of the four choices given to complete a grammatical sentence, while in Example 7.2 Because psychological inhibitions, the candidate had no control over his A B response to a question, and so lapsed into silence. C D the student is asked to identify which one of the four underlined phrases is ungrammatical in the sentence. The subjects were given six questions of the first type and ten of the second. They were given ten minutes to answer all the questions in this section. In the second part of the test, the subjects were asked to read two passages, each of which was about 330 words in length. Each text was accompanied by ten questions. Some questions referred to the text as a whole:


107

Example 7.3 The topic of the passage is developed mainly by means of (1) (2) (3) (4)

providing details of politicians’ lives describing historical events chronologically dividing the discussion into two major areas comparing and contrasting points of view

while others related to cohesion and other local phenomena, e.g. Example 7.4 The word ‘insular’ in line 7 is closest in meaning to (1) (2) (3) (4)

detached narrow-minded surrounded by water diabetic

The subjects were allowed 22 minutes altogether to answer the second section. In all, the test took 32 minutes, compared to 1 hour 50 minutes for the full TOEFL and 1 hour 20 minutes (80 minutes) for the two sections. After the test, which was strictly timed and administered according to the rules of the Educational Testing Service to make it as authentic as possible, the tests and answer sheets were collected, and the subjects were then handed a questionnaire, which they were asked to fill in. The information gathered from this questionnaire will be discussed in the following chapter. Beforehand, let us take a look at the results of the test.

Results The principal purpose of this study is not to report on the performance in English of a randomly selected population of Indian students in Goa and on the coast south of Goa. The aim of the study is to search for reasons why such a population attains the highest average scores in the world in a widely recognised English language test. The information concerning the individual student that is of utmost importance is not their performance in the brief English test they were asked to take but the background information they provided concerning their use of languages. Nevertheless, it was felt that an indication of the performance of these students in an unprepared test of English would give some information concerning the proficiency of Indian students, and especially of Konkani speakers as compared to other Indian students who speak another mother tongue. On this basis, however, the results of the brief TOEFL do not show anything significant in the performance of the Konkani speakers as compared to the speakers of other languages who took part in the study. In

108


Table 7.6 First language and test scores Language

No.

Average score (%)

Swahili

4

79.90

English

17

76.62

4

72.13

Tamil Malayalam

64

68.18

170

65.66

Telugu

2

63.50

Overall

318

66.18

Konkani

some cases, we find the opposite result: non-Konkani speaking students attained better results than Konkani speakers. If we take mother tongue (‘native language’, ‘strongest language’ or simply ‘first language’ were used as explanations) as the parameter, we can see from Table 7.6 that speakers of Swahili attained the best results and Konkani speakers were overall a little below average. But of the language groups in Table 7.6, we may eliminate three of them – Swahili, Tamil and Telugu because of the very small number of subjects. We may also consider eliminating English, because we would expect English speakers to attain high scores in English language tests. In fact, the difference between Konkani speakers and English speakers is the only one that is significant (p = 0.022). But this may not be as true as it may seem. First, we cannot ascertain why Indians who are products of the local social and educational environment would register English as their strongest language. There is no doubt, however, that many Indian families speak English at home; it is probable that students from such families may put down English as their native language (see earlier). Others may consider that English is the language of instruction, so these students consider English to be necessarily their strongest language. The truth of the matter may be that in many of these 17 cases, it is not English but a local Indian language, such as Konkani, that is the native language. Second, the scores of English speakers in the actual TOEFL itself are not among the highest. This may be seen in the Table 1 in the Introduction: English does not regularly appear among the top native languages of examinees. The average score was between 590 and 594 (591.9 for the six-year period) but in one year 1995–96 English speakers did not get into the highest 13, when their average score was 588. Most of these English speakers probably have a strong second language, for they have attended high school in a nonEnglish-speaking country. However, there is no such clear difference


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Table 7.7 Literacy rate (in percentages), according to 2001 census India

65.38

Males

75.96

Females Goa

54.28 82.32

Males

88.88

Females

75.51

Karnataka

67.04

Males

76.29

Females Kerala

57.45 90.92

Males

94.20

Females

87.86

among the larger groups of subjects in the present study. The average grade among Konkani speakers is below the general average but the difference between that group and the group above it with regard to the average grade, speakers of Malayalam (mainly in Kochi), is not significant. Although over 300 subjects were tested and questioned in the present study, the distribution of this population among the populations they come from was not equally spread. Since this study focuses on Konkani speakers, Goa provided most of the subjects, for it is this state where Konkani is the official language. As previously mentioned (in this chapter and in Chapter 2), the state of Karnataka has more Konkani speakers than in Goa, but only a handful were selected at Mangalore University, while the majority were Kannada and especially Tulu speakers. In Kerala, there are far fewer Konkani speakers (over 64,000 according to the 1991 census), so the number of Konkani speakers among the subjects in the Sacred Heart College and at the Cochin University over-represents the number of Konkani speakers in the state. The two states of Karnataka and Kerala have, of course, different histories, a different educational development and if both had been states in the Indian Union from 1947,5 similar differences can be said of Goa, as we have already seen. If we take a look at the literacy rate of these three states according to the data from the 2001 census (Table 7.7), it is clearly seen that differences exist. While the literacy rate in Karnataka is higher than the national rate, it is still fairly low compared to Goa and Kerala.6 Of course, in this study we are

110


dealing with the student population, which in any case is fully literate and forms the upper part of these statistics. But the overall picture of the state seems to be reflected in the test results, as given in Table 7.2. These data go some way to explain the high performance of the Kochi students, who attained a much higher average score than that of Konkani speakers. However, the average age of the Cochin University students is higher than that in Goan colleges except for the colleges of education (Nirmala and Ponda). Since the latter are graduate students, they have been exposed to English for far longer than the Goan students. This matter of age may also be related to the two groups of older students, those at the two colleges of education. But apparently, the academic level of the intake is not high: hence, their academic performance in English is also low.7 In the following chapter, we shall present further data concerning the students in this study and show, wherever possible, the relationship between such data and the test results. Notes 1. In 1998/1999 there were 1048 English-speaking examinees taking the pen-andpaper test (out of a total of just over 340,000, i.e. 0.3%), and in the following year, 1999–2000, 1399 English speakers out of a total of more than 400,000 (i.e. 0.34%). See note 3 for full details. 2. Australia (and New Zealand) appears very rarely, since it has its own English test. Although the UK has its own battery of tests, there are nevertheless a large number of examinees. 3. In the year 1998–99, there were 340,223 examinees in the pen-and-paper test in all the administrations taken together throughout the world, and another 276,410, who took the computer test. In 1999–2000, both figures increased. There were 411,103 pen-and-paper testees and 317,708 computer testees. In this year the largest native language group which took the more traditional format (which is the basis of comparison with the group under discussion in this study) was Chinese (about 137,000 examinees), then Japanese (almost 100,000), Korean (over 85,000), followed at a long distance by Thai speakers (about 17,000). 4. Much of the information presented in this part of the study has undergone statistical analysis (for which I would like to thank Nitza Barkan and the Statistical Unit of Haifa University). To allow for smoother reading, I have given particulars of the various statistical tests in the footnotes. 5. Karnataka was created in 1968 from the state of Mysore, as part of the reorganisation of Indian states based on the linguistic majority in each area. 6. In fact, only one other area is close to these results. That is the territory of Delhi, the Union capital, where the literacy rate is about the same as Goa’s (81.82% for the general population of the territory; for males the rate is 87.37%, and for females 75%). Kerala has always been the highest educated state, partly as a result of the policies of the local communist government that ran the state for many years. 7. Facetiously speaking, this may be an example of George Bernard Shaw’s famous pronouncement from Man and Superman: ‘He who can, does; he who cannot, teaches’.

Chapter 8

Results from Questionnaire General statistics In this section, I would like to give some of the statistical data concerning the students who took part in the study. As mentioned previously (see Table 7.4), there were altogether 318 students, 220 from Goan colleges, 31 from the University of Mangalore and 67 from two institutions in Kochi: the first, the Sacred Heart College, teaching up to BA level, and the second, the Cochin University of Science and Technology, which is primarily a postgraduate institution. Most of the students were female – 70.4% (224 students) and the rest male (94 = 29.6%). Most of the students were also city-bred and city-educated. They were asked several questions concerning their upbringing and their connection to cities and villages – birthplace, place of primary and secondary education and place of tertiary, or college, education. Since the terms ‘village’ and ‘city’ were not defined beforehand, there were some double answers – ‘city and village’ – but this constituted less than 10% in each case. In Table 8.1, such answers are marked as ‘other’. Obviously, places like Panaji, Kochi or Mangalore – with populations in the region of 100,000, 1.2 million and 500,000 respectively – would no doubt be considered large towns or cities and most colleges would be found in such locations. The place of birth and of education will not be referred to again in this study. Age, however, will be examined in areas in which age difference

Table 8.1 Place of birth, and of education

City Village Other No. of completed answers

Place of birth

School education

College education

208(66.7%)

179 (58.1%)

255 (83.1%)

76 (24.4%)

102 (33.1%)

33 (10.7%)

28(9.0%) 312 111

Where East Looks West Results from Questionnaire

27 (8.8%) 308

19 (6.2%) 307

112


Table 8.2 Religious affiliation Hindus Catholics Moslem Jehovah W. Total

Goa

Mangalore

Kochi

Total

143 (65%)

21 (68%)

41 (61.2%)

205 (64.4%)

75 (34%)

9 (30%)

25 (37.3%)

109 (34.3%)

1 (2%)

1 (1.5%)

3 (1%)

1 (0.5%) 1 (0.5%) 220

1 (0.3%) 31

67

318

may seem to be salient, although, in general, we are talking of a homogeneous group as far as age is concerned. However, one parameter should be taken into consideration with regard to these statistics – religion. Note has been made in Part 1 of the linguistic differences between the two religious groups in Goa: the Catholics helped to maintain Konkani, and, more than that, have seen in English the principal language of communication, while many Hindus – probably apart from the Saraswati Brahmins (see Chapter 5) – are also ‘loyal’ to Marathi, into which the sacred texts have long been translated from Sanskrit. Apart from three Muslims and one Jehovah’s Witness, the two predominant groups are, therefore, Hindus and Catholics. The figures for the three areas – Goa, Mangalore and Kochi – are given in Table 8.2. The large group of Catholics in Goa is of no surprise, since it had been a Portuguese colony for 450 years, the religion of the colonialists was Catholicism and the colonial powers did everything they could in the early days of their rule to convert the local population (see Chapter 2). The proportion of Catholics among Goan students in this study is a little more than the estimated percentage of Catholics in the population as a whole (34% as against 25%). So, we can argue that the population of subjects in this study reflects fairly well the religious affiliation of the Goan population. As for the number of Catholics in Mangalore and in Kochi, we have already seen that there are significant groups of Catholics in both states, so there should be no surprise with regard to the number of Catholics in the research sample, although there are considerably less than 37% Catholics among the students in Kerala. Another factor that may be of relevance is caste affiliation. We have seen the dominant role of the sub-caste of Gauda Saraswati Brahmins (GSBs) (see Chapter 5), in maintaining the Konkani language and the underlying caste affiliation of Goan Catholics, who are supposed to be casteless, i.e. entirely outside the caste system. However, because of the delicacy of the matter, a question concerning caste was not put on the questionnaire (it is

