There is a popular joke about apples in the district of Murshidabad. A middle-aged father asked his ailing son whether he was gaining in strength each time the latter finished a slice of apple offered to him during his recovery from fever. This apparently not-so-funny joke speaks volumes about the relationship a rural child shares with the expensive and ‘medicinal’ fruit, the apple. It may sound absurd to urban ears, but, as they say, truth is sometimes stranger than fiction. Many children from rural areas in this country, especially children from families of small farmers, taste an apple for the first time in their life when they fall sick and a country quack advises the family to provide nutritious food to the ailing child. Thus the apple is an alien, elite too, fruit to such ill-fated children of rural India.

By no means is this fruit an integral part of their frugal existence, let alone their culture. But the worst irony of the existing education system in this country lies in the fact that the first English word an Indian child formally learns is apple! It would be an impossible task to explain the reason behind the introduction of such a fallacious learning mechanism, without citing the impact of an obstinate and undying colonial hangover. It is a well-known fact that the British colonialists introduced a Eurocentric academic curriculum in India, especially at the primary level, with the objective of hegemonizing young Indian minds into the European culture and value system.

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They planned to achieve this goal by instilling the idea of a superior Western culture among young Indian students through the English language. Thus the English language, in this context, served a dual purpose ~ first, it worked as a medium of communication, and, secondly, as a communicator of Western culture and its inherent value system. This was cunningly designed to produce a hybrid community ~ Indian in skin and British in taste. Subsequently, this newly emerged hybrid community developed a staunch sense of distaste towards its own language and, more importantly, its culture.

To understand the politics of alienation involved in the entire process and also to facilitate a cultural fight back, the networks of linguistic and cultural hegemony need to be deconstructed at the very outset. Therefore the classic ‘A for apple’ equation and its cultural resonances must be understood vis-à-vis this larger political cultural framework. It is quite normal to kick-start the formal cognitive process of a Western child with the image of an apple as it is one of the most common cultural images in Western countries, especially in England. Apple is so amply available in these countries that many of their dishes contain the fruit in one form or another. Even some of their religious scriptures and popular cultural texts contain multiple references and allusions to the apple.

Thus, an apple is such a popular image in Western culture that it catches the imagination of a Western child easily and quickly. Therefore, it is expected that their formal cognitive process would start with such a hugely popular image as that of an apple. ‘A for apple’ is thus not only expected but also effective from the cultural as well as cognitive perspective. However, it is weird to repeat the same in the Indian context for obvious reasons. There is no denying the fact that knowledge of the English language is crucial in a vastly globalised world where English is used as the global lingua franca. But teaching and learning of the English language must not be done through a curriculum that may contain seeds of cultural or psychological colonisation. A close study of some of the well-known stories and rhymes taught at the primary and preprimary levels across India would reveal the Eurocentric nature of the existing academic framework in this country.

Added to that, most of the pictorial illustrations supplied with stories and rhymes in the primary readers have explicit European touches. In one such illustration, accompanying a popular farmer’s story, the farmer is shown to have been dressed up almost like Sherlock Holmes with a hat and a pair of gumboots! In the European context, this image is perfectly alright. But this creates a completely false image of a farmer in the budding Indian minds. Thus children get alienated unknowingly from Indian realities. In the same way, the relations between the black sheep and its master, between the farmer and his farm, between God and his creation etc. have been represented through Eurocentric images and sign systems.

Thus, while learning the English language, children get immersed in a world that has no connection whatsoever with the world around them. This intellectual alienation ultimately leads to cultural ali – e nation, which, in the long run, proves fatal for this community of young learners. As stated earlier, an unpolished and unqualified contempt for whatever is originally theirs develops within such children and they feel ashamed to speak their mother tongue and also to have regard for their own culture. Closing down of English medium schools, or dropping the English course from the academic curriculum, or imposing the so-called Indian knowledge system on children won’t be a feasible solution to this serious problem. A rational restructuring of the existing English curriculum at the pre-primary and the primary levels, emphasising liberal and diversified Indian cultural images and icons, may initiate a whole new process of cultural re-membering.

English language taught through Indian stories and rhymes with typical Indian images and sign systems can be a viable alternative to the current conflicting curriculum. In doing so, the role of language as a communicator of culture must be kept in mind. The words of the Kenyan author and intellectual Ng g wa Thiong’o are highly suggestive in this context. While explaining the relation between language and identity he said, “Language carries culture, and culture carries, particularly through orat – ure and literature, the entire body of values by which we come to perceive ourselves and our place in the world. How people perceive themselves affects how they look at their culture….” The long existing colonial residues in the overall academic curricula, especially at primary and pre-primary levels, must stop now and forever.

Time is ripe for Indian policy makers to frame a curriculum for primary and pre-primary students that would encourage both teachers and learners to approach English as a medium of communication first and then as a carrier of culture ~ Indian culture of course. Appropriate and useful texts and techniques must be introduced with a view to creating an Indian cultural environment within the curricula and also within the classroom. Without dispelling the aura of cultural superiority associated with English language, the spell of the cultural false consciousness among Indian students shall never be broken. This applies to other hegemonic discourses too.

Therefore, systematic and collective resistan – ce against such normalised practices, which are largely hegemonic in nature, is necessary to build an inclusive and independent system. Shadow wars on others’ languages, especially on English, or futile grumbles of dejected hearts on International Mother Language Day shall neither save the mother nor the tongue. One has to understand that the best way to save a people’s language is to preserve their culture and to instil a sense of pride among people about their own culture. If the tongue is to be saved, the mother needs to be saved first.

(The writer is Assistant Professor at the Department of English, Rabindra Bharati University, and he can be reached at dd@rbu.ac.in)