Language, Education, and Identity: Medium in South Asia 9780367626525, 9780367704315, 9781003146278

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Title
Copyright
Contents
Notes on contributors
Acknowledgments
List of abbreviations
1 Medium in South Asia: ethnography, discourse, and policy
Part I The meanings of medium
2 Medium and coaching centers in North India
3 Medium discourses and the construction of self and other in social media in postcolonial Bangladesh
4 Media of medium: language boundaries and multimodal semiotic ecologies in Nepali schools for deaf students
Part II Medium, identity, and the production of inequality
5 Romance, Austen, and English-medium schooling in Pakistan
6 Muslims in Sri Lankan language politics: Tamil- and English-medium education
7 Labor migration and English-medium schooling in Nepal
8 English-medium education and patriarchy: narratives of Indian women
9 Recognizing diversity: multiethnic Sinhala- and Tamil-medium schools in Sri Lanka
Part III Medium and considerations of policy
10 The Right to Education Act: medium and dis-citizenship
Index

Citation preview

LANGUAGE, EDUCATION, AND IDENTITY

This book examines medium of instruction in education and studies its social, economic, and political significance in the lives of people living in South Asia. It provides insight into the meaning of medium and what makes it so important to identity, aspiration, and inequality. It questions the ideologized associations between education and social and spatial mobility and discusses the gender- and class-based marginalization that comes with vernacular-medium education. The volume also considers how policy measures, such as the Right to Education (RTE) Act in India, have failed to address the inequalities brought by medium in schools, and investigates questions on language access, inclusion, and rights. Drawing on extensive fieldwork and in-depth interviews, the book will be indispensable for students and scholars of anthropology, education studies, sociolinguistics, sociology, and South Asian studies. It will also appeal to those interested in language and education in South Asia, especially the role of language in the reproduction of inequality. Chaise LaDousa is the Christian A. Johnson Excellence in Teaching Professor of Anthropology at Hamilton College, USA. His research interests include language and culture, political economy, and education, in India and the United States. He is the author of Hindi Is Our Ground, English Is Our Sky: Education, Language, and Social Class in Contemporary India (2014) and is Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Linguistic Anthropology. Christina P. Davis is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Western Illinois University, USA. Her research concerns language and digital media practices, multilingual education, and ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka and India. She is the author of The Struggle for a Multilingual Future: Youth and Education in Sri Lanka (2020) and is Book Review Editor of the Journal of Linguistic Anthropology.

LANGUAGE, EDUCATION, AND IDENTITY Medium in South Asia

Edited by Chaise LaDousa and Christina P. Davis

First published 2022 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2022 selection and editorial matter, Chaise LaDousa and Christina P. Davis; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Chaise LaDousa and Christina P. Davis to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-0-367-62652-5 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-70431-5 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-14627-8 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC

CONTENTS

Notes on contributorsvii Acknowledgmentsix List of abbreviationsxi   1 Medium in South Asia: ethnography, discourse, and policy

1

CHAISE LADOUSA AND CHRISTINA P. DAVIS

PART I

The meanings of medium

19

  2 Medium and coaching centers in North India

21

CHAISE LADOUSA

  3 Medium discourses and the construction of self and other in social media in postcolonial Bangladesh

44

IFFAT JAHAN AND M. OBAIDUL HAMID

  4 Media of medium: language boundaries and multimodal semiotic ecologies in Nepali schools for deaf students

71

ERIKA HOFFMANN-DILLOWAY

PART II

Medium, identity, and the production of inequality

93

  5 Romance, Austen, and English-medium schooling in Pakistan

95

JAVARIA FAROOQUI

v

C ontents

  6 Muslims in Sri Lankan language politics: Tamil- and English-medium education

115

CHRISTINA P. DAVIS

  7 Labor migration and English-medium schooling in Nepal

138

MIRANDA WEINBERG

  8 English-medium education and patriarchy: narratives of Indian women

159

PRITI SANDHU

  9 Recognizing diversity: multiethnic Sinhala- and Tamil-medium schools in Sri Lanka

182

HARSHA DULARI WIJESEKERA

PART III

Medium and considerations of policy

207

10 The Right to Education Act: medium and dis-citizenship

209

USREE BHATTACHARYA AND LEI JIANG

Index228

vi

CONTRIBUTORS

Usree Bhattacharya is Assistant Professor of Language and Literacy Education at the University of Georgia, USA. Her research is inspired by questions of diversity, equity, and access in multilingual educational contexts. She has published articles in journals, including Applied Linguistics (2019), Journal of Language, Identity, and Education (2017), and Language Policy (2017). Christina P. Davis is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Western Illinois University, USA. Her research concerns language and digital media practices, multilingual education, and ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka and India. She is the author of The Struggle for a Multilingual Future: Youth and Education in Sri Lanka (2020) and is Book Review Editor of the Journal of Linguistic Anthropology. Javaria Farooqui is a PhD candidate at the University of Tasmania, Australia. Her research investigates Anglophone romance reading practices in Pakistan to analyze how this Western popular leisure activity has become an indicator of middlebrow cultural taste, superior language, and romantic finesse in the postcolonial country. She has recently published an article on popular Urdu fiction in Journal of Popular Romance Studies (2020). M. Obaidul Hamid is Senior Lecturer in TESOL Education at the University of Queensland, Australia. Previously he worked at the University of Dhaka, Bangladesh. His research focuses on the policy and practice of TESOL education in developing societies. He is Co-editor of Language Planning for Medium of Instruction in Asia (2014). Erika Hoffmann-Dilloway is Professor of Anthropology at Oberlin College, USA. Her research on sign languages addresses the flexible multimodal nature of communicative practices, as well as the social factors that facilitate or limit that flexibility. Her geographical focus is on signers in Nepal, Malta, and Germany. She is the author of Signing and Belonging in Nepal (2016).

vii

C ontributors

Iffat Jahan is a casual academic at the University of Queensland, Australia. She worked at several universities in Bangladesh including the University of Dhaka and East West University. She is interested in language and identity discourses in news and social media. She has published articles in Journal of Sociolinguistics (2019), Current Issues in Language Planning (2013), and Comparative Education Review (2015). Lei Jiang is a PhD candidate in language and literacy education at the University of Georgia, USA. His research interests are applied linguistics, language education, and quantitative and qualitative research methods. He has recently published in Applied Linguistics (2019), Language and Education (2020), Research in Science Education (2019), and the Journal of Language, Identity, and Education (2020). Chaise LaDousa is the Christian A. Johnson Excellence in Teaching Professor of Anthropology at Hamilton College, USA. His research interests include language and culture, political economy, and education, in India and the United States. He is the author of Hindi Is Our Ground, English Is Our Sky: Education, Language, and Social Class in Contemporary India (2014) and is Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Linguistic Anthropology. Priti Sandhu is Associate Professor of English at University of Washington, USA. Her research includes language and identity, medium of education, gender, intersectionality, English language teacher education, and discourse analysis. She is the author of Professional Identity Constructions of Indian Women (2016). Miranda Weinberg is Visiting Assistant Professor in Linguistics at Swarthmore College, USA. Her research focuses on multilingual education, Indigenous language revitalization, and language policy, with a geographical focus on Nepal and the United States. Her research has appeared in Language & Communication (2016), Linguistics and Education (2015), Signs and Society (2017), Current Issues in Language Planning (2020), and Journal of Language, Identity, and Education (2016). Harsha Dulari Wijesekera is Senior Lecturer at the Postgraduate Institute of English, Open University of Sri Lanka. Her research interests include medium of instruction, sociology of education, and teacher professional development. She has published pieces in Multilingual Education Yearbook (2019) and International Journal of Inclusive Education (2019).