Results from Questionnaire

113

even forbidden to ask a direct question concerning caste in the national census).1 But in two Goan colleges, the students were told orally that if they wish to do so they may state caste affiliation. Very few availed themselves of the opportunity and those that did record their caste belonged, apart from three students, to the highest caste of Brahmins. The other three registered local Hindu castes or religious groups (Lingayat, Ezhora and Thiyya). However, it appeared that in Kochi some students volunteered this information without being asked. Instead of recording ‘Hindu’ under religion, a handful wrote ‘GSB’. This is a further indication of the pride members of this particular sub-caste demonstrate (see Chapter 5). So, despite the underlying significance of caste distinctions, the data from the study do not provide enough information for any meaningful conclusion. Nevertheless, interesting results concerning caste and language will be presented in what follows, even if they should be considered anecdotal and not statistically significant. In the following analysis of the questionnaire, reference will be made where appropriate to the test results. After all, one of the initial hypotheses of this study is that there is a correlation between native language and performance in English. As has been shown, the data collected in the study do not show this correlation but nevertheless, the test results vis-à-vis certain groups of the population do provide interesting insights into the language situation and especially into the multilingual situation in India today. I will not go through the questionnaire question by question, for the questions were, in fact, asked in a random order. A group of questions in the questionnaire were also taken from questionnaires presented to other groups of Indians as reported in various previously published research papers. These questions include reasons for studying English, circumstances in which subjects use one language or another and the attitude of the students to what is called the ‘three-language formula’ in the school curriculum. The results from these questions will be discussed when we relate to India as a whole in the following chapter. The data which I shall deal with initially relate more to the particular issues of Konkani speakers, and speakers of other languages who live on the Konkan and Malabar coast. The religious distinctions are important, especially in Goa, and this will be one parameter in some of the analyses. Another important parameter is, of course, the subjects’ native language. Moreover, the subjects’ self-assessment of their ability to understand, speak, read and write a number of languages will be discussed. These data will be correlated, where possible, with their performance in the English test. Finally, migration, which has been part of Goan history for a very long time, has led to a fairly large Goan diaspora, as we have seen in Chapter 5. It may be hypothesised that contact with friends and especially families who

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have either emigrated abroad to English-speaking countries or moved to other regions as temporary residents (the Persian Gulf States) has led to English becoming the main language of many Goans or, at least, the lingua franca. Konkani has suffered attrition among ex-Goans abroad, and the younger generation of migrants tend to be English speakers only. Konkani lessons have been reported in several places and a meeting was held in March 2001 at the Kala Academy in Panaji on the occasion of the publication of a book of spoken Konkani. The author Edward de Lima said that the book, in the roman script, was primarily meant for the second and third generations of Goans abroad (GoaCom News, 26 March, 2001; for further comments, see Chapter 2). This reflects, however, the nostalgia felt by the emigrant groups, and does not constitute a serious attempt to revive the language among Goans abroad.

Native Language Here, we are concerned with straightforward numerical results. The largest group – both in Goa and overall – are, of course, Konkani speakers. This is the focal group in this study. In Table 8.3, the major native language groups are listed. The small number of Kannada speakers should not be surprising, even though there were 31 students in the group in Mangalore. We are talking here of the coastal region to where Konkani speakers emigrated several Table 8.3 Number of speakers per native language Language

Number

% of all students

Konkani

170

53.5

Konkani + one other language Malayalam

a

7

2.2

64

20.1

Marathi

26

8.2

English

17

5.3

Tulu

10

3.1

7

2.2

Kannada Hindi Othersb Total

6

1.9

11

3.5

318

100.0

aAlthough the students in the study were asked to record their native language or, alternatively, their strongest language, seven students recorded Konkani and one other language (Kannada, Marathi, English, Hindi, Swahili); hence, the extra item. bThese are Swahili, Telugu, Tamil and Coorgi.


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centuries ago (see Chapter 2), and this coastal region is also inhabited not only by Kannada and Konkani speakers but also by Tulu speakers. Tulu is a Dravidian language with about 1.5 million speakers. Despite having about the same number of speakers as Konkani, it is not one of the scheduled languages. One of the reasons is that it is not an official language of a state; in Karnataka the pride of place is taken by Kannada. Moreover, since there are Schedule VIII languages such as Sindhi and Urdu which are not regional languages, Tulu is one of those languages ‘that lacked the political cachet to be included’ in the Schedule (King, 1998: 4). Finally, it has also been argued that Tulu has no recognised writing system (Breton, 1997: 104) but in place of an ancient Tulu script used up to the 18th century, the Kannada script is used today to write the language. As for writing Konkani, of the 177 native Konkani speakers (see Table 8.3), 152 stated that they write in the language. Of these, 147 write in Devanagari, four in both Devanagari and roman and one student writes Konkani in both the Devanagari and Kannada scripts. The breakdown according to religion is as expected. As well as the 109 Hindus who write in Devanagari, we also find a smaller group of 37 Catholics and one Jehovah Witness who also write in the Indian script. The four students who write Konkani in both the Devanagari and roman scripts are, of course, Catholic.

Self-assessment in Language Competence The students were asked to assess their own ability in a series of languages. The languages that were mentioned explicitly on the questionnaire were English, Hindi, Kannada, Konkani, Malayalam, Marathi and Portuguese, while an opportunity was given to the students to provide any other language they may know. Some of the students, for example, were speakers of Tamil, either as native speakers or as second language speakers. The languages that were explicitly listed were chosen for specific reasons. English, of course, was known by all to some extent. I am putting this delicately, for although all the studies are in English, we cannot assume that all the students understand everything that is said to them. Hindi, as we have seen in Chapter 1, is the constitutionally declared national language but this role has not been accepted everywhere, especially in the south. The students’ self-assessment in Hindi would indicate how conscious they are of the role Hindi plays in the country and even more so in their own private lives. Kannada, Konkani, Malayalam and Marathi are the languages of the states on the west coast: Kannada is the official language of Karnataka, Konkani, of course, of Goa, Malayalam of Kerala and Marathi of Maharashtra – the last one also has an important role in Goa itself. Portuguese was also explicitly listed, since it was the colonial

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language of Goa, so it is interesting to see how many young Goans indicate that they know the language. Self-assessment was divided into four skills – understanding the spoken language, speaking, reading and writing. In a multilingual society such as India, it is very common to find many people being able to converse in a language, while they do not know how to write it.2 This is, of course, relevant to languages which have a writing system, as is the case with the languages under discussion (but see the discussion of Malvani in Chapter 7). People may be able to converse in, say, Kannada, because local workers or cleaners come from Karnataka or because they may occasionally work in Karnataka but are unable to read and write it, because they do not see themselves as part of the culture. What is interesting, especially in the situation with regard to Konkani, is the number of students who recorded Konkani as their native language but stated that they have a poor reading and writing knowledge of the language, responses that are not expected from an educated population. While the mean self-assessment for understanding and speaking Konkani was 4.38 and 4.22 respectively (out of a possible five points; see later), for reading and writing the mean self-assessment was 3.66 and 3.36, which is a significant difference.3 Such a difference is not found in the scores for self-assessment in other languages; the scores for self-assessment are much closer among the four skills. In Table 8.4 are found the scores for Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi and Portuguese. There are five categories of answers with regard to self-assessment: very good, good, average, less than average, and poor. Hence, the maximum score is five points. Although the students were asked to give answers to the question relating to the specific language or languages of which they have knowledge, it is probable that some of the answers under ‘poor’ may mean that the respondent may know a couple of words in that language and is unable to hold even a short conversation. Be that as it may, the results are certainly more consistent than those who stated that they know Konkani to a specific level. It may be shown, nevertheless, that the difference between speaking and understanding, on the one hand, and reading and writing, on the other, is statistically significant. The figures given in Table 8.5 show the difference in self-assessment between spoken proficiency and written (and reading) proficiency of a number of the languages in the survey. What Table 8.5 also points out is the extent to which Hindi is known by the student population, according to self-assessment. This is an important factor in the linguistic dynamics of India, which seems to point to a gradual change of attitude to, and competence in, to the national language.


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Table 8.4 Self-assessment in languages other than English and Konkani Language

Mean

N

s.d.

4.12

310

0.83

Hindi Understanding Speaking

3.53

308

0.96

Reading

3.78

305

1.10

Writing

3.59

304

1.08

Understanding

2.67

75

1.77

Speaking

2.62

69

1.71

Reading

2.60

63

1.85

Writing

2.48

64

1.76

3.71

119

1.64

Kannada

Malayalam Understanding Speaking

3.63

116

1.64

Reading

3.37

113

1.77

Writing

3.31

114

1.78

Understanding

3.94

201

1.23

Speaking

3.39

197

1.40

Reading

3.54

194

1.50

Writing

3.39

191

1.52

1.88

52

1.22

Marathi

Portuguese Understanding Speaking

1.75

48

1.14

Reading

1.70

47

1.20

Writing

1.61

46

1.14

Table 8.5 Differences in spoken and written proficiency Language Hindi Kannada

N

Pr > |t|

305

0.0002

64

0.0068

Malayalam

113

< 0.0001

Marathi

194

< 0.0001

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Correspondence and Personal Contact with the Diaspora It should be pointed out at the outset that what is meant by correspondence was not defined; so it is to be assumed that it may include letters, telephone conversations and even e-mail. The subjects in the study were asked to relate to two situations in which they may have correspondence with people outside their area of residence. They were asked if there were family or friends in other parts of India and in other parts of the world with whom they corresponded. They were also asked to list which parts of the world. Answers include mainly the Gulf States, Britain, the USA and Canada. As has been stated previously (Chapter 5), there is a relatively large Goan diaspora, especially in English-speaking countries and in some of the Gulf states. Those Goans living and working in the Gulf may be considered to be temporary residents only, while those living in English-speaking countries have been there for at least a generation, especially following the expulsion of Asians from Uganda in 1972 (see Chapter 5). One of the parameters examined in the present study was the contact between the subjects in the study – the students in Goa, Mangalore and in Kochi – and relatives and friends outside the country. A number of statistical analyses were carried out on the available data. The first questions (whether they have any correspondence with friends and relatives abroad and in which countries) provide fairly straightforward results: there were 261 affirmative answers and, of these, 220 stated that they correspond with friends and relatives outside the borders of India. The locations abroad may be divided into four groups shown in Table 8.6 Another question that was asked relates to the identity of the language or languages used in such correspondence. Here students could, of course, record more than one language, so we cannot divide the 220 students into groups on the basis of the language of correspondence. In fact, 403 replies were given, with many of the students giving two or more languages. Table 8.6 Destination of correspondence outside India (raw numbers and percentage) N

Percentage

(1)

English-speaking countries (e.g. USA, UK):

115

52

(2)

Arab countries (including the Gulf states):

68

31

(3)

Continental Europe and South America:

28

13

(4)

Singapore, Seychelles, East Africa:

9

4

220

100

Total


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Table 8.7 Frequency of use of language in correspondence (percentage) English

39

Konkani

20

Marathi

14

Malayalam

11

Hindi Others

8 a

8

Total

100

aThe

other languages include Indian languages such as Tamil, Kannada and Tulu, as well as non-Indian languages such as Portuguese and Swahili.

