Salaam, Namaste, Goodbye and Good Riddance

By Sunny Bindra

Date:13-08-06

Source: Awaz

In which language do you think? When I was ten years old, it became clear to me that I generally think in English. Many years later, the repercussions of this seemingly innocuous discovery became apparent. Since then I have tussled with the idea of ‘my’ language, and its loss.

‘My’ language is Punjabi. But Hindi, Urdu, Gujarati and Kiswahili are also mine – I can speak and understand them (in varying degrees). I grew up with them; more importantly, I feel for them. I love their nuance and cadence, their idiom and rhythm. Sitting above all of them, in terms of usage and general intimacy, is English. It is the language I find myself conversing in and writing in most of the time. I am devoted to it, but it also fills me with unease. Is it ‘mine’? And in giving it the crown, what have I lost?

English is the language of South Asians in Kenya today. It is the language of business, of general expression, of exuberance. Once upon a time, it was the language of external communication: our homes resonated with the sounds of Punjabi and Gujarati, of Cutchi and Hindi. Outside – in schools, shops, public places – we switched to Angrezi. But listen to the generation below thirty today: English is not only spoken in every single situation and every single interaction – it is the only language spoken.

So what? Languages do die out. There are more than six thousand still spoken around the world today, but by the end of this century more than half may have disappeared. Many argue that this is a good thing; that it reflects the end of isolationism and heralds a new integration of the people of the world. In the past, wars, invasions and colonisations often led to the loss of indigenous language. Today it is globalisation that leads the onslaught. English is lingua franca – you either speak it or you stay irrelevant.

So it is with the young wahindi of East Africa. The old folks may still be twanging the old tongues, but we who are modern can only express our freshness in English. All our learning – of medicine, of law, of science, of art – is conducted in English. Our expressions, our elations, even our put-downs – all English. “Take a chill pill, bro”, I hear you tell me. We are part of the South Asian diaspora. We are entrepreneurs and achievers, and we’re on our way to ruling the world. We can only do that in English. So don’t fulminate – reciprocate!

And yet there is another interesting phenomenon at work. We don’t abandon our songs and our movies – they have never been more popular. Bollywood keeps booming; our crooners keep crooning. Because of our films and songs, everyone has some sort of working knowledge of Hindi and Urdu. We can’t really speak the lingo, but we get the drift and don’t lose the plot. Hai na? It helps, of course, that the dialogues of most new movies are increasingly peppered with English (to sell to the diaspora) and have ve-e-e-ry simple plots (to sell to half-wits).

This ‘resurgence’ of the cultural values of home is largely driven by the diaspora dollar. No matter how well the brethren do in far-off lands, after a while of trying to fit in and doing as the Romans do, a lament rises deep in the soul: this isn’t mine! I want my songs, my words, my heritage. Sadly, this is not coupled with a desire to learn or relearn the mother tongue: it only manifests in a need to partake in ‘culturelite’ – fusion music, movies with international settings, folk songs remixed and redux. Why am I worried? Because you can only express a culture in its own language.