viii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This volume’s roots lie in the 44th Annual Conference on South Asia in Madison, Wisconsin where Davis, LaDousa, and Sandhu presented papers on the social significance of medium. Others were invited to write contributions on medium and a special issue of International Journal of the Sociology of Language entitled Language and Schooling in India and Sri Lanka: Language Medium Matters was published in 2018. The chapters herein by Bhattacharya and Jiang, Davis, LaDousa, and Sandhu are revised versions of articles that appeared in the special issue. We are especially grateful to De Gruyter for allowing us to reuse the following material from the special issue: Bhattacharya, Usree and Lei Jiang, “The Right to Education Act (2009): Instructional Medium and Dis-Citizenship.” In: Chaise LaDousa (ed.) Language and Schooling in India and Sri Lanka: Language Medium Matters, special issue of International Journal of the Sociology of Language 253, Berlin: De Gruyter, 2018, pp. 149–168. Davis, Christina P., “Muslims in Sri Lankan Language Politics: A Study of Tamil- and English-Medium Education.” In: Chaise LaDousa (ed.) Language and Schooling in India and Sri Lanka: Language Medium Matters, special issue of International Journal of the Sociology of Language 253, Berlin: De Gruyter, 2018, pp. 125–148. LaDousa, Chaise, “Language Medium and a High-Stakes Test: Language Ideology and Coaching Centers in North India.” In: Chaise LaDousa (ed.) Language and Schooling in India and Sri Lanka: Language Medium Matters, special issue of International Journal of the Sociology of Language 253, Berlin: De Gruyter, 2018, pp. 103–124. Sandhu, Priti, “English Medium Education, Patriarchy, and Emerging Social Structures: Narratives of Indian Women.” In: Chaise LaDousa (ed.) Language and Schooling in India and Sri Lanka: Language Medium Matters, special issue of International Journal of the Sociology of Language 253, Berlin: De Gruyter, 2018, pp. 55–78.

ix

A cknowledgments

At Routledge, Lubna Irfan expressed interest in the edited volume and her encouragement and guidance have been much appreciated. Two anonymous reviewers made careful and detailed critiques and suggestions, and these helped contributors a great deal in revising their chapters. Anvitaa Bajaj has also been extremely helpful in the preparation of the manuscript.

x

ABBREVIATIONS

AIFRTE All India Forum for Right to Education BIPOC Black, Indigenous, and people of color CABE Central Advisory Board of Education CCTV closed-circuit television CSAT Civil Services Aptitude Test FERA foreign employment recruitment agency GCE General Certificate of Education IAS Indian Administrative Service ILO International Labour Organization JASP Jane Austen Society of Pakistan LP language policy LTTE Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam MHRD Ministry of Human Resource Development MTI Mother-tongue instruction NCERT National Council of Educational Research and Training NEPC National Education Planning Commission NSL Nepali Sign Language PROBE Public Report on Basic Education in India RTE Act Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act SLC School Leaving Certificate SSA Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan “Education for All Movement” TC Total Communication TSL Tamil-as-a-second language UN United Nations UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization UPSC Union Public Service Commission USAID United States Agency for International Development

xi

1 MEDIUM IN SOUTH ASIA Ethnography, discourse, and policy Chaise LaDousa and Christina P. Davis

The term “medium of instruction” – or, in common parlance, “medium” – refers to the language in which interaction occurs in a classroom. The term holds enormous salience and utility across the nations of South Asia. Indeed, one is hard pressed to imagine the vast and complicated educational infrastructures of Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka – their schools, institutions of higher education, and coaching centers  – without the designation of medium. All of these different types of institutions are recognizable, in part, because they share characteristic assortments of roles (students, teachers, and administrators), spaces (entryways, classrooms, and areas for games or relaxation), and materials (pencils, textbooks, and computers). The notion of medium cuts across these institutions unevenly, leaving some uninflected, and dividing others into two or more types. There has been surprisingly little scholarship on medium. One notable volume (Tollefson and Tsui 2004b) includes India as the only South Asian nation (Annamalai 2004). A monograph (Ramanathan 2005) presents an especially rich consideration of the significance of medium in the college setting in Gujarat, India, but it is also confined to a particular locale. This volume is the first to examine the sociocultural significance of medium across South Asia. The term medium corresponds to the language(s) in which instruction and curricular materials are offered, whether produced by the teacher, read in a printed text, or presented digitally on a screen. But medium extends into social and institutional life because it can be used to describe the larger school, or university, or even coaching center. Thus, one may speak of an Urdu-medium class in an English-medium school. And the difference medium makes reaches even further, marking students, the students’ families, teachers, administrators, professors, and coaching instructors in socioculturally meaningful ways. People quite regularly describe themselves and others by the medium through which their education is being, or was, offered. Sometimes connections between institution and person stand alone as one possibility among others, and sometimes those connections invite comparison 1

C haise L a D ousa and C hristina P . D avis

with other possibilities, often toward the reproduction of sharp contrasts. For example, a student might say, “I’m in an English-medium school, not a Tamil-medium one.” Through the rubric of medium, institutions and people are viewed as different from, or even the opposite of, one another. Occasionally, invocations, representations, and discussions of medium explicitly grapple with and offer critical stances toward the historically constructed, ever-changing ways in which languages, through their various connections to institutions, exhibit inequality.

Sociolinguistics and the study of medium in South Asia South Asia is a prominent region in the study of relationships between language and society, and scholars working there played key roles in the development of sociolinguistics as a field of study (Gumperz 1958, 1961). Scholarly literature has highlighted the dispositions toward languages in the colonial administrations and postcolonial nations of the region, as well as the development of and changes to each nation’s language policies (Das Gupta 1969; DeVotta 2004; Hosain and Tollefson 2007; Kachru 1981; Rahman 2010; Sonntag 1980; Thirumalai 2002). Themes developed by scholars in the humanities and social sciences include the significance of English’s colonial origins and its sociolinguistic relationship to vernacular languages (Agnihotri and Khanna 1997; Sah 2020; Seth 2007; Viswanathan 2014), the politics surrounding the question of national languages and the recognition of regional languages (Annamalai 2010; Choudhry 2009; Das Gupta 1970), the development of standardized varieties of some languages and the ramifications for non-standardized languages (Gupta, Abbi, and Aggarwal 1995; Shapiro and Schiffman 1981), and the implications for language policy of the region’s storied prevalence of language varieties and multilingualism (Aggarwal 1988; Annamalai 2004; Bhatia and Ritchie 2004; Canagarajah and Ashraf 2013; Srivastava 1990). Some scholars have developed critiques of national efforts to catalog linguistic and sociolinguistic variation through language surveys or a census. They note that attempts to account for language variation often imposed language categories that respondents did not actually offer or used criteria for language difference that shifted from census to census (Khubchandani 2003). The extraordinary diversity of the region has prompted some scholars to ponder the very question of whether South Asia even represents an area characterized by sociolinguistic phenomena (Kachru, Kachru, and Sridhar 2008). Khubchandani (1997) offers a “rainbow” as an image for the concept kshetra, Sanskrit for field or region. He “sees the concept of kshetra as being different from the Western model of region, which refers to an amalgamated area with diverse people yoked together by statutory policy” (Canagarajah 2013, 39). While Khubchandani’s rainbow metaphor highlights how there is a different logic to understanding sociolinguistics 2