However, of the languages used in correspondence, English is the most frequent, as can be seen in Table 8.7. We do find an interesting difference in the use of language in correspondence among the two dominant religious groups – Hindus and Catholics. This, of course, mainly pertains to Goa, although some of the Catholics in the survey live in Mangalore and in Kochi. Table 8.8 relates only to the most frequent languages, as explicitly listed in Table 8.7. It shows the frequency of each language used by the two major religious groups, as well as the raw data of the number of Catholics and Hindus corresponding in each language. Whereas the frequency of use of English among Catholics and Hindus is fairly similar, we find differences in the frequency of the use of other languages. In fact, of the 133 responses from Catholics who correspond Table 8.8 Number and frequency of languages in correspondence among Catholics and Hindus Catholic

Hindu

Others

N%

Total (%)

English

78

48

72

44

13

8

100

Konkani

21

25

58

68

6

7

100

Marathi Malayalam Hindi Other languages Total aIt

3

5

53

95

–

–

100

17

40

26

60

–

–

100

4

13

26

87

–

–

100

10

38

16

62

–

–

100

133

251

a

19

should be remembered that among the responses are those who correspond in more than one language. Hence, the total figure (393) is greater than the total number of subjects.

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abroad, 78 (58.6%) do so in English, while of the 251 responses from Hindus who correspond abroad, only 72 (28.6%) do so in English. Despite Catholic support for Konkani, especially in opposition to Marathi (see Chapters 2 and 3), far fewer Catholics write in Konkani when corresponding abroad. We have seen the reason in the discussion on the Goan diaspora (Chapter 5). Most of the organised ex-Goans in English-speaking countries4 are Catholics who have, in the main, forgotten Konkani. Attempts to teach the younger generation the language have not shown any signs of success. The use of Marathi amongst Hindus is not surprising, since it is the language into which the sacred texts have been translated many centuries ago. Only three Catholics registered Marathi as a language of correspondence. As for Malayalam, while a large minority of speakers using the language in correspondence are Catholics, the majority are Hindu. Hindi, it seems, is also a Hindu-dominated language, which is not surprising, since just over 80% of the population of India are Hindu anyway. Among the few Brahmins who recorded their caste, we also see that they have a tendency to use Konkani. This language was recorded among the Brahmins seven times, Marathi three times, while English was recorded four times; however, one of the four Brahmins was a Catholic! That is, despite the non-caste characteristics of Christianity, Christians who are aware that they come from the Brahmin caste retain this knowledge throughout the generations (see Chapter 5); hence, their use of English is to be expected, as this corresponds to the data for Catholics in general (see Table 8.8). The reason for inquiring into the use of language in correspondence is to investigate whether the use of English in such circumstances improves the proficiency in the language, and whether Konkani speakers have some advantage in this field. As an answer to the first question, it is quite obvious that a person who uses a language in many varied situations, e.g. speaking to parents, to friends and corresponding abroad in that language, will attain, on the whole, higher scores in any given language proficiency test. We can analyze whether those who do use English in correspondence attained higher scores in the English test that was administered just before the questionnaire was distributed. Table 8.9 gives a statistical description of such data. The difference in performance is highly significant.5 When we look at the locations to which the Indian students direct their correspondence, we also see what is obvious: corresponding with friends and relations in an English-speaking country may be a factor leading to a higher test achievement. Given the four groups of countries listed earlier, we have the data given in Table 8.10. The results of those who correspond with English-speaking countries


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Table 8.9 Use of English in correspondence and achievement in English test Language of correspondence

N

Mean test result

s.d.

Not English

162

60.9

19.2

English

156

71.6

16.6

Table 8.10 Country of correspondence and test achievement Country group

Mean test result

English-speaking countries

73.9

Arab countries

64.8

Continental Europe and South America

83.3

Singapore, Seychelles, East Africa

68.3

Table 8.11 Grades of correspondents in English only, by first language Language

Mean grade

N

s.d.

Kannada

83.50

2

7.78

English

80.54

12

14.58

Swahili

76.87

3

13.38

Konkani

73.34

54

15.67

Marathi

72.50

7

22.78

Malayalam

70.13

28

13.96

are significantly higher than those who correspond with Arab countries but not statistically different from those who correspond with people in Singapore, Seychelles and East Africa.6 The top results were those attained by students corresponding with relatives and friends in continental Europe and Brazil. However, as we have seen earlier, these last two groups are very small. But are there any significant data concerning Konkani speakers who correspond in English? After all, one of the main objectives of this study is to examine the reasons for the high achievement in English of Konkani speakers. Table 8.11 presents the test scores of students who correspond only in English. It is clearly seen that Konkani speakers who correspond in English do not attain the highest scores, although the average score is higher than

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Konkani speakers in general (mean score: 65.66; standard deviation: 18.95), who, in turn, attain just under the overall mean score (66.18). They do make up the largest group but this does not appear significant since Konkani speakers also constitute the largest group in this study. If we eliminate the English speakers (despite reservations concerning the definition of this group; see Chapter 7) and ignore the two very small groups of Kannada and Swahili speakers, there may be some significance, although minimal, in that those Konkani speakers using English only in correspondence attain above average scores. Notes 1. See comment on Scheduled Castes in Chapter 5. 2. This phenomenon is also found among children of immigrants even in more monolingual societies. They may speak the language of their parents but without tuition they do not read it. 3. According to the Mason test with a significance level below 0.0001. 4. No data were made available for the Gulf States, even though Kuwait, for example, has an Goan association. 5. After a t test, Pr > |t| 0.0000. 6. According to Duncan’s multiple range test.

Chapter 9

English in India The Great Debate As we are concerned with the role of English among college students in a region of India, it is worthwhile to look briefly at the function of the language especially in tertiary education. The choice of language was the subject of a ‘great debate’ in the 1960s. The then Indian Education Minister, Dr Triguna Sen, said to the Indian Parliament (the Lok Sabha) in July 1967 that the government of India has accepted in principle that Indian languages should . . . be adopted as media of education at all stages and in all subjects, including agriculture, engineering, law, medicine and technology. (Cited by Shah, 1968: 5) The Minister did not ignore the importance of English. At a later speech at a conference of university vice-chancellors in September 1967, Sen maintained that there was a need to strengthen, side by side with the adoption of regional languages as media, the study of English because it gives the students direct access to the growing knowledge of the world. (Cited by Shah, 1968: 9) So, English should serve as an external or ‘international link’ language, while Hindi should be encouraged to develop as an ‘internal link’ (p.10). Since the Minister and the Indian Government at that time wanted to see Hindi as the national language, Sen saw in English and Hindi the two major languages for higher education, adding the hope ‘that, with the consent of the non-Hindi areas themselves, Hindi will one day be the link language’ (p.13). Both English and the students’ mother tongue should be used, argued P.B. Pandit at a seminar in October 1967. English should not be cut off but ‘once a discourse in Indian languages begins, it will gain momentum only by interaction with English’ (Shah, 1968: 24). Pandit pointed out the origin of English scientific terms in the ‘common language’, such as ‘energy’, 123

Where East Looks West English in India

124


‘mass’ and ‘force’. However, there is a difficulty in looking for similar expressions in the native Indian languages. The Indians ‘lack scientific discourse in [their] languages’ (p. 27) He gives the example of the word grit, defined in physical geography as ‘coarse sandstone of angular grain’. This has a straightforward Hindi equivalent kankari but for scientific purposes it has been translated into the Sanskritised konaya-balukaœma (literally ‘small piece of sandstone’), not one simple word as occurs in English or colloquial Hindi. This artificiality of Hindi even for native speakers may be a contribution to the widespread use of English in education (see Chapter 1).

Three-language Formula Some of the questions in the questionnaire distributed among the students in this study (see Chapter 8) derive from previous research on language, especially on English, in India. Kailish Aggarwal (1988) examined the attitudes and perceptions towards English among Indian students in the state of Orissa on the east coast of India on the Bay of Bengal, in the general context of the three-language formula in the educational system. This policy was originally proposed as early as 1956 but it was only in 1968 that it was adopted by the Indian Parliament as part of the national policy on education. It was decided that the following languages should be taught in schools: (1) the mother tongue or regional language; (2) the official language of the Union or the associate official language so long as it exists; and (3) a modern Indian or foreign language not covered by 1. and 2. (cited by Aggarwal, 1988: 290) This means, for example, that a student in Goa should learn Konkani, which is the official regional language of the state, Hindi, the official language of the Union, and, say, English. But Hindi can, according to this, be ignored as the second language to be taught may be either the official language, which is Hindi, or ‘the associate official language’, which is English. It should also be noted that in the Indian Constitution there is no mention of ‘the associate official language’ or the commonly used expression ‘link language’. English is mentioned in the Constitution in the context of its use in specific public sectors, especially in the judiciary. The Central Board of Secondary Education in New Delhi announced in September 1988 that up to the tenth grade, three languages are to be studied – English, Hindi and one modern Indian language – but the Indian Supreme Court issued an injunction against the decision (Aggarwal, 1989: 76). Sonntag (1995: 103) sees in the vagueness in which the language policy was pro-

English in India

125

claimed the possibility of a choice between Hindi and English and even the possibility that Hindi (or English) may be dropped from the curriculum. However, the two languages, Hindi and English, are considered basic to the policy. A further problem lies with southern Indian languages. It was – and is still – hoped that native speakers of Hindi, over 340 million of them in the north, will learn – in addition to English – a second Indian language, specifically one of the major southern Dravidian languages (Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil or Telugu). There is no indication, however, that this is happening. School students in the Hindi region tend to learn Hindi and English only. If the education authorities or a school in the north decide that another language should be taught, it is often Sanskrit, the classical Indian language, and not a language spoken by millions of compatriots. In Delhi near the Jama Mosque, for example, there is a school called the AngloSanskrit Victoria Jubilee Senior Secondary School in which students have a choice between Hindi and English as medium of instruction, while the third language is, of course, Sanskrit. In the south, too, there are also cases where a two-language formula is being followed, i.e. the state language and English, with Hindi being left out (Verma, 1995: 91). In Aggarwal’s (1988) study, the three languages involved were Hindi, English and Oriya, the official language of Orissa. More than 50% of the students in the survey – who numbered altogether 52 from three colleges – rated their competence in these three languages at least as ‘good’; the figures presented here are based on self-assessment. But at the lower levels of competence, Hindi was not in a strong position, for 16% of the students rated their competence in Hindi as poor. The results of the Orissa survey on attitudes to the three-language formula were that 58% voted for a twolanguage formula in contrast to 22% in favour of a three-language formula, while 20% remained uncommitted. As for the choice of the two languages to be used in the educational system, 88% wanted English and Oriya, the state language of Orissa, while only 12% chose Hindi and Oriya. Similar overall results were found in the present study among the students in Goa and to the south on the Konkan coast, although the number of supporters of a two-language formula and those of a three-language formula were not as wide apart as those in the Orissa study. Most support was given to a two-language formula (54%), while 39% supported the three-language formula and 7% did not express any opinion either way. Of the combination of languages, the pair English–Hindi attained 59% of the total vote, with English–Konkani in second place (25%). This seems to reflect the growing competence in Hindi throughout the country (see Chapter 1), even though it is not a result of the educational system but of the spread of popular culture. It also reflects, as far as Goa is concerned, the low

126


status accorded to Konkani. It is interesting to note that despite the longstanding controversy between Konkani and Marathi protagonists, which has even led to bloodshed (see the discussions in Chapters 2 and 3), the occurrence of Marathi as one of the two or three languages taught at school is not of any significance. Of the 195 students who answered the question on the choice of languages, a mere nine favoured the combination of English and Marathi (4.6%), and only one supported a three-language formula with Hindi, Marathi and Konkani as the three languages. It should be pointed out that in the administration of the questionnaire sessions at the various colleges and universities, there was no real indication that all the students understood the implications of the question. No explanation was given and no questions were asked by the students with regard to this issue before they filled out their answer to this question. Moreover, most of the students were not in the educational field. So, it is my belief that these results show language preferences but do not necessarily reflect opinions on national language policies.

