Studia Polensia, Vol. 12 No. 1, 2023.
Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.32728/studpol/2023.12.01.01
Strange, and Stranger Ways With Strangers: English in India Revisited
K. Narayana Chandran
; The University of Hyderabad, India
*
* Corresponding author.
Abstract
It is difficult to find the necessary discursive focus on English in
multilingual India. Its aspirational youth still need this language of colonial
provenance to keep its otherness from the native cultures of India they
nonetheless esteem. This article acknowledges the radical ambivalence
English thus creates, beside an analysis of the others English engenders in
India’s globalizing progress. It critiques what academics often practise as
a version and variant of Cultural Studies, and how they end by practicing
Stranger Studies. The concluding part of this article probes the reservations
most Indians seem to have about their visitors and guests, and how English
inflects their transactions with the ‘other’ world. A Harold Pinter tableau
from Mountain Language is read as an object lesson for students who invest
in English, unmindful of its undiminished potential still as an imperialist
language. When Language fails the Human, it is time we rethink the
humanities. The article ends with a reformist hope that no Indian or other
state capital will ever be a stage for such an overbearing English scenario
the way it appears so blatantly in Pinter’s play.
Keywords
English in India; “Stranger” Studies; Harold Pinter’s Mountain Language; Guests, Visitors, Others - Language and the Human
Hrčak ID:
311684
URI
Publication date:
20.12.2023.
Visits: 553 *