M edium in S outh A sia

in South Asia, a great number of scholars concur that a model that can be contrasted with the situation in Western societies is needed. Considerations of the region question converge on several points: the South Asian region is home to a long history of multilingualism wherein speakers use different languages for different social activities and where the accommodation to an interlocutor’s lack of ability in one’s own languages is normal and hardly problematic. Out of this large body of work – only lightly touched on here – many insights have emerged about medium. A  resounding refrain across the nations of South Asia is that the language(s) of instruction in school, whatever the medium, is not usually the language(s) of one’s home. The concept of “mother tongue” – literally, the tongue of one’s mother to whom one has an absolute bond  – has deep political and moral significance in South Asia as a primary or true language of a speaker (Woolard 1998). The many languages identified as mother tongues almost always fail to gain representation in the language(s) offered in school (Khubchandani 1977; LaDousa 2004, 2012; Mitchell 2009; Pattanayak 1982). For example, schools often use standardized varieties that do not encompass the vast array of language varieties used in the home. Scholars have criticized the use of the idea of mother tongue for sociolinguistic description, pointing out that it has no stable criteria; but they also note that the standardized language varieties found in school materials almost never correspond to a language variety spoken by students outside of school (Khubchandani 2003). Scholars have expanded discussions on the disconnection between the language of home and the language of school in three major directions. Some have probed the colonial origins of language and education policies generally to argue that the introduction of English and its location in colonial institutions of administration and extraction prompted efforts at the reform and standardization of vernaculars (Dasgupta 1993). The use of language in education smacked of colonial logics as certain language varieties  – English, above all, but also emergent forms of vernaculars  – served increasingly to distinguish the educated from the uneducated. Other scholars have considered the ways in which discourses of development and modernization continue to rely on the production of distinctions initiated in colonial encounters and administrations, but also provide the possibility that schools and the languages used within them may become symbols of national belonging and cohesion (Ahearn 2001). Often, symbolic connections between schools, languages, and nations imply exclusions configured by intersections of caste, class, religion, gender, and sexuality (Benei 2008; Davis 2012, 2015, 2020a, 2020b; Davis and LaDousa 2020a; Jeffrey, Jeffery, and Jeffery 2008; LaDousa 2002, 2006, 2007a, 2007b, 2020; Ramanathan 2005; Sandhu 2016). Finally, scholars have pointed to the special disadvantages and challenges faced by certain groups in the face 3

C haise L a D ousa and C hristina P . D avis

of the medium available at schools. Especially important is the disposition of Adivasis or Indigenous people whose languages are absent from most all schools and whose languages are thought to be inappropriate for academic tasks (Abbi 2008; Choksi 2021; Nambissan 1994). Other work has shown that linguistic minority groups suffer in the shadow of standardized languages backed by national recognition and state administration, even when national legislation has guaranteed those language minorities the right to representation in some school activity (Mohanty 2019; Panda and Mohanty 2015). Finally, the growing corpus of autobiographical and other types of writing by traditionally stigmatized groups such as Dalits has provided examples of the ways in which languages have taken on new political resonances such as the desire for English-medium schooling (Sadana 2012, 22–3; Zelliot 2008). Scholars of language policy have shown that, on the whole, there has been little legislation about medium (LaDousa 2014, 2018; LaDousa and Davis 2018). Especially noteworthy in language policy studies of South Asia has been India’s 1968 National Policy on Education’s three-language formula that mandated multilingual education in the interest of national integration (Aggarwal 1988; LaDousa 2005; National Policy on Education 1968). Brass (1990, 143) describes the difficulty northern Indian schools had in recruiting teachers of Dravidian languages, as well as the widely known antipathy in Tamil Nadu and other areas of southern India to instruction in Hindi. The three-language formula was revised in 2019 when the government rescinded language about Hindi. Other aspects of the formula, however, were preserved (Venkataramanan 2019). Bangladesh’s language policies were shaped by the independence struggle. Sheikh Hasina recently invoked Bangla and its symbolic tie to nationhood, but also the tie between English and economic activity, when she admonished, “one needs to learn different languages but not by excluding one’s mother tongue” (Tribune Desk, Dhaka Tribune 2020). In Pakistan, Urdu has resonated with the idea of nationalism, but English has continued to be important in its ties to economic mobility, cosmopolitanism, and links to globalization (Durrani 2012; Rahman 2010). After Nepal’s civil war (1996–2006), the Constitution of 1990 opened up an earlier monolingual focus on Nepali to multilingual possibilities based on the notion of mother tongue (Weinberg 2013). And conflict has marked Sri Lankan language policy so severely that reforms introduced in the late 1990s and early 2000s – during the civil war – were oriented explicitly toward the goal of peace and ethnic integration (Davis 2015, 2020a, 4). Studies of language policy lack much insight on the notion of medium because policy has largely considered which languages students should learn and not the relationships between languages and the institutions in which those languages can be accessed.

4

M edium in S outh A sia

Ethnography, discourse, and identity in the study of medium In addition to focusing on incompatibilities between medium and mother tongue – and language policy generally – the chapters in this volume reveal more fully the complex and shifting ways in which medium contributes to meaning and identity in social life in South Asia. While the chapters show their indebtedness to previous sociolinguistic work in South Asia in their citations and discussions, they consider medium to be a subject of investigation in its own right, and one that requires a rich sense of context to explore. Medium is indeed a pan-South Asian phenomenon, but it emerges in national, regional, and local spheres of institutional infrastructure, social distinction, and political-economic process. In the conclusion to their volume on medium, Tollefson and Tsui note, “to adequately understand the complex interplay of politics and pedagogy, researchers must incorporate a classroom (and playground) perspective as well as a broader historicalstructural perspective (2004a, 293).” We take this to mean that scholars should consider the importance of medium in colonial and postcolonial national histories as well as in the practices of people outside the classroom. While only some of the chapters herein report on what happens in classrooms, most of the chapters are based on fieldwork where the social differences medium makes are central in people’s lives, how they make their livings, and how they reflect on themselves and others. The authors largely share an ethnographic approach, and thus foreground the ways in which medium contributes to the constitution of people as subjects. Ethnographic work grapples with the difficulties of apprehending questions of meaning and purpose entailed in social life. The authors make detailed and explicit assertions about the ways medium shapes people’s lives by offering them possibilities, but also imposing limitations on them. An example illustrates some of the ways in which institutional differences of medium have been shaped by developments such as historical change, neoliberal shifts, and the public/private distinction in education. When LaDousa was conducting fieldwork among schools in Varanasi, India in 1996, a somewhat common opinion was that a Hindi-medium education might provide the possibility of a middle-class future for the student (LaDousa 2014). By 2010, this attitude had faded considerably and, by 2020, it had disappeared. Indeed, many of the private schools that were Hindi medium in the 1990s have declared since that they are English medium, even though much of their online materials and instruction is in Hindi (LaDousa 2020). Mukhopadhyay and Sarangapani (2018), among others, note that one of the most profound shifts in the history of education in India has been the use of the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) “Education for All Movement” to ensure universal access to schooling. The SSA was set in place by the District Primary

5

C haise L a D ousa and C hristina P . D avis

Education Programme (DPEP) in 1994 and expanded under Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in 2000–1. At the same time that the SSA has brought large numbers of children to school, India has witnessed an astronomical degree of growth in the number of private schools, largely catering to people for whom private schooling previously had been an impossible expense. Medium mediates these two developments. While some SSA schools are English medium, the vast majority are not, and while some private schools are not English medium, the vast majority are. Indeed, it has become a cliché in India that the cachet of English has accompanied the promise offered by the private school. Consider the way that advertising for schools provides an instantiation of the difference between the SSA school and the private school. Nowhere in many school advertisements is medium mentioned explicitly, and, yet, the conventions of SSA school advertising and private school advertising constitutes a contrast that parallels that of assumptions about medium. There are indeed two versions of SSA advertising used across the Hindi-speaking region of India. While one version is in English, its slogan, “Education for All,” does not rhyme or engage in syntactic parallelism like the Hindi one, sab paṛhẽ sab baṛhẽ “if all study all grow.”1 These poetic features give evidence that the Hindi version is primary and the English version is derivative. Other language regions have a state language and English as their alternatives. Schools run under the auspices of the SSA are easy to recognize. Their signboards and advertising depict a girl and a boy riding a pencil. The girl rides in front; facing left like the pencil’s sharpened point, and holds a book in her right hand and hangs on to the pencil with her left. The boy rides behind and points the way forward with his right hand and holds on to the pencil with his left. The girl and boy are differentiated by hairstyle – the girl’s braids are tied with bows whereas the boy has much shorter hair – and by dress – the girl’s dress hangs past her knees whereas the boy wears short pants with knees exposed. The images are drawn to simplify features of the children. The eyes are dots, the nose is an angle, the smile is a crescent, and the face is a circle. Many private schools hint at medium by using English in their advertising. The advertisements for English-medium schools also contrast with that of the SSA by depicting students with color photography rather than with color illustrations. Sometimes the schoolchildren are playing together or doing something exuberant like jumping in unison. Sometimes the schoolchildren are shoulder-to-shoulder beaming with bright smiles aimed straight at the viewer. The schoolchildren are most often depicted wearing their uniforms, but their demeanor is most often relaxed and joyous. And most significant for their contrast with advertising for the SSA, English-medium schools depict particular schoolchildren with photography. New conventions of advertising have come to cast “government-type ads” as a kind to 6