Exposure to English Apart from the questions on the three-language formula, there were other areas covered in Aggarwal’s study which were also covered in the present study. One such question concerned reasons for studying English. Aggarwal’s figures are given below in Table 9.1, and are compared with the figures from the present study. It can be seen that apart from ‘any other’ reason, which almost 6% of the students in the present study gave, the only obvious difference between the two surveys is the percentage of respondents who stated that they study English because of English literature and those who study it because of employment prospectives. Perhaps, in 1988, students in Orissa, and Table 9.1 Reasons for studying English in Orissa (Aggarwal, 1988: 292) and in Goa (present study) Orissa (%)

Goa (%)

(a)

To pursue higher studies

46

43

(b)

To learn the language and use it

26

27

(c)

To go outside the state

4

4

(d)

To read English literature

(e)

To get a job

(f)

Any other

Total

16

6

8

14

0

6

100

100

English in India

127

elsewhere, were more humanistically inclined, while the modern student at the turn of the millennium is concerned much more with his or her economic welfare. This can, of course, be only speculation. At a general level, the data from the two surveys present a fairly similar picture. The choice of ‘learning the language and using it’ is somewhat vague but if we eliminate all meanings of ‘use’ given as other choices, we seem to refer here to everyday use outside the classroom and places of employment. There are other interesting similarities between the two surveys despite the different locations, the different periods of time and the number of respondents. There were only 52 students in Aggarwal’s study, while in the present study 309 (out of 318) gave answers to the question concerning reasons for studying English. The home background and upbringing of the two populations, for example, are quite similar. In the Orissa study, 30% of the students were born and went to school in rural areas while in the Konkani study, about 25% were born in rural areas, and just over 33% were educated at rural schools. At college level, most Orissa and west coast students studied or study in urban colleges (88% in Orissa and 83% in the present study). Other questions asked in both Aggarwal’s and the present study concern the students’ exposure to English other than at school or college. Students were asked (1) whether they read books in English (apart from prescribed texts at school), (2) whether they read English language journals or newspapers, (3) whether they listen to radio programmes in English and (4) whether they watch English films. This last question was changed in the present study, because of the establishment of cable television in India, to whether they watched English-language films and television programmes. In Table 9.2, the results again appear side-by-side to facilitate comparison. It may be seen that students in the present study have a higher exposure to English. This exposure is not only from English books and newspapers but also from watching films and television in English. This seems to indicate once again the awareness of the importance of English in their lives. The responses to the third of the questions, concerning radio programmes in English, needs, however, a brief explanation. This explanation is also partly relevant to other responses. First, at no time while I was in Goa, did I hear any radio programmes in English on any of the Indian Radio (Doordarshan) stations. If students did listen to programmes in English, either this could refer to radio programmes from overseas stations such as the BBC or it is a case of giving answers which may be thought to be acceptable to the person who asks the questions. The fact that 80% of the Orissa students did not listen to radio programmes in English probably reflects this reality – in part at least, since it is possible that not many people had radios in Orissa in 1988.1 Second, the response ‘sometimes’ was taken from

128


Table 9.2 Exposure to English in Orissa (Aggarwal, 1988: 293) and present study Often (%)

Never (%)

Sometimes (%)

Total (%)

Orissa

18

72

10

100

Goa etc.

37

2

61

100

Orissa

26

56

18

100

Goa etc.

58

2

40

100

Orissa

18

80

2

100

Goa etc.

20

16

64

100

Orissa

28

30

42

100

Goa etc.

36

9

55

100

English books

English newspapers and journals

English radio programmes

English films/television

the Orissa study. In the present study, a distinction was made between ‘sometimes’ and ‘rarely’ but these two were finally combined under ‘sometimes’ in the table. Although ‘rarely’ does mean ‘sometimes but infrequently’, responses of this nature can never be accurate. It is possible that in many cases, respondents who write ‘rarely’ actually mean ‘no’ or ‘never’. In fact, the large number of ‘rarely’ in question (3) concerning the radio (24%) may be added to the answer ‘never’. We would then get 40%, still half of the Orissa number but such a figure probably reflects the reality more accurately. Aggarwal was also interested in the use of English when subjects were in contact with people outside the classroom but not necessarily outside the school. Table 9.3 presents comparative data, while Table 9.4 gives data concerning other groups of the population which were relevant to the present study but not to the Orissa study. The picture again is strikingly clear. English is more available among Goans and other students on the west Konkan coast of India today than it was in the late 1980s in Orissa. English is the language of communication in the home among a significant part of the population. It is also the lingua franca when people meet who do not speak the same mother tongue. English is the language used within the educational system and not only in the classroom as the medium of instruction, for speaking to teachers even outside the classroom is constantly in English.

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Table 9.3 Use of English outside the classroom Yes %)

Never Sometimes Total (%) (%) (%)

With parents Orissa Goa, etc.

2

98

0

100

20

36

44

100

With brothers and sisters Orissa

6

90

4

100

34

14

52

100

Orissa

56

20

24

100

Goa, etc.

67

3

30

100

Orissa

10

82

8

100

Goa, etc.

77

4

19

100

Orissa

16

80

4

100

Goa, etc.

84

0

16

100

4

90

6

100

42

12

46

100

Goa, etc. With friends

With those who do not speak mother tongue

With teachers

Socially Orissa Goa, etc.

The other three classes of people asked about in the present study but not in Aggarwal’s were neighbours, bank clerks and government clerks. These results are given in Table 9.4. The influx of Indians from other parts of the country is gradually changing the demographic picture, including the language situation. It is more likely that neighbours speak the same language even in a multilingual society such as India. This is clearly seen in areas of the major cities which are populated by newcomers. These newcomers tend to settle and build their living quarters in areas already populated by people coming from their own region and speaking the same language (Laitin, 1993), so one may find districts of Bengali speakers, of Tamil speakers, etc. in cities such as Mumbai (Bombay). In such circumstances, English would not play an important role in contrast to the local language. But when it comes to the working population at their respective places of work, we meet many instances of clerks in offices who do not have a good grasp of the local

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Table 9.4 Use of English in Goa with specific classes of people Yes (%)

Never (%)

Sometimes (%)

Total (%)

With neighbours

20

31

49

100

With bank clerks

57

13

30

100

With government clerks

48

16

36

100

language despite the language regulations concerning government employment. According to the law, public employees have to speak and write in the local language. Moreover, even where the clerk may speak Konkani, there is considerable contact with people from other states who do not speak the language. English has become in many cases the lingua franca. One of the problems that was brought up during the language controversy in Goa in 2000 is the possible influx of youngsters looking for work in Goa from neighbouring Maharashtra if Marathi were to be declared an official language of Goa on par with Konkani (see Chapter 3).

Bombay Schools In another study, also using Aggarwal’s paper as the basis, Franc (1998) examined language use among students in four schools in Bombay (Mumbai) – two English-medium schools, one Gujarati-medium and one Marathi-medium school. In addition, she was able to study one schoolclass which was visiting Bombay from Andhra Pradesh; these were Telugu speakers. Unlike both Aggarwal’s and the present study, one set of students, in the Marathi-medium school, was given a questionnaire in a language other than English. The total number of students was about 200, although Franc does not give exact numbers for some of the classes. She focused on the multilingualism of the students as well as their attitude to the languages and their self-assessment with regard to language use. In one of the English-medium schools, students learned Hindi and Marathi as well as studying all subjects in English. Those students who have another mother tongue (e.g. Konkani, Urdu) speak, then, at least four languages. They had a positive attitude to Hindi. It was the lingua franca for communicating with people who do not speak English. There was also a marked preference in speaking Hindi to friends (73%). As expected, a preference may be observed for English in reading, in education and for jobs. In the Gujarati-medium school, Hindi was also considered to be of importance, especially in general communication (76%). Even in the question concerning a three-language formula as opposed to a two-

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131

language formula in the educational system, there was an overwhelming preference for a Hindi–English combination (93.5%), with only three students (6.5%) opting for a three-language policy with Gujarati as the third language. Similar support (84%) for a Hindi–English two-language policy was found in an English-medium private school. In the Marathimedium school, too, preference (70%) was shown for a two-language formula but this time the two languages were Marathi and English. The attitude towards English among these students was less favourable than among the other sets of students. Franc points out the socioeconomic background of the students; their parents tended to come from uneducated classes of manual workers, e.g. fishermen, rickshaw-drivers. Only 2% of the students spoke English on a daily basis; Hindi was considered of far greater importance. The students from Andhra Pradesh may be considered typical of the population of the southern states in that Hindi is not favoured at all. English is used among friends, for reading material, in education and in jobs. However, despite alleged hostility towards Hindi, the language has a greater role to play (63%) in daily communication. But, overall, Hindi plays a far smaller part in their ‘linguistic lives’ than in Bombay. Despite general resistance to Hindi, all students opted for a two-language formula with English and Hindi for pragmatic reasons: Hindi is the national language in letter and it is becoming so in spirit, too, as we may see from the results. In the conclusion to her study, Franc examines further the question of the role of Hindi and the widely-held belief that the language is treated with animosity outside the northern states. While not denying the truth of that belief, she sees indications today that Hindi is gradually becoming more acceptable: there are signs of change, if not a full-scale revolution, taking place in India in respect to the Hindi language. This is also supported by the findings of this study, especially in terms of general Indian culture (e.g. cinema, songs). The role of Hindi in the south and the local populations’ attitude towards it is a topic for an important piece of research but does not directly concern the present study. Notes 1. Orissa is a fairly poor state. This became very obvious in October 1999, when the state was struck by a cyclone, which led to a tremendous loss in lives, in livestock and in property. According to the Statistical Outline of India 1996–7, Orissa had an infant mortality rate of 103, the highest in India, a per capita income of Rs4726 ( = $100), second before the lowest, the state of Bihar, and a low literacy rate of 49.1, sixth from the bottom out of 21 states and union territories.

Chapter 10

Multilingualism Multilingualism in India India is one of the most prominent countries in which multilingualism does not only exist but is officially recognised. The phenomenon exists in many if not in most countries in the world; eurocentrism still seems to see the formula ‘one country = one language’ as the norm. However, in the majority of the countries, despite their multilingualism, there are attempts to establish one or two languages as the official languages, leaving aside all other languages without any official status. In many countries of SubSaharan Africa, despite rampant multilingualism, the colonial languages, English and French, seem to hold sway. The Linguistic problems of postapartheid South Africa have been at the fore of changes to the country’s official structure. Not that English and Afrikaans have lost any official status (although Afrikaans was a candidate for removal from the official language list), but to them have been added nine other languages: Ndebele, Sepedi, Sesotho, Setswana, siSwati, Twhivenda, Xhosa, Xitsonga and Zulu. The Pan African Language Board promotes these official languages, and, in addition, the Khoi, Nama and San languages. The Board also ensures respect for German, Greek, Gujarati, Hindi, Tamil, Portuguese, Telugu and Urdu, as well as Arabic, Hebrew, Sanskrit and other languages used for religious purposes in South Africa (Nan van den Bergh, personal communication, 2000). In Asia, we also find multilingual societies. China has a large number of languages, but has the advantage of a unified writing system. Indonesia and the Philippines are other countries which are highly multilingual, with widely accepted linguae francae – Bahasa in Indonesia and English and Tagalog in the Philippines. In India, despite constitutional support for the official status of Hindi, (see Chapter 1), the state structure is linguistically based, hence giving far-reaching rights to regional languages. Ambivalent attitudes, and sometimes hostility, towards Hindi have assured English the role of the lingua franca; in other words, English continues the dominant role it had before independence in 1947. Indian society is fluid, people move from 132

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region to region, from state to state, to find employment (and unfortunately, in many cases, abject poverty). Laitin (1993: 59) points out that migrant communities have ‘a strategic incentive to assimilate the language of their new home’ in order, among other things, to get ahead in the world. Maintaining the language of origin has a heavy price. However, immigrants throughout India retain the language of the region of origin. For example, a study of Tamil speakers in the Karnataka capital city of Bangalore shows that though Bangalore had become part of the state at the break-up of the Madras State in 1956, in areas where Tamils live there are still Tamil speakers. This does not rule out, of course, the possibility that they may be proficient in Kannada, Hindi and English, too (cited by Laitin, 1993: 61). Although a state was set up within borders that were determined by the dominant language in the region, things have changed to the same extent that society and population have changed. Goa is a case in point, as we have seen. Konkani may be the state language but according to the 1991 census, only about 51% of the population declared it to be their native language (see Chapter 2). As well as the special status of Marathi, with one-third declaring it as their native language, the influx of workers and farm workers into Goa selling their wares in the market has brought other languages into the state and the number of people speaking these other languages, e.g. Kannada from neighbouring Karnataka, seems to be growing.

Multilingualism Among the Subjects under Study Further evidence of Indian multilingualism may be seen in an analysis of some of the questions on the questionnaire distributed among the 318 students in Goa, Mangalore (Karnataka) and Kochi (Kerala) who were the subjects of this study. Two parameters were taken to determine the extent of the multilingualism. First, the proficiency in English of the students was ascertained at a certain level: those who attained at least 71% in the English test (see Chapter 7) were included. Second, another list was made with regard to the student’s self-assessment in English. It was decided to include in the list those who attained at least 3.5 points in their general self-assessment or 4 points (out of a possible 5) in understanding and speaking a language. That is to say, the subjects saw themselves as fairly competent, at least ‘good’ in either understanding and speaking English or being competent in all four skills: understanding, speaking, reading and writing. In a multilingual setting, it should be remembered that, in contrast to the established, but changing, eurocentric conception of languages as written artifacts, people may be able to speak other languages without being able to

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Table 10.1 Extent of multilingualism among students attaining 71% in English test (in each case English is one of the languages) 2 languages =

38

3 languages =

46

4 languages =

38

5 languages = Total

3 125

Table 10.2 Extent of multilingualism among students giving self-assessment of at least 3.5 in competence in all language skills or 4 points in the spoken language (in each case English is one of the languages) 2 languages =

69

3 languages =

73

4 languages =

106

5 languages =

3

Total

251

read or write them. Moreover, in many cases, the languages involved may not have a writing system at all. As far as other languages are concerned, we relied solely on self-assessment, since no other language test except for the English one was administered. The same cut-off point was chosen – 3.5 for general self-assessment or 4 for self-assessment in speaking and understanding the language. The number of multilingual students according to their proven ability in English (through the test) was much smaller than the number based on selfassessment. As we have seen, people may be under an illusion as far as their own abilities are concerned. Only 125 students were included in the first count based on test scores, while double that figure (251) appear in the second based on self-assessment. Table 10.1 presents the number of students who had attained at least 71% in the English test and at least 3.5 in their self-assessment in other languages, while Table 10.2 presents the figures based solely on self-assessment in English and in other languages. What would have been expected is that all the 318 students, except, perhaps, those few students, who registered English as their native language, would be in the list but many of them did not evaluate their English highly. This is also the case among Konkani speakers self-assessing their knowledge of their native language: they may have given a lower self-

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assessment of the language, even though they may be native speakers of the language, partly because of the status of the language (see Chapter 2). Moreover, some students may be speakers of languages which are outside the region. They were asked in which other languages they claimed competence without grading their competence. These languages include Tamil, spoken in the east, and Swahili, the major language of East Africa. We also have a group of Tulu speakers in Karnataka. These languages were left out in this analysis. Table 10.2, of course, relates to a larger population, since no account is taken of their performance in English, and competent knowledge of the spoken language, even if it is only by self-assessment, is taken into account. I will relate to these data mainly. Table 10.1 is limited in that it uses a criterion – high performance in an English test1 – that may prevent a full picture of multilingualism among this population, and in this region of India. Which languages are we speaking of? In all cases, English is one of them. Moreover, since a large proportion of the students are Konkani speakers, we expect Konkani to appear as a language with many speakers. In fact, 176 students recorded a high self-assessment in Konkani, which is one less than the number of native speakers (see Table 8.3). Another ‘popular’ language is Hindi. It has been seen that despite many objections to Hindi as the official language of India, especially in the south, there has been widespread acquisition of the language especially in the spoken form, because of the nationwide distribution of Hindi films in cinemas and on television and because of the popularity of Hindi songs. So, popular culture seems to have succeeded to a certain extent where official attempts have failed to persuade non-Hindi speakers to adopt the language as the official language. There were 184 students who stated that they have a good knowledge of Hindi, compared to six who speak Hindi as their native language. The other languages in the list are more locally based. It is worth noting that all the 109 students who assessed themselves as competent in four and more languages registered competence not only in English but in Hindi, too. Table 10.3 shows the languages in descending order of number of proficient speakers. English is, of course, at the top for the reasons previously given What can we learn from these numbers about the linguistic situation of India and. more precisely, the western coast of India, south of Bombay? That multilingualism is widespread there can be no doubt. To be a speaker of four languages, although not necessarily at the same level of competence, is the norm; according to Table 10.2. There are 106 such people in the

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Table 10.3 Languages and number of competent speakers English

251

Hindi

184

Konkani

176

Marathi

102

Malayalam

56

Kannada

22

Portuguese

3

total population of 318, i.e. one-third, which is 42% of the total number of students who claim that they are at least bilingual. But in the context of Goa and its languages, we find an interesting picture. In view of the controversy, which burst out again in 2000, concerning the official language of the state (see Chapter 3), there is a connection between those speakers who claim that they know Marathi, on the one hand, and Konkani speakers, on the other. Of the 115 students who stated that they are competent in Marathi (according to the criterion given earlier), only ten of them did not know Konkani. The breakdown according to religion is 104 Hindus, ten Catholics and one Jehovah Witness. All but one of these students (a Catholic from Mangalore) are from Goa. As expected, while these 104 Marathi-speaking Hindus constitute a majority of Goan Hindus (out of 143, i.e. 72.7%), not many Catholics know the language. In other words, apart from this small group of competent Catholic speakers of Marathi, who may have come from Maharashtra, all the others are Goans. As we have seen, Goan Hindus consider Marathi to be their sacred language; even if they are native speakers of Konkani, Marathi plays an important cultural role in their lives. A quarter of the Goan Hindus are native speakers of Marathi, for 26 subjects recorded this language as their native language. This picture fits in with the general picture of the entire population in the present study. The Hindus gave a much higher self-assessment than the Catholics in their handling of Marathi (3.93 versus 2.3). There were also three times more Hindus than Catholics who answered this question. The 109 students (of a total of 251 who claimed minimum competence with 3.5 or 4 (see earlier), i.e. 43.43%, and almost 34.3% of the total sample) who considered themselves competent in four or five languages registered English and Hindi as two of the languages. The breakdown of languages is given in Table 10.4.

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Table 10.4 Speakers of at least four languages Four languages English, Hindi, Konkani, Marathi

91

English, Hindi, Konkani, Malayalam

13

English, Hindi, Konkani, Kannada Subtotal

2 106

Five languages English, Hindi, Konkani, Marathi, Kannada

2

English, Hindi, Konkani, Marathi, Malayalam

1

Subtotal Total

3 109

The high number of speakers of both Konkani and Marathi is not surprising. It may also be an indication of the close relationship of the two languages but not that Konkani is a dialect of Marathi, which had been argued in the distant past, and is still being argued (see Chapter 2). Competence in both languages seems to indicate the family resemblance of two separate languages. The fact that both belong to the same branch of IndoAryan languages strengthens this sociolinguistic situation. It also seems to be true that Hindi is not a difficult language for Konkani and Marathi speakers to understand and even speak (Vassant Lawande, personal communication, 1999). Apart from English, self-assessment is the sole criterion for establishing knowledge of language. For English, we have another criterion – the subjects’ performance in the shortened TOEFL test. If we look at the data concerning multilingualism with the test taken into consideration, then we get lower figures. A grade of 71% in the English test may be considered, fairly arbitrarily, as an indication of a student being sufficiently proficient in the language to warrant inclusion in the list of competent speakers and users of the language. Table 10.5 provides the relevant data concerning multilingualism, with this proviso concerning English. The low number of subjects (41) should be compared to the total number of subjects that show the same minimum performance in English – 138, as compared to the 251, if we accept self-assessment as the sole criterion. While 43.43% gave themselves ‘high marks’ for language proficiency, only 29.7% may be considered competent if we take the test scores into account. This is still a high percentage, although among all 318 subjects, we are talking of only 12.9%.