M edium in S outh A sia

be avoided if one is to brand one’s product effectively, and schools are no exception it seems (Kaur 2020). Color photography of actual grinning students in uniforms – most often engaged in relaxed play – signal the school’s participation in a larger regime of value underpinned by English. All of this contrasts with the government’s image of children riding a pencil accompanied by a catchy Hindi slogan. While the differences between advertising for the SSA and for Englishmedium schools illustrate much about the meaningful practices that constitute the differences between Hindi- and English-medium schools in India in the last two decades, the figures are inevitably just images and texts. What gives them an ethnographic life? That is to ask, what do people think of them and what sorts of insights can we gain about people by their opinions? What are other ways of representing students and how do the advertisements of the SSA and the private school relate to those? And, perhaps most simply, where are actual instances of the signs found? What is their condition? What are their surrounding neighborhoods like? Where do the students come from? These are just some of the questions that would give a better sense of the social lives of the two kinds of advertising. A typical dilemma of an ethnographic approach is finding ways to convey to a reader the struggles in which people are engaged while accounting for what makes those struggles meaningful to the people involved. In such an approach, context is not simply a backdrop portrayed by the scholar to help readers understand the time and location of action (see Silverstein 1992a). Rather, context should partly account for the points of view of people so that readers might understand something about the ways in which people approach the dilemmas of their lives as the social world offers distinctions and likely courses of action. Social distinctions do not determine the trajectories of lives, but, rather, they inform people’s sense of themselves and the trajectories possible for them. This entails that there is, indeed, no one universal subject, but rather that people are always already implicated in the subjectification of the social world and its distinctions. Some scholars have called specific subjectivities “figures of personhood,” or types of people constituted by the progression of social life (Agha 2005, 2007, 2011; Koven 2015). Figures of personhood can correspond to specific people (such as Muhammad Ali Jinnah), or can correspond to a type of person (such as a Bangla-medium student). By treating medium as a dimension of subjectivity, or figure of personhood, the chapters pay careful attention to the ways in which people must speak from the position of someone attached to a medium at the same time that they are hardly in control of the stereotypes that circulate about people like them, or even the stereotypes that they use to describe others, whether they like them or not. Policies, practices, and discourses around medium in South Asia can be examined through the concept of language ideologies, beliefs and ideas about language that people use to rationalize their understandings of 7

C haise L a D ousa and C hristina P . D avis

linguistic variation in relation to the social world (Davis 2020a).2 Multiple in any society, language ideologies are not limited to misconceptions about language, because they may be consistent with scholarly views. They are partial, incomplete, and they inevitably privilege some social groups over others. They may consist of explicit statements about language (“you need to study in the English medium to get a good job”) or more implicit assumptions involved in everyday practices (saying riskā for “rikshaw” shows one’s lack of education) (Irvine 2011, 2018). National and state-level language and education policies embed language ideologies and play a significant role in locally situated processes of identity formation. While some of the chapters invoke this term to discuss the way people, groups, and institutions make sense of language and linguistic varieties in relation to ethnicity, religion, gender, and class, they all concern policies and practices that involve language ideologies. Some of the chapters make use of Bourdieu’s arguments that linguistic practice or discourse is emergent from what he called “habitus,” or embodied dispositions to the world (1977). Histories of language standardization; uses of language varieties in schools, courts, and the media; and the establishment and growth of literary traditions all contribute to the possibility that one’s habitus allows relatively easy participation or a lack of familiarity. Bourdieu explained that people in the latter position feel out of place and often react by falling silent. In sum, Bourdieu conceptualized the social and cultural worlds as arenas in which distinction can be embodied in ways that seem natural and unmotivated and in which exclusions present themselves as necessary (Bourdieu 1984). Some scholars of language ideology have argued that Bourdieu’s formulations are too rigidly hierarchical and are not nuanced enough to account for the complexity of discourse in social life (Irvine 2011; Woolard 1998), but the authors who invoke Bourdieu in this volume do so to capture the ways in which language is wrapped up in many inequalities of the social and cultural worlds they explore. The authors use a number of methods in their ethnographic explorations. All of the chapters (except for the last one) draw on experiences in which the authors were involved. Sometimes the authors were observers of ongoing activity such as classroom routines, and sometimes the authors were participants through conversations and interviews. Some chapters are based more on descriptions of the fieldwork conducted by the authors, and others offer transcriptions of interviews with research subjects. Explicit quotes of the people with whom the author has worked allow the reader to get some sense of how specific people use medium to make assertions about themselves and others. But the authors’ experiences do not exhaust the materials offered in the chapters herein. Medium is an issue that enjoys frequent attention in various media forms in South Asia. Several of the chapters to follow offer examples of the ways that newspaper stories describe the significance of medium and others reflect on the ways people create materials through their 8

M edium in S outh A sia

Internet posts. Accompanying ethnographic description, interview excerpts, and media examples are descriptions of institutional infrastructures and demographic information meant to provide a sense of the larger temporal and spatial dynamics of medium in South Asia.

The chapters: meaning, identity, and policy This volume’s chapters are arranged among three parts that highlight different ways of configuring the significance of medium as a sociocultural phenomenon. Part I is entitled “The meanings of medium.” The three chapters in Part I demonstrate the importance of the careful consideration of spatial, temporal, and social aspects of context when considering medium. Indeed, answers to questions about to whom medium is significant and to what consequences vary radically among the three chapters. Taken together, the chapters show how discourse in media about medium – including closedcircuit television, Internet participation, and sign language  – is crucial to understanding why medium takes on the importance it does. In “Medium and coaching centers in North India,” Chaise LaDousa discusses protests in 2014 in Delhi shaped by medium in response to changes to an important civil service exam. The chapter draws on fieldwork in coaching centers offering students tutorials for the exam, as well as journalistic reports about the protests, to understand the ways in which the divide between Hindi- and English-medium coaching helped students and instructors reflect on the protests. The chapter also considers that changes in the coaching industry with the advent of closed-circuit television in peripheral locations are creating new sorts of inequalities that reflections on medium would not capture. Iffat Jahan and M. Obaidul Hamid’s chapter, “Medium discourses and the construction of self and other in social media in postcolonial Bangladesh” considers construction of “self” and “other” identity in the context of debates pertaining to medium on social media. The debate participants are students and graduates affiliated with Bangla-medium public schools and English-medium private schools. Through their posts, they show how the debates, which involve crude and vulgar language, contribute to the reformulation of class identities vis-à-vis the self in postcolonial Bangladesh. The chapter makes the case that new information technologies provide a forum for the extension of the social salience of medium. In her chapter “Media of medium: language boundaries and multimodal semiotic ecologies in Nepali schools for deaf students,” Erika Hoffmann-Dilloway ponders the overlap of the term “medium” meaning language used as a medium of instruction and the term “medium” meaning the physical channel of modes of communication. The chapter incorporates ethnographic work in Nepal to consider the social consequences of the possibility that medium may simultaneously be interpreted to signify Nepali or Nepali Sign Language. 9