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Table 10.5 Speakers of at least four or five languages (with high grade in English test) Four languages English, Hindi, Konkani, Marathi

28

English, Hindi, Konkani, Malayalam

9

English, Hindi, Konkani, Kannada

1

Subtotal

38

Five languages English, Hindi, Konkani, Marathi, Kannada

1

English, Hindi, Konkani, Marathi, Malayalam

2

Subtotal Total

3 41

But may we explain why the most multilingual subjects have Konkani (and Marathi) as one of their languages? Is there something about Konkani speakers that leads them to becoming multilingual? Here, we are in the field of speculation but a type of speculation that may be considered justified in light of the available data. Being a Konkani speaker seems to imply that you are more likely to achieve a higher degree of multilingualism than if you are a native speaker of one of the other languages. In fact, almost the only significant figure of those that know three languages concerns knowledge of Hindi, English and Konkani – 26 out of 251 (10.36%) on the basis of selfassessment only and 15 out of 138 (10.87%) on the basis of a grade of 71% in the English test. The only three-language combination that approximates these data is the set of English, Hindi and Malayalam in Kerala – 23 (9.16%) on the basis of self-assessment and 12 (8.7%) on the basis of attaining 71% in the English test. This may reflect the high level of education and literacy in that state. The results of the analysis seem to indicate that Konkani speakers are more prone to be multilingual than speakers of other languages. If that is so, and as I have already stated, we are in the area of speculation, Konkani speakers tend to know more languages than others, which may lead to a better performance in language tests, as the TOEFL results seem to indicate.

A Further Condition for Second Language Acquisition Interestingly enough, Bernard Spolsky (1989) does not include multilingualism among the conditions for second language learning. He does

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mention in passing in the opening chapter that knowledge of other languages and exposure to other languages should be considered part of the social context (pp. 25, 26) but he does not elaborate on this. If a person has knowledge of, say, three second languages, a fourth language will not be so difficult to learn, compared to another person who is beginning to learn a language, other than his/her native language, for the first time. The more languages one learns, the easier learning languages becomes. The learner develops sets of expectations concerning the contents of a language – possible structures, possible sound patterns, vocabulary differences. Of course, if the person learns only West European languages, there is a built-in set of limitations to what s/he may be exposed. But the moment a person learns one language from another sub-branch of the IndoEuropean family of languages, e.g. Slavonic, Indian or even a language from another family, e.g. Semitic, Dravidian, the set of expectations will be further expanded. Notes 1. After all, people may be competent speakers of a language without being able (1) to read and write in that language (if it has a writing system) and (2) to take tests in that language or at all, and/or succeed in tests.

Chapter 11

Conclusion Introduction In this book, we have been searching for reasons that may explain the consistent success of Konkani speakers in TOEFL examinations. In order to achieve that objective, we have looked at the sociolinguistic situation in Goa and have compared it to the situation in other parts of India. We have looked at the history of Goa, and have seen that it differs to a considerable extent from that of India as a whole. We have seen the central role that migration plays in the history of Konkani speakers, not only in Goa but also to the south in Mangalore (in Karnataka) and in Kerala and, of course, we have taken note of the eventual settlement of Goans in various parts of the world – East Africa, Britain, USA, Australia and the Persian Gulf states. We have seen the religious differences between Hindus and Catholics that are reflected, too, in language use and choice and in orthography. We have examined the status of official languages, the almost non-acceptance by Goans of their native language and the implications that arise from such a situation. We have explored a longstanding language controversy, which started its life as an academic argument in the 19th century, while in the 20th century it has developed into a political, and even violent, struggle in decision-making concerning the official language. The controversy was laid to rest, so it was thought, in 1987 and in 1992 by two decisions – one by the Goan legislative assembly and the other by the leading national academy, the Sahitya Academy in New Delhi – recognising Konkani as one of the Schedule VIII languages. We have followed the outbreak of the language controversy in 2000 after a high court decision in favour of Konkani as the sole language requirement for government employment. The controversy was fairly quickly taken over by politicians, until its disappearance from the headlines due to political manoeuvres. We then noted the re-emergence of the controversy at the time of the national census in February and March of 2001. We have also examined responses given by over 300 Indian students concerning their use of languages, their selfassessment of language proficiency and their attitudes towards particular 140

Where East Looks West Conclusion

Conclusion

141

languages, as well their performance in an abridged version of the TOEFL which was administered to them. The net result of this study is that there is no clear answer to the question why Konkani speakers seem to have an advantage over other language speakers when it comes to taking the TOEFL. There are many indications that we are on the right track but there may be some missing data that could make the difference. For example, we have seen that around 70% of Konkani speakers take the exam in India but the remaining 30% or so, who take the test outside India, could hypothetically attain such high scores that the average score for Konkani speakers would reach such a level. I have, however, some doubts as to the effect of the results of the remaining 30% on the overall average, since the number of TOEFL examinees taking the test in English-speaking countries is fairly similar to the number in the Gulf States in the period studied – 15.7% and 12.8%, respectively, of the total number of Konkani-speaking testees. It would be only those in English-speaking countries that would have any advantage over other groups. It is not reasonable to expect that these examinees in Englishspeaking countries received maximum scores, while others received far less. The high scores would be well distributed among the different locations. Another set of data that we do not have pertains to the number of Konkani speakers in Goa who have sat the TOEFL examination compared to the number in Karnataka who have done so, especially around the city of Mangalore. The focus of this study has been Goa but there are more Konkani speakers in Karnataka than in Goa. If so, we may have been looking simply at the wrong population. However, the historical and social background that has been presented does show that in Goa we are dealing with a fairly unique situation, a combination of factors that has led to Goa’s being for centuries a window to the west, more so than other parts of India. If it is the Konkani speakers of Karnataka that attain such success in the TOEFL, then we would be looking at a population speaking a minority language and trying to succeed in the world despite this handicap. This, in fact, brings us to another group of language speakers that has appeared in this study with which it may be informative to compare – a group of Tulu speakers, as mentioned in Chapter 8. Tulu is a Dravidian language spoken by some 1.5 million mainly on the Konkan coast in Karnataka, south of Goa. It is not one of the Scheduled Languages (Chapter 1) and there are even arguments over whether it should be considered a written language or not. Its speakers are Hindu by religion. In this study, there were 10 Tulu-speaking students (3.1% of the total number), nine from Mangalore and one from the Sacred Heart College in Kochi. While Tulu speakers appear high up in the list of TOEFL scores based on mother

142


tongue (see Introduction and the next section), which is quite close to Konkani, in the test given as part of this study the average grade was only 60.95% (compared to 65.66% among Konkani speakers). Of the ten students, three claimed that they correspond abroad in English (see Chapter 8) and the average grade of these three – 69.17% – was above the average of all the groups in the study (66.18%) but below the average for Konkani speakers who correspond abroad in English (73.34%).2 Therefore, the position of Tulu speakers in India is similar in many ways to Konkani speakers. Tulu speakers are a small linguistic minority in the Kannada-speaking state of Karnataka (especially in and around Mangalore), while Konkani speakers are a linguistic minority on the west coast of India, where Marathi, Kannada and Malayalam speakers constitute the linguistic giants. In order to survive, linguistic minorities either tend to become multilingual or eventually disappear as a separate language group. When a linguistic minority uses languages other than their own for a number of different functions in the community and for communication at various levels between different linguistic communities, it may become difficult to maintain the native language, which would then lead to its eventual extinction. To combat this, there is often a need for a group of zealots to fight the linguistic battles, as we have seen to be the case in Goa, although there is no guarantee that the Konkani cultural groups will win the war in the long run. Another set of circumstances in which a language may be maintained is revived nationalism. This has occurred in some of the ex-Soviet republics. Before the break-up of the Soviet Union, local languages competed with Russian but the latter – the language of power – constantly had the upper hand. Since 1991, the competition between Russian and the local languages has been taking place on much more equal terms. In the Ukraine, for example, Ukrainian is well established as the national language, while in Khazakhstan, despite attempts to establish Kazakh, a Turkic language, Russian is still considered more prestigious (Landau & Kellner-Heinkele, 2001: 75). Even if they have much in common, however, there are differences between Konkani and Tulu speakers that may be partly attributed to the different histories. Tulu has always been spoken in India, at one time in a princedom (the state of Mysore), at other times in part of the British Raj, or in modern independent India, while the major Konkani-speaking area (Goa) has undergone 450 years of Portuguese rule. While the ex-Soviet republics started to tackle the linguistic issues very quickly after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, in Goa – 40 years after liberation – Konkani has not been used effectively to instil ‘Goanness’ among the local population. No one theory may form the basis of this study; no one model may be applied to explain the available data. The apparently most relevant model

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143

that may be used (and has been used) is the set of conditions that Bernard Spolsky (1989) presented in his book on conditions for second language acquisition but as we have seen (Chapter 6), only a few of the conditions seem to pertain specifically to the situation in Goa and to the situation of Konkani speakers. Many of the conditions Spolsky sets out relate to second language acquisition in general, including the Indian and the particular Goan situations. In addition to the limited application of theories of second language acquisition, there are a number of other paradigms in the present study. The discussions of migration and caste/religion are based on work in the field of sociology and anthropology. Haugen’s (1966) model of language standardisation is cited in the examination of the changing status of Konkani in Goa, while the question of language maintenance (and possible language death) does not seem to be central to the issue, although this issue has been discussed in the press (The Herald, 27 June 2002). Another paradigm considers social history as a partial explanation of many linguistic phenomena (e.g. Leith, 1983), especially, but not exclusively, in the field of historical linguistics. Despite aphorisms such as ‘history repeats itself’, there is no theory of history, so no theory may be applied to the historical conditions of the Portuguese in Goa. There may be theories of historical methodology, however, which are closely linked to the philosophical question ‘What is a (historical) fact?’ (Carr, 1964). But this is part of a broader area – the theory of knowledge or epistemology. Carr even quotes from Marx (despite the latter’s historical determinism) in his argument against a theory of history: Events strikingly similar, but occurring in a different historical milieu, lead to completely dissimilar results. By studying each of these evolutions separately and then comparing them, it is easy to find the key to the understanding of this phenomenon; but it is never possible to arrive at this understanding by using the passe-partout of some historical-philosophical theory whose great virtue is to stand above history. (Cited in Carr, 1964: 65) In our case, we do not have any grounds to say that any relatively small coast-dwelling population speaking a language with very little extant literature, in a region where other languages are spoken by much larger populations, and after almost half a millennium of foreign rule, will produce an élite who will attain the highest competence in the world in a test on an international language as a second language.2 Even Tulu speakers, who do relatively well in the TOEFL, and who in 2000–01 have ousted Konkani from top position, do not fulfil one of the important conditions for Konkani speakers – their being subject to foreign rule for such a

144


long time. As we go down the scale (see Table 11.1), fewer and fewer conditions may be applied to speakers of any specific language. Malayalam, for example, not only does not fulfil the 450 years of foreign rule (as opposed to sporadic foreign infiltration and only about 150 years of foreign rule) but neither is it a minority language in the region where it is spoken. If we take the non-Indian languages in the table, most of them (Dutch, German, Norwegian, Swedish) do not fulfil any of the conditions suggested by the Konkani pre-eminence. Moreover, they are far more closely related to English than Konkani, all being West or North Germanic languages. In conclusion, from such a collection of research fields and methods, it would be foolhardy to present a model that catches it all. Different theories lead to different approaches. The use of different theories and, in consequence, the use of different approaches, whenever possible, leads nevertheless to a more comprehensive coverage of the factors in the situation examined in this study.

More Recent TOEFL Data If there is no clear conclusion, we still do have clear results. The TOEFL data presented in this work are for the years 1993 to 1998. In the academic year 1998–99, the use of computer-based tests was initiated, and consequently spread, so the number of examinees taking the pen-and-paper test went down. According to the Test and Score Data Summary 1999–2000, published by the Educational Testing Service – over 340,000 took the traditional test in the year 1998–99, while 276,410 took the computer-based test. In the following year (1999–2000), we find 411,103 candidates in the penand-paper test and 317,708 in the computer-based test. Then, in the following academic year, 2000–01, we find a complete reversal as a result of the rapid spread of the computer-based test. The vast majority of examinees in the world took the computer-based TOEFL (472,144 in all – just over 67%, according to the Test and Score Data Summary 2001–02), while 230,877 examinees took the ‘traditional’ pen-and-paper TOEFL. Let us look at the top part of the native language ‘league’, as we have done in the study, but this time for the three subsequent years from 1998 until 2001. Table 11.1 gives the figures for the pen-and-paper test, which is at the centre of our inquiry. It should be noted that statistically we are not dealing with the same proportion of examinees out of the total number of examinees in any given year. For the pen-and-paper test, I have taken the top 12 language groups, which for 1998–99 constitute 5.08% of the total number of examinees, for 1999–2000 a similar figure of 5.67%, while in 2000–01 this figure went down

Conclusion

145

Table 11.1 TOEFL results for 1998–99, 1999–2000 and 2000–01, according to native language – paper test 1998–99

1999–2000

2000–01

1. Konkani

622

1. Konkani

621

1. Konkani

624

2. Tulu

618

2. Norwegian

619

2. Malayalam

598

3. Norwegian

612

3. Tulu Kashmiri Swedish

609 603

3. German

596

4. German

609

4. Kashmiri Marathi

595

5. Malayalam Kashmiri

603

7. Marathi Tamil

599

6. Malayalam

598

6. Tamil

593

7. Estonian

597

7. Kannada Romanian

591

8. Hindi Marathi

596 9. Hindi

588

9. Hindi

598

10. Kannada English

595

10. Kannada Tamil

595

10. Estonian

585

12. Oriya

594

12. English

594

11. Dutch English

584

to 3.75%. Not only has the total number of examinees decreased but the number of high attainers has also gone down in raw numbers. In the computer-based TOEFL, the top 12 were also selected (see Table 11.2). For 1998–99, the top twelve language groups constitute 7.24% of the total number of examinees, in 1999–2000 we have a similar figure of 7.6%, while in 2000–01 the top 12 language groups now constitute only 5.3% of the total. Although there has been a steady increase in the raw numbers of examinees in the top 12 groups, their proportion has been reduced, because now we have over 472,000 candidates in the computer-based TOEFL, which is an increase of over 48% over the previous year (compared to a little less than 15% increase from 1998–99 to 1999–2000). The decrease in the number of examinees taking the pen-and -paper test from 1999–2000 to 2000–01 was 43.8%, which explains the difference in figures. These two tables present more or less the same results that we have seen in the Introduction. There are, however, several ‘surprises’:

146


Table 11.2 TOEFL results for 1998–99, 1999–2000 and 2000–01, according to native language – computer-based test 1998–99

1999–2000

1. Konkani

260

2. Dutch

258

3. Kannada Marathi

256

5. Kashmiri Danish

1. Konkani Dutch

2000–01 260

3. Kannada

258

4. Marathi Kashmiri

257

255 6. Danish 7. German Finnish

255

7. German

249

8. Finnish

248

9. Oriya

247

9. Malayalam

249

10. Hindi

246

10. Swedish Shona

244

11. Shona

245

12. Malayalam

244

12. Rumanian

1. Tulu

265

2. Kashmiri

261

3. Dutch Konkani

260

5. Kannada

255

6. Danish Marathi

253

8. Malayalam Slovene

251

10. Hindi

250

11. Finnish Tamil

248

250

243

(1) the appearance among the high scorers in the computer-based and penand-paper test results of Rumanian and of Shona (a South African language) speakers, although Shona does appear in the ‘league’ relating to the pen-and-paper TOEFL in 1996–97 (see Introduction); and (2) not only the appearance of Tulu speakers among the high scorers in the computer-based test but also their taking first position in 2000–01. Since one swallow does not make a summer, no far-reaching conclusion may be drawn on the basis of the results of one year.3 However, it is interesting to note that Tulu speakers, a linguistic minority, may have to be

Conclusion

147

multilingual in order to survive as a speech community, as previously mentioned. While it is possible to compare the results in Table 11.1 with those discussed in this study, those of the computer-based test (Table 11.2) cannot be directly compared, since the test has a different composition. For example, an essay question, to be written in a standard word-processing program, has been integrated into the examination, which is not the case with the traditional TOEFL text.4 For the researchers at the Educational Testing Service, of course, the results of the new TOEFL are not a less reliable but – they argue – a better indication of the examinees’ proficiency in English, i.e. the aim remains the same. Despite the ‘ousting’ of Konkani from first position in the computerbased TOEFL, the prominent languages in the ‘league’ are still Germanic (German, Dutch, Danish, Norwegian and even English) and Indian, both Indo-Aryan (Hindi, Kashmiri, Marathi and of course, Konkani) and Dravidian (Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu and Tulu). After this extensive investigation into the linguistic panorama of India, and especially of Goa, are we able to come to a general conclusion? Let us try. A possible reason for the constant success of Konkani speakers is that, though they may be in the east – in south Asia – they have been looking west for centuries, and still do! Notes 1. The differences are not significant: 0.4571 (p = 0.05). Since only three Tulu speakers correspond in English, there is no value in a statistical test. 2. Perhaps a comparable case would be the testing of French among the population of the ex-French colony of Pondicherry on the east coast of India (see Chapter 4). But that is a subject for a different study. 3. For readers who enjoy such statistics, in the year 2001–02, Konkani returns to the top position with 263, followed closely by Tulu (262), and then Dutch (261), Marathi and Danish (257), Kashmiri (256) and Kannada (255). There were no Konkani and Tulu speakers taking the paper-based test. 4. Several times a year there is a test of written English (TWE), which is a half-hour essay exam, followed by the traditional pen-and-paper TOEFL. While it is compulsory for those sitting the exam at the selected sessions, the score is not part of the final TOEFL score, but is given separately. Not so with the new computerbased exam, in which the essay is compulsory and is part of the final score, though a separate score is indicated on the score sheet.

Appendix The Goa, Daman and Diu Official Language Act 1987 and Notifications1 1

An Act to adopt the official language for official purposes of the Union territory of Goa, Daman and Diu Be it enacted by the Legislative Assembly of Goa, Daman and Diu in the Thirty-eight Year of the Republic of India as follows:– 1.

Short title, extent and commencement (1) This Act may be called the Goa, Daman and Diu Official Language Act, 1987. (2) It extends to the whole of the Union territory of Goa, Daman and Diu. (3) It shall come into force at once. 2. Definitions. – In this Act, unless the context otherwise requires, (a) ‘Administrator’ means the Administrator of the Union territory of Goa, Daman and Diu appointed by the President under article 239 of the Constitution; (b) ‘Government’ means the Government of Goa, Daman and Diu; (c) ‘Konkani language’ means Konkani language in Devanagari script; (d) ‘notification’ means a notification published in the Official Gazette; (e) ‘Official Gazette’ means the Official Gazette of the Government of Goa, Daman and Diu; (f) ‘Union territory’ means the Union territory of Goa, Daman and Diu. (3) Official language of the Union territory. (1) With effect from such date as the Administrator may, by notification, appoint, Konkani language shall, subject to the provisions contained in sections 34 and 35 of the Government of Union Territories, 1963 (Central Act 20 of 1963), be the official language for all or any of the official purposes of the Union territory, and different dates may be appointed for different official purposes; Provided that the Administrator may, by a like notification, direct that 148

Where East Looks West Appendix

Appendix

4.

5.

149

in case of the Goa District, the Marathi language, and in the case of Daman and Diu Districts, the Gujarati Language, shall also be used for all or any of the official purposes and different dates may be appointed for different official purposes. Provided further that nothing contained in this sub-section shall be deemed to affect the use of the Marathi and Gujarati languages in educational, social or cultural fields; Provided further that the Government shall not, in granting aid to any educational or cultural institution, discriminate against such institution only on ground of language; (2) Nothing contained in sub-section (1) shall preclude any person from submitting any representation for the redress of any grievance to any officer or authority of the Union territory in any of the languages used in the Union territory. Continued use of English language. Notwithstanding anything contained in section 3, the English language shall continue to be used in addition to the languages specified in that section for all or any of the official purposes of the Union territory. Laying of notification before Legislative Assembly. Every notification issued under this Act shall be laid, as soon as may be after it is issued, before the Legislative Assembly while it is in session for a total period of fourteen days which may be comprised in one session or in two successive sessions, and if before the expiry of the session in which it is so laid or the session immediately following, the Legislative Assembly agree in making any modification in the notification or agree that the notification should not be issued, the notification shall thereafter have effect only in such modified form or be of no effect as the case may be; so, however, that any such modification or annulment shall be without prejudice to the validity of anything previously done under that notification.

Notification (1–1–87/OL&PG) – as ordered by Governor of Goa (15 December 1987). In exercise of the powers conferred by sub-section (1) of section 3 of the Goa, Daman and Diu Official Language Act, 1987 (Act No. 5 of 1987), the Government of Goa hereby appoints the 19th day of December, 1987 as the date from which Konkani Language shall be the official language for the purposes of replies by the Government whenever communications are received in Konkani language. In exercise of the powers conferred by sub-section (1) of section 3 of the Goa, Daman and Diu Official Language Act, 1987 (Act No. 5 of 1987), the

150


Government of Goa hereby appoints the 19th day of December, 1987 as the date from which Marathi shall be used for the purposes of replies by the Government whenever the communications are received in Marathi language. Note 1. My thanks to Kyoko Matsukawa for obtaining a copy of the Act for me.

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Index – 2001 6, 26, 41n., 56-57, 71, 85n., 109, 140 – East Africa 81 cinema, Indian 9, 10, 12, 17, 37, 65, 128, 131, 135 colonial languages 96, 117, 132

Adhil Shah 23, 26 Albuquerque, Afonso de 26, 76 Andhra Pradesh xi, 9, 12, 48, 55, 59, 130, 131 Arabic 5, 11, 13, 16, 17, 19, 20n., 23, 24, 66, 68, 69, 82, 97n., 132 Assamese 20n.

Dadra-Nagar Haveli (Gujarat) 25 Daman and Diu (Gujarat) 3, 26, 34, 58n., 69n., 76 Dé, Shobha 65 Desai, Anita 90 diaspora, Goan 82-84, 113, 118, 120 diglossia 20n., 66-69 Doordarshan see media Dravidian languages vii, 3, 6, 9, 14, 16, 19, 43, 115, 125, 139, 141, 147 see also separate languages

Bahasa Malay (Indonesia) 4, 132 Bandodkar, Dayanand 32-33, 34, 49, 75 Bangalore (Karnataka) 14, 60, 133 Bangladesh 20n. Bengali 9, 11, 13, 14, 20n., 61, 65, 74, 129 Bijapur (Karnataka) 23, 26, 76 bilingualism 9, 36, 48, 51 Bombay (Mumbai) ix, 26, 37, 41n., 47, 48, 60, 63, 77ff., 82, 83, 130, 135 – schools 130-131 British Raj 15, 77, 80, 142 castes xi, 27, 33, 42, 68, 70-75, 85n., 95, 112, 113, 120, 143 – Brahmins 27, 29, 42, 71-73, 113, 120 Saraswati Brahmins 29, 33, 42, 57n., 73-75, 112 – Devadasi 33, 75 – Kshatriya 27, 71, 72 Catholics 25, 27-29, 31-34, 38, 46, 54, 63, 71, 78-83, 93, 95, 112, 115, 119, 120, 136, 140 – church services and liturgy 43, 50, 73, 93 – conversion to Catholicism 25-27, 42, 72 – nuevos christianos 28 CBSE (Central Board of Secondary Education) 7, 124 Census 1961 3 – 1991 9, 26, 40-41n., 50, 57n., 68, 70, 109, 133

East Africa ix, 80ff., 121, 135, 140 East India Company 4, 15, 77 Educational Testing Service see TOEFL English language passim – Indian English 90, 97n. English literature 16, 92-96, 126 eurocentrism 132, 133 examinations ix, 8, 16, 20n., 63, 69, 94 see also TOEFL Gandhi, Mahatma 10, 13, 17, 70 Goa passim – Legislative Assembly 32, 33, 38, 45, 47-48, 51, 53, 58n., 140 – nuevas conquistas 29, 72, 77 – velhas conquistas 29, 72, 76 Great Tradition 92-94 Hebrew 20n., 69, 96, 103, 132 Hindi vii, xi, 4-11,13, 14, 16, 20, 25, 37,

155

Where East Looks West Index

156 46, 50, 51, 59, 61, 66, 68, 69, 92, 115, 116, 120, 123-125, 131, 132, 133, 135-138, 147 – ‘Hindi belt’ 6, 7, 9, 10, 12, 17, 18, 59, 68 Hindus and Hinduism 10, 12-13, 15, 20n., 25-30, 36, 38, 41n., 42-44, 50, 54, 64-65, 66-68, 71ff., 80, 83, 85n., 93, 95, 112-113, 115, 119 120, 136, 140, 141 – Hindu sacred texts 15, 16, 29, 30, 31, 38, 42, 50 Hindustani 10, 13, 16, 17 historical determinism (Marx) 143 Indian Constitution 3, 4-6, 7, 8, 12-13, 14, 19n., 37, 40, 55, 58n., 92, 115, 124, 132 – Schedule VIII 3ff., 9, 13, 14, 19n., 33, 34, 70, 92, 115, 140, 141 Israel ix, 69, 96, 97n. Jesuits 17, 27, 28, 29, 31, 39, 42, 43, 71, 72, 74, 91 Jha, Raj Kamal 65 Jinnah, Mohammed 17 Kannada vii, 6,9, 12, 13, 14, 17, 34, 43, 47, 55, 56, 57n., 109, 114, 115, 116, 122, 125, 133, 142, 147 Karnataka ix, 3, 9, 12-14, 17, 23, 26, 27, 32, 39, 43, 44, 47, 55, 57n., 59, 63, 77, 92, 104, 109, 110n., 115, 116, 133, 135, 140-142 Kashmiri vii, 13, 147 Kerala ix, 9, 25, 27, 28, 36, 39, 41n., 59, 61, 63, 74, 76, 77, 83, 109, 110n., 112, 115, 133, 138, 140 Kochi (Cochin) xiiin., 25, 26, 36, 55, 63, 76 – colleges ix, xi, 89, 102, 104, 109-110, 111-113, 118-119, 133, 141 Konkani passim – dialects 30-32, 57, 66, 75, 77, 92, 93, 100 – dictionaries 29, 36, 39, 85n. – Goa Konkani Akademi 38 – Konkani cultural organisations 44, 45, 47, 56

Where East Looks West – Konkani grammars and textbooks 28, 29, 32, 39, 41n., 91 – Konkani Institute (Mangalore) 39 – Konkani-Marathi controversy xi, 30, 31-34, 40, 42-58, 59, 65, 75, 93, 126, 137 – suppression of language 28, 29, 94 – syntactic features 22-24 – Thomas Stephens Konkani Centre 39 – vocabulary 23-24 language standardisation 16, 20n., 30, 32, 75, 77, 90, 92, 96, 97n., 143 learnability of languages 10, 24-25, 90-91, 138-139 linguistic landscape xi, 11, 20n., 61-62, 68, 69n. literacy rate 109, 110n., 131n., 138 Macaulay, Lord 15-16 Maharashtra 8, 9, 13, 17, 26, 32, 36, 42, 43, 47-50, 53, 55, 63, 75, 81, 83, 85n., 115, 130, 136 Malayalam 6, 9, 14, 28, 39, 61, 83, 109, 115, 116, 120, 125, 138, 142, 144, 147 Malvani (or Kudali) 100, 116 mando 37 Mangalore ix, xi, 3, 13, 25, 26, 28, 39, 55, 57n., 63, 77, 111-112, 140, 142 – Mangalore University 89, 102, 104, 109, 111, 114, 118-119, 133, 136, 141 Marathas 41n., 77, 85n. Marathi vii, 5, 6, 8, 9, 11, 13, 17, 22, 27, 29, 30, 31ff., 40, 41n., 60-61, 63, 66-67, 80, 83, 91, 93, 112, 115, 116, 120, 126, 130-131, 136, 138, 142, 147 Marathi cultural organizations 32, 44, 45, 54, 55, 57 matrimonial column (in newspapers) 71, 73 media 35-37, 69 – book publishing 18-19, 36, 128 – press xi, 7-9, 14, 17-19, 24, 36-37, 38, 43, 46, 50, 54-55, 57, 60-62, 97n., 128, 143 – radio and television 14, 16, 18, 36-37, 61, 97n., 128, 135 medium of instruction 12, 14, 17-18, 29-31, 33-35, 46, 47, 59, 62-65, 75, 91,

Index 93, 123, 125, 128, 130-131 migration 19, 25f., 41n., 43, 57, 63f., 75-84, 104, 113, 129f., 133, 140, 143 Moslems xi, 5, 8, 10, 12, 13, 17, 20n., 23, 34, 41n., 50, 68, 71, 76, 80 multilingualism xi, 9, 55, 97, 113, 116, 129, 130, 132-139, 142, 147 Napoleonic Wars 62, 77 Nehru, Jawaharlal, 4, 7, 13, 17, 32, 33, 41n. Nepali 25, 50, 70, 84n. North America vii, ix, x, 18, 20, 24, 82, 95, 101, 118 Official Language Act 1987 (Goa) 11, 33, 40, 42, 44, 45, 47-49, 51-56, 58n., 148-150 Official Languages Act 1963 (India) 7 Opinion Poll (Referendum) 32, 63 Orissa 124, 125-128, 131n. Oriya vii, 125 orthography – Devanagari script 4, 6, 9-12, 19-20n., 28-29, 33, 36, 39, 40, 43, 47, 50, 68, 73, 85n., 92, 115, 148 – Kandovi script 27, 39 – Kannada script 27, 28, 29, 39, 92, 93, 115 – Perso-Arabic script 10, 12, 13, 20n., 28, 68 – roman script 19n., 27-29, 36, 39, 43, 50, 73, 92, 114, 115 Pakistan ix, 13, 17, 20n., 25, 63, 78, 82 Panaji (capital of Goa) 11, 17, 23, 36, 61, 62, 73, 82, 85n., 94, 104, 105, 111, 114 Parrikar, Manohar 41n., 47, 51, 52, 58n. Parsis 78, 80, 85n. Persian 6, 10, 13, 20n., 23 Persian Gulf States ix, 46, 81, 82, 83, 101, 114, 118, 122n., 140, 141 political parties (Goa) 45-54 – BJP 45ff., 58n. – Congress (parties) 17, 32, 33, 41n., 45ff., 58n. – MGP (Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party) 32-33, 45ff., 58n. – United Goan Party 32, 58n.

157 Pondicherry 63, 80, 147n. Portuguese colony in Goa 3, 4, 24-32, 41n., 42, 54, 58n., 82-85, 69n., 71-72, 74, 76-79, 81, 84, 85n., 93-94, 104, 112, 142, 143 – medical school 29, 30 – printing press 27-28 – Provincial Congress of Portuguese India 64 – Salazar, Oliveira 64 Portuguese language 24, 28-31, 40n., 43, 57n., 62-64, 83, 84, 115, 116, 132 public opinion 43-47, 65-66 Punjabi 13, 68 questionnaire 82, 83, 89, 96-97, 104-105, 107, 111-122, 124, 126, 133 – correspondence abroad 83, 118-122 – self-assessment ix, 113, 115-118, 125, 130, 133-137 – students’ background 111-114 Ribeiro, Orlanda 64-65 Roy, Arundhati 65, 90 Russian 9, 19n., 142 Sahitya Academy 34, 36, 140 Sanskrit 4, 5, 6, 10, 15, 18, 23, 39, 74, 91, 112, 125, 132 Sanskrit University (Varanasi) 15, 18 Sanskritisation 13, 69, 124 Sardinha, Francisco 45, 48, 52, 53, 56, 57-58n. schools passim second language acquisition x, xi, 89-96, 97, 135, 138, 143 Set, Vikram 90 Sindhi 6, 13, 115 songs, popular Indian 10, 12, 17, 37, 131, 135 South African languages 132, 145, 147n. Stephens, Thomas 27, 28, 29, 42, 50, 55, 91 Swahili 108, 122, 135 Tagalog 103, 132 Tamil language vii, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 14, 18, 20n., 83, 93, 103, 108, 115, 125, 129, 132, 133, 135, 147

158 Tamil Nadu 6-8, 9, 17, 20n., 41n., 55, 59, 63, 72, 93 Telugu 6, 9, 12, 14, 48, 56, 73, 108, 125, 130, 132, 147 tertiary education 30, 59, 105, 111, 123-124 test validity x, 99-101, 103 Thomas Stephens Konkani Centre 38 three-language formula (in schools) 113, 124-126, 130, 138 TOEFL (Test of English as Foreign Language) vii, x, xiiin., 3, 19n., 89, 91, 98-100, 140, 141, 144, 145, 147 – age of testees 104-105, 110, 111-112 – computer test 98, 99, 100n., 144-147 – pen-and-paper test 98, 110n., 144,

Where East Looks West 146, 147 – results test in research 107-110 TOEFL 1998-2001 101, 110, 144-146 TOEFL 2001-02 144, 147n. tourism in India 12, 17, 18, 20-21n., 41n. Tulu vii, 3, 6, 14, 109, 115, 135, 141, 142, 143, 145, 147 Turkish 19-20n., 23-24 TWE (Test of Written English) 98, 99-100 unemployment, threat of 43, 49, 50, 52 Urdu 5, 8, 10, 12, 13, 20n., 25, 28, 34, 68, 115, 130, 132

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