C haise L a D ousa and C hristina P . D avis

Part II, “Medium, identity, and the production of inequality,” examines the intersections of medium and social identities in situated practices. Whether concerned with conversations in classrooms between teachers or autobiographical narratives, these chapters all investigate how medium can function as a dimension of inequality in relation to ethnicity, religion, gender, and geographic mobility. They show how the medium in which a person studies (whether English or a vernacular) affects how they see themselves in relation to others and imagine their futures. In “Romance, Austen, and English-medium schooling in Pakistan,” Javaria Farooqui incorporates her experience teaching at two universities in Lahore to show how interest in the novels of Jane Austen has created a taste for romance literature among English-educated upper-class women. The students relate Austen’s descriptions of patriarchal and class-divided Regency-era England to contemporary Pakistani society. She argues that the disposition toward romance acts to redefine existing ideas about the kind of cultural capital associated with English- vs. Urdu-medium education. In “Muslims in Sri Lankan language politics: Tamil- and Englishmedium education,” Christina P. Davis draws on research at a trilingual Sri Lankan government school to investigate how Muslim teachers and students conceptualize Tamil- and English-medium education in relation to ethno-religious identity and class differences. The majority of Sri Lankan Muslims speak Tamil as a first language, but they distinguish themselves as a separate ethnic group from Tamils on the basis of their religion. She examines how Muslim teachers, in their interactions with non-Muslim teachers and with her, asserted how their heterogeneous linguistic practices were inextricably linked to their distinct ethno-religious identities. She also shows that while unequal access to English produced inequalities among Muslim students, their lack of fit with the ethnolinguistic models presupposed by the school helped them embrace English-medium education. Miranda Weinberg in “Labor migration and English-medium schooling in Nepal” analyzes medium, class, and mobility by looking at how international labor is associated with English-medium education. Drawing on ethnographic research in schools and communities in Nepal, she examines discourses of medium in relation to labor migration practices. She argues that medium distinctions are incorporated into discourses that evaluate people, schools, and nations on a quality and prestige scale ranging from “big” to “small.” Counter-discourses question the ideologized associations between education and social and spatial mobility by arguing that one does not necessarily need to study at a big school to be a big person and travel to a big country. In “English-medium education and patriarchy: narratives of Indian women,” Priti Sandhu turns to the autobiographical narratives of five Indian women collected in interviews to demonstrate their associations

10

M edium in S outh A sia

of Hindi-medium education with gender- and class-based marginalization. She shows how the women argue that education in Hindi restricted them from obtaining “good” jobs, which, in turn, prevented them from negotiating “good marriages” and forging equitable relationships with their husbands after marriage. Their narratives, however, also revealed the subtle ways in which they resisted these forms of marginalization. In “Recognizing diversity: multiethnic Sinhala- and Tamil-medium schools in Sri Lanka,” Harsha Dulari Wijesekera investigates medium policies in relation to ethnic divisions in postwar Sri Lanka. Post-independence educational policies improved educational access for Sri Lankan youth, but the separation of students on the basis of medium (Sinhala or Tamil) heightened feelings of interethnic discord. While the majority of Sinhalaand Tamil-medium students study in separate schools, some bi-media schools integrate students from different ethnic and religious backgrounds for ­English-medium instruction. Drawing on ethnographic research at two of these schools, Wijesekera argues that while some schools recognize their students’ ethnolinguistic heterogeneity and make efforts to encourage positive attitudes toward diversity, others exhibit practices that promote exclusion and reinforce ethnic and religious divisions. Part III is entitled, “Medium and considerations of policy.” In the ­volume’s final chapter, “The Right to Education Act: medium and dis-citizenship,” Usree Bhattacharya and Lei Jiang consider the Right to Education (RTE) Act, passed by the Government of India in 2009, in light of the medium divisions in schooling. They reflect on the text of the RTE Act as well as other policy measures to investigate the Act’s promise that students can enjoy instruction in their mother tongue. One of the ironies they point out is that children from the class background targeted by the RTE Act have come to feel the attraction of English-medium education. The authors argue that the guarantee of rights without attention to the conditions under which students might engage with institutions can very well constitute a form of “discitizenship,” the denial of the ability to participate as a citizen. They show how educational policies designed to alleviate inequality, promote cohesion, or consolidate identities are often at a disjuncture from the lived experiences of students.

Notes 1 The English version is rendered in roman script while the Hindi version is rendered in Devanagari script. For further work on the social life of script in South Asia, see Ahmad (2008, 2011); Choksi (2014, 2015, 2017, 2021); Davis and LaDousa (2020b); King (2001); and LaDousa (2002, 2020). 2 For literature on language ideologies see Errington (1999); Gal and Irvine (1995, 2019); Irvine (2011); Irvine and Gal (2000); Kroskrity (2000, 2004); Silverstein (1979, 1992b); Woolard (1998); and Woolard and Schieffelin (1994).

11

C haise L a D ousa and C hristina P . D avis

References Abbi, Anvita. 2008. “Tribal Languages.” In Language in South Asia, edited by Braj B. Kachru, Yamuna Kachru, and S. N. Sridhar, 153–74. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Aggarwal, Kailash S. 1988. “English and India’s Three-Language Formula: An Empirical Perspective.” World Englishes 7 (3): 289–98. Agha, Asif. 2005. “Voice, Footing, Enregisterment.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 15 (1): 38–59. ——— 2007. Language and Social Relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ——— 2011. “Large and Small Scale Forms of Personhood.” Language  & Communication 31: 171–80. Agnihotri, R., and A. Khanna, eds. 1997. Problematizing English in India. New Delhi: Sage Publications. Ahearn, Laura. 2001. Invitations to Love: Literacy, Love Letters, and Social Change in Nepal. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Ahmad, Rizwan. 2008. “Scripting a New Identity: The Battle for Devanagari in Nineteenth Century India.” Journal of Pragmatics 40 (7): 1163–83. ——— 2011. “Urdu in Devanagari: Shifting Orthographic Practices and Muslim Identity in Delhi.” Language in Society 40: 259–84. Annamalai, E. 2004. “Medium of Power: The Question of English in Education in India.” In Medium of Instruction Politics: Which Agenda? Whose Agenda? edited by James W. Tollefson and Amy Tsui, 177–94. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. ——— 2010. “Politics of Language in India.” In Routledge Handbook of South Asian Politics: India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Nepal, edited by Paul R. Brass, 213–31. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. Benei, Veronique. 2008. Schooling Passions: Nation, History, and Language in Contemporary Western India. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Bhatia, Tej K., and William C. Ritchie. 2004. “Bilingualism in South Asia.” In The Handbook of Bilingualism, edited by Tej K. Bhatia and William C. Ritchie, 780– 807. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977 [1972]. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Translated by Richard Nice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ——— 1984. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Translated by Richard Nice. London: Taylor & Francis Group. Brass, Paul. 1990. The New Cambridge History of India, Vol. 4, Pt. 1: The Politics of India Since Independence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Canagarajah, Suresh. 2013. Translingual Practice: Global Englishes and Cosmopolitan Relations. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. Canagarajah, Suresh, and Hina Ashraf. 2013. “Multilingualism and Education in South Asia: Resolving Policy/Practice Dilemmas.” Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 33: 258–85. Choksi, Nishaant. 2014. “Scripting the Border: Script Practices and Territorial Imagination among Santali Speakers in Eastern India.” International Journal of the Sociology of Language 227: 47–64.

12

M edium in S outh A sia

——— 2015. “Surface Politics: Scaling Multiscriptality in an Indian Village Market.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 25 (1): 1–24. ——— 2017. “From Language to Script: Graphic Practice and the Politics of Authority in Santali Language Media, Eastern India.” Modern Asian Studies 51 (5): 1519–60. ——— 2021. Graphic Politics in Eastern India: Script and the Quest for Autonomy. New York: Bloomsbury Academic. Choudhry, Sujit. 2009. “Managing Linguistic Nationalism through Constitutional Design: Lessons from South Asia.” International Journal of Constitutional Law 7 (4): 577–618. Das Gupta, Jyotirindra. 1969. Official Language Problems and Policies in South Asia. The Hague: Mouton de Gruyter. ——— 1970. Language Conflict and National Development: Group Politics and National Language Policy in India. Berkeley: University of California Press. Dasgupta, Probal. 1993. The Otherness of English: India’s Auntie Tongue Syndrome. New Delhi: Sage Publications. Davis, Christina P. 2012. “ ‘Is Jaffna Tamil the Best?’: Producing ‘Legitimate’ Language in a Multilingual Sri Lankan School.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 22 (2): E61–82. ——— 2015. “Speaking Conflict: Ideological Barriers to Bilingual Policy Implementation in Civil War Sri Lanka.” Anthropology  & Education Quarterly 46 (2): 95–112. ——— 2020a. The Struggle for a Multilingual Future: Youth and Education in Sri Lanka. New York: Oxford University Press. ——— 2020b. “Trilingual Blunders: Signboards, Social Media, and Transnational Sri Lankan Tamil Publics.” Special Issue, Signs and Society 8 (1): 93–124. Davis, Christina P., and Chaise LaDousa. 2020a. “Introduction: Sign and Script in South Asia.” Special Issue, Signs and Society 8 (1): 1–7. ——— eds. 2020b. Sign and Script in South Asia: Media and Semiotic Mediation. Special Issue, Signs and Society 8 (1). DeVotta, Neil. 2004. Blowback: Linguistic Nationalism, Institutional Decay, and Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Durrani, Mariam. 2012. “Banishing Colonial Specters: Language Ideology and Education Policy in Pakistan.” Working Papers in Educational Linguistics 27 (1): 29–49. Errington, Joseph. 1999. “Ideology.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 9 (1–2): 115–17. Gal, Susan, and Judith T. Irvine. 1995. “The Boundaries of Languages and Disciplines: How Ideologies Construct Differences.” Social Research 62: 967–1001. ——— 2019. Signs of Difference: Language and Ideology in Social Life. New York: Cambridge University Press. Gumperz, John. 1958. “Dialect Differences and Social Stratification in a North Indian Village.” American Anthropologist 60 (4): 668–81. ——— 1961. “Speech Variation and the Study of Indian Civilization.” American Anthropologist 63 (5, pt. 1): 976–87. Gupta, R. S., Anvita Abbi, and Kailash Aggarwal, eds. 1995. Language and the State: Perspectives on the Eighth Schedule. New Delhi: Creative Books.

13

C haise L a D ousa and C hristina P . D avis

Hosain, Tanya, and James W. Tollefson. 2007. “Language Policy in Education in Bangladesh.” In Language Policy, Culture, and Identity in Asian Contexts, edited by Amy B. M. Tsui and James W. Tollefson, 241–58. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Irvine, Judith T. 2011. “Language Ideology.” In Oxford Bibliographies: Anthropology, edited by John L. Jackson. New York: Oxford University Press. Accessed December  18, 2020. www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780 199766567/obo-9780199766567-0012.xml ——— 2018. “Divided Values, Shadow Languages: Positioning and Perspective in Linguistic Ideologies.” Special Issue, Signs and Society 6 (1): 25–44. Irvine, Judith T., and Susan Gal. 2000. “Language Ideology and Linguistic Differentiation.” In Regimes of Language: Ideologies, Polities, and Identities, edited by Paul V. Kroskrity, 35–83. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press. Jeffrey, Craig, Patricia Jeffery, and Roger Jeffery. 2008. Degrees Without Freedom? Education, Masculinities, and Unemployment in North India. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Kachru, Braj B. 1981. “Language Policy in South Asia.” Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 2: 60–85. Kachru, Braj B., Yamuna Kachru, and S. N. Sridhar, eds. 2008. Language in South Asia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kaur, Ravinder. 2020. Brand New Nation: Capitalist Dreams and Nationalist Designs in Twenty-First Century India. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Khubchandani, L. M. 1977. “Language Ideology and Language Development.” International Journal of the Sociology of Language 13: 33–51. ——— 1997. Revisualizing Boundaries: A  Plurilingual Ethos. New Delhi: Sage Publications. ——— 2003. “Defining Mother Tongue Education in Plurilingual Contexts.” Language Policy 2: 239–54. King, Robert D. 2001. “The Poisonous Potency of Script: Hindi and Urdu.” International Journal of the Sociology of Language 150: 43–59. Koven, Michele. 2015. “Narrative and Cultural Identities: Performing and Aligning with Figures of Personhood.” In The Handbook of Narrative Analysis, edited by Ana De Fina and Alexandra Georgakopoulou, 388–407. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Kroskrity, Paul V. 2000. “Regimenting Languages: Language Ideological Perspectives.” In Regimes of Language: Ideologies, Polities, and Identities, edited by Paul Kroskrity, 1–34. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press. ——— 2004. “Language Ideology.” In Companion to Linguistic Anthropology, edited by Alessandro Duranti, 496–517. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. LaDousa, Chaise. 2002. “Advertising in the Periphery: Languages and Schools in a North Indian City.” Language in Society 31 (2): 213–42. ——— 2004. “In the Mouth but not on the Map: Visions of Language and Their Enactment in the Hindi Belt.” Journal of Pragmatics 36 (4): 633–61. ——— 2005. “Disparate Markets: Language, Nation, and Education in North India.” American Ethnologist 32 (3): 460–78.

14

M edium in S outh A sia

——— 2006. “The Discursive Malleability of an Identity: A Dialogic Approach to Language ‘Medium’ Schooling in North India.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 16 (1): 36–57. ——— 2007a. “Liberalisation, Privatisation, Globalisation and Indian Schooling: An Interview with Krishna Kumar.” Globalisation, Societies, and Education 5 (2): 137–52. ——— 2007b. “Of Nation and State: Language, School, and the Reproduction of Disparity in a North Indian City.” Anthropological Quarterly 80 (4): 925–60. ——— 2012. “On Mother and Other Tongues: Sociolinguistics, Schools, and Language Ideology in Northern India.” In Making Sense of Language: Readings in Culture and Communication, edited by Susan Blum, 2nd ed., 544–58. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ——— 2014. Hindi Is Our Ground, English Is Our Sky: Education, Language, and Social Class in Contemporary India. New York: Berghahn Books. ——— 2018. “Mind the (Language-Medium) Gap.” In Routledge Handbook of Education in India: Debates, Practices, and Policies, edited by Krishna Kumar, 81–96. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. ——— 2020. “Language, Script, and Advertising in India’s Hindi Belt: Institutional Voices in Flux.” Special Issue, Signs and Society 8 (1): 155–84. LaDousa, Chaise, and Christina P. Davis. 2018. “Introduction: Language and Schooling in India and Sri Lanka: Language Medium Matters.” Special Issue, International Journal of the Sociology of Language 253: 1–26. Mitchell, Lisa. 2009. Language, Emotion, and Politics in South India: The Making of a Mother Tongue. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Mohanty, Ajit K. 2019. The Multilingual Reality: Living with Languages. Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters. Mukhopadhyay, Rahul, and Padma Sarangapani. 2018. “Introduction: Education in India Between the State and Market – Concepts Framing the New Discourse: Quality, Efficiency, Accountability.” In School Education in India: Market, State and Quality, edited by Manish Jain, Archana Mehendale, Rahul Mukhopadhyay, Padma M. Sarangapani, and Christopher Winch, 1–28. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. Nambissan, Geetha B. 1994. “Language and Schooling of Tribal Children: Issues Related to Medium of Instruction.” Economic and Political Weekly 29 (42): 2747–54. National Policy on Education. 1968. Education and National Development. Report of the Education Commission 1964–66. New Delhi: NCERT. Panda, Minati, and Ajit K. Mohanty. 2015. “Multilingual Education in South Asia: The Burden of the Double Divide.” In The Handbook of Bilingual and Multilingual Education, edited by Wayne E. Wright, Sovicheth Boun, and Ofelia García, 542–53. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Pattanayak, D. P. 1982. Multilingualism and Mother-Tongue Education. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Rahman, Tariq. 2010. “Language Problems and Politics in Pakistan.” In Routledge Handbook of South Asian Politics: India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Nepal, edited by Paul R. Brass, 232–46. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.

15

C haise L a D ousa and C hristina P . D avis

Ramanathan, Vaidehi. 2005. The English-Vernacular Divide: Postcolonial Language Politics and Practice. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters. Sadana, Rashmi. 2012. English Heart, Hindi Heartland: The Political Life of Literature in India. Berkeley: University of California Press. Sah, Pramod K. 2020. “English Medium Instruction in South Asia’s Multilingual Schools: Unpacking the Dynamics of Ideological Orientations, Policy/Practices, and Democratic Questions.” International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. Accessed December 18, 2020. www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.10 80/13670050.2020.1718591?journalCode=rbeb20 Sandhu, Priti. 2016. Professional Identity Constructions of Indian Women. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Seth, Sanjay. 2007. Subject Lessons: The Western Education of Colonial India. Durham: Duke University Press. Shapiro, Michael C., and Harold F. Schiffman. 1981. Language and Society in South Asia. New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. Silverstein, Michael. 1979. “Language Structure and Linguistic Ideology.” In Papers from the Parasession on Units and Levels, edited by Paul R. Clyne, William F. Hanks, and Carol L. Hofbauer, 193–247. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society. ——— 1992a. “The Indeterminacy of Contextualization: When Is Enough Enough?” In The Contextualization of Language, edited by Peter Auer and Aldo Di Luzio, 55–76. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. ——— 1992b. “The Uses and Utility of Ideology: Some Reflections.” Pragmatics 2 (3): 311–23. Sonntag, S. K. 1980. “Language Planning and Policy in Nepal.” ITL: Review of Applied Linguistics 48: 71–92. Srivastava, A. K. 1990. “Multilingualism and School Education in India: Special Features, Problems, and Prospects.” In Multilingualism in India, edited by Debi Pattanayak, 37–53. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters. Thirumalai, M. S. 2002. “Sri Lanka’s Language Policy: A Brief Introduction.” Language in India 1, January 9. www.languageinindia.com/jan2002/srilanka1.html Tollefson, James W., and Amy B. M. Tsui. 2004a. “Contexts of Medium-of-Instruc tion Policy.” In Medium of Instruction Policies: Which Agenda? Whose Agenda? edited by James W. Tollefson and Amy Tsui, 283–94. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. ———, eds. 2004b. Medium of Instruction Politics: Which Agenda? Whose Agenda? Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Tribune Desk. 2020. “PM: Don’t Neglect Mother Tongue while Learning Other Languages.” Dhaka Tribune, February 21. Accessed December 18, 2020. www. dhakatribune.com/bangladesh/dhaka/2020/02/21/pm-don-t-neglect-mothertongue-while-learning-other-languages Venkataramanan, K. 2019. “What Is the Three-Language Formula?” The Hindu, June 8. Accessed December 18, 2020. www.thehindu.com/news/national/what-isthe-three-language-formula/article27698700.ece Viswanathan, Gauri. 2014. Masks of Conquest: Literary Study and British Rule in India. 25th Anniversary ed. New York: Columbia University Press. Weinberg, Miranda. 2013. “Revisiting History in Language Policy: The Case of Medium of Instruction in Nepal.” Working Papers in Educational Linguistics 28 (1): 61–80.

16

M edium in S outh A sia

Woolard, Kathryn A. 1998. “Introduction: Language Ideology as a Field of Inquiry.” In Language Ideologies: Practice and Theory, edited by Bambi B. Schieffelin, Kathryn A. Woolard, and Paul V. Kroskrity, 3–50. New York: Oxford University Press. Woolard, Kathryn A., and Bambi B. Schieffelin. 1994. “Language Ideology.” Annual Review of Anthropology 23: 55–82. Zelliot, Eleanor. 2008. “Dalit Literature, Language, and Identity.” In Language in South Asia, edited by Braj B. Kachru, Yamuna Kachru, and S. N. Sridhar, 450–65. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

17

Part I THE MEANINGS OF MEDIUM

2 MEDIUM AND COACHING CENTERS IN NORTH INDIA Chaise LaDousa

Across the nations of South Asia, coaching can refer to a number of arrangements, including tutoring in support of primary, secondary, or post-­ secondary coursework, or classes in preparation for an entrance exam for post-graduate education or a job. Employment in coaching ranges from relatively informal relationships between tutors and students working toward coursework or an exam in one or more subjects to relatively formal relationships whereby tutors or coaching centers regularly offer to batches of students coursework oriented to an exam. The coaching industry is wholly unregulated in India, and a bill introduced in the Lok Sabha in 2016 that defined the industry was tabled (Patel 2016). Many coaching centers focus their efforts on a particular exam, often linked to a job. In her book on Indian youth, Snigdha Poonam states, “If a job promises a decent amount of money and status, it is sure to come with an entrance exam” (2018, 37). In India, one of the most competitive exams is for the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC). The UPSC’s series of tests provides entrance to some of India’s highest non-elected government posts. Cities like Delhi, Hyderabad, Chennai, Allahabad, Jaipur, Lucknow, and Patna, among many others, have become known for the presence of UPSC coaching centers and some centers have opened branches in smaller cities and towns nearby. Just like schools and universities, coaching centers offer their services in a “medium,” and so salient is the notion of medium that a coaching center often uses its medium designation as part of its advertising (Davis and LaDousa 2020; LaDousa 2002, 2018, 2020; LaDousa and Davis 2018). Medium difference is relevant to UPSC coaching centers in two respects. First, the part of the exam called “preliminaries” or “prelims” can be taken either in Hindi or in English, and the second part of the exam called “mains” can be taken in one of the languages listed in the eighth schedule of the Constitution of India or in English. Second, the medium designation of the coaching center is the primary language of pedagogy during coursework. Thus, the medium

21

C haise L a D ousa

in which the set of tests will be taken corresponds to the medium in which classroom preparation takes place. The medium distinction in the UPSC exam garnered national attention in the monsoon season of 2014 when aspirants protested fiercely in several locations in Delhi. Changes were made to the exam in 2011, and the percentage of aspirants advancing to the mains who had chosen to take the exam in Hindi had declined drastically since. Many protesters demanded a reversal of the changes made to the exam in hopes of improving the fate of students taking the exam in Hindi. This chapter draws from newspaper articles, blog posts, and my own fieldwork experiences in coaching centers in Delhi, the national capital, and Varanasi, a small city to the southeast, to understand why the UPSC exam served as such an important flashpoint for reflections on the dispositions of languages. I employ the notion of language ideology to appreciate the various ways in which journalists, coaching center instructors and students, and educational professionals outside of the coaching center industry found the medium distinction useful for understanding the ramifications of changes to the exam. Expanded on later in the chapter, language ideologies are ideas about language that mediate linguistic practices. When representing and reflecting on changes to the UPSC exam, people regularly drew on and recreated stereotypes about people and institutions through the idiom of medium. Regional distinctions germane to coaching center infrastructure often played a part in stereotyping. For example, Hindi-medium coaching instructors pointed out to me that their students are less flexible and less adaptable than English-medium students – traits thought to be required by the parts of the exam introduced in 2011. This implied, of course, that Hindi-medium students would benefit in special ways at coaching centers. At the same time, some teachers at franchised Hindi-medium coaching centers in smaller cities far from Delhi praised their students for their abilities in Hindi. Such teachers explained that Delhi is a place where the Hindi of residents is often less proficient and less clearly differentiated from English. The medium opposition thus worked on multiple “axes of differentiation,” often setting Hindi-medium aspirants in a subordinate position to their English-medium counterparts, but sometimes in a superordinate position when found in small franchised centers (Gal and Irvine 2019). Fieldwork also revealed two insights about coaching centers that have not been reported in the media and were not part of people’s reflections about medium of instruction. On the one hand, students continued to seek coaching services, even in the shadow of declining fortunes of Hindimedium aspirants. Students felt that their coaching instructors cared for them and even made sacrifices for them, and some students drew stark contrasts between their coaching instructors and their former professors whom they described as uncaring. This was true of students studying in Hindi- or English-medium coaching institutions. On the other hand, fieldwork observations revealed that franchising coupled with technology has introduced 22

M edium and coaching centers in N orth I ndia

new relationships between the instructor and the student in coaching centers far from Delhi. Students in small towns have begun to watch instructors teaching batches in small cities nearby on closed-circuit television. While managers in the coaching centers described the use of technology as innovative, the arrangement denies access to the coaching instructor so valuable to students in Delhi. Medium difference has served to organize ideas about inequality in student protests of changes to the UPSC exam. But the aspects of coaching that continue to draw students to Hindi-medium institutions prompt us to consider that coaching offers something not represented in protests. That is to say, medium has the potential to reveal inequality in stark contrast, but, in other moments, students still find value in Hindi-medium coaching centers. And new uses of communicative technologies on the periphery of coaching are attracting relatively rural students who will not enjoy the teacher-student relationships valued at coaching centers in larger cities. These communicative developments are adding new dimensions of inequality to the coaching industry that are unlikely to be addressed by a focus on medium. In sum, institutions are only partly ideologized by language, and the consequence is that we must consider the intersection of institutions and language ideology in ethnographic fieldwork.

Shifts in the examination and responses from Hindimedium aspirants The great importance of the UPSC exam is reflected by its inclusion in the Constitution of India. Articles 315 through 323 called for the formation of the UPSC for the fair recruitment of civil servants through an annual testing process (Government of India 2015 [1949]). The UPSC was designed to have a certain degree of autonomy from the central government and terms were set for members of the commission so that they could not be removed easily. Those who are successfully recruited by the UPSC through the Civil Services Examination are given posts in the All India Services Group, which includes the Indian Administrative Service, the Indian Police Service, and the Indian Forest Service, as well as for a great number of services belonging to “Group A” or “Group B.” The UPSC thus administers the exam providing the placement mechanism for eventual promotion to especially prestigious posts in the public services including District Magistrate, Commissioner of Police, and Divisional Forest Officer. The Civil Services Examination has always been competitive, but, since the 1990s, the exam’s competitiveness has become notorious. Das reports: The competition is quite tough. For example, in the year 2006, 3.84 lakh [1 lakh = 100,000] candidates applied for civil service positions, out of which the number of candidates who actually appeared was 23

C haise L a D ousa

1.96 lakh. Only 474 candidates were finally selected. This means that only 0.12 per cent of those who appeared for the examination were successful. Going by the success rate, it is clear that the civil services have been able to attract the brightest of educational system in India. In fact, the competition has become tougher over the years. For example, the success rate for the year 1950 was 8.58 per cent while for the year 1970, it was 6.36 per cent. For the year 1990, the success rate was 0.59 per cent and it had come down to 0.12 per cent in the year 2006. (2013, 62) The Civil Services Examination is also notoriously complex. Aspirants must first take a preliminary examination that has two parts: a general studies component (which has to do with history and society) and an aptitude component (which has to do with analytical capability and emotional intelligence). The second part of the preliminary exam is popularly known as the CSAT (Civil Services Aptitude Test). Students who receive sufficient scores advance to what is called the “mains,” a much more extensive exam including multiple sections on general studies, an essay, language comprehension, and a test in two subjects of the student’s choice. Successful candidates in the mains appear for an interview. Only candidates who are successful in the interview receive posts in the branches of the public services. When the CSAT was introduced to the Civil Services Examination in 2011  – especially the second paper, the aptitude component  – students who opted for the Hindi-medium format of the examination began to fare exceedingly poorly. Fluctuations were reported in public media. In a story published by The Hindu, Bansal reported: The number of students writing the UPSC mains exam in English has been disproportionately high over the last few years compared to that in the past, analysis of UPSC data from 2009 to 2014 show. A significant jump was seen in the year 2011 when 83 per cent candidates took the mains exam in English compared to around 62 per cent in 2009. Corresponding to that, Hindi saw a steep decline – a drop of around 20 percentage points from 36 per cent in 2010 to 15 per cent in 2011. This sudden change coincides with the introduction of the CSAT examination in UPSC prelims in 2011. (2016) The website, IASPassion.com, included a story by Kapoor offering the following data: In 2009, out of 11,504 aspirants who sat for the mains, having passed the preliminary exams, 6,270 had opted for English and 4,861 had opted for Hindi. In 2010, out of 11,859 students who appeared for the mains, 7,371 had opted for English, whereas 4,194 had opted for Hindi. In 24

M edium and coaching centers in N orth I ndia

2011, out of 11,230 students who appeared for the mains, 9,316 had opted for English and only 1,700 had opted for Hindi. The low number of students in the mains who had opted for Hindi in 2011 continued in the 2012, 2013, and 2014 examinations (2016). The year 2014 saw a number of protests to the changes made to the UPSC examination. A protest in late June included over 200 examination aspirants in front of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s house. A protest in midJuly was held in front of the house of Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh (Sikdar 2014). In August, a reporter explained: Hundreds of UPSC aspirants clashed with police and blocked traffic in Mukherjee Nagar on Thursday, demanding the scrapping of the Civil Services Aptitude Test (CSAT) in the UPSC examination. . . . According to police, around 8 pm, about 600–700 UPSC aspirants from coaching centres and hostels in Mukherjee Nagar assembled on the Gandhi Vihar road and shouted slogans demanding a written confirmation from the government that the CSAT would be scrapped. (Hafeez 2014) Another reporter described the mounting tension in August, “The UPSC Civil Services Aptitude Test (CSAT) row has escalated with protests by aspirants intensifying with each passing day. The agitating students want CSAT to be scrapped as they say the pattern of the test puts English-­ language candidates at an advantage, which is unfair for Hindi and regional language aspirants” (Kohli 2014). While both reporters invoked the CSAT in their descriptions of the protests, the second reporter made explicit that the protesters saw the introduction of the CSAT and the decreasing representation of students who opted to take the examination in Hindi as connected. Many popular media venues claimed that the protests over the Civil Services Examination presented the first problem or crisis for the new government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Indeed, the Government of India’s Department of Personnel and Training announced that beginning in 2014 the CSAT would be a qualifying paper whereby aspirants would need to achieve 33 per cent. No longer would the score for the CSAT be added to the student’s overall score. A reporter explained: Last year’s decision by the Central government to make the Civil Services Aptitude Test (CSAT) a qualifying paper in the UPSC exam came as a huge relief to lakhs of aspirants. The General Studies Paper-II in the Civil Services (Preliminary) Exam (CSAT) is now a qualifying paper with minimum qualifying marks fixed at 33%. This means that every student is required just to pass this paper 25

C haise L a D ousa

with the minimum 33% marks. These won’t be added to the final results of the preliminary exam. (Kohli 2016) The new policy was applied to the 2015 and 2016 examinations. In 2019, the UPSC advised the government to remove the CSAT from the exams, but, as of 2020, the recommendation has been ignored.

Fieldwork contexts The fieldwork on which this chapter is based began in September of 2014, just after the protests. In Delhi’s Mukherjee Nagar, site of some of the protests and an area containing many coaching centers for the UPSC exam for IAS admission, I rotated between two coaching centers for four weeks. Twice a week I spent the day in a Hindi-medium coaching center owned by Ram who taught two batches of the history subject paper in his own center with approximately eighty students per batch and taught a course for the mains exam in a larger hall owned by someone else to approximately 800 students. Twice a week I  spent the day in an English-medium coaching center owned by Manish who taught two batches of the Indian polity subject paper with approximately fifty students per batch. Once a week I attended a Hindi-medium lecture for the Hindi subject paper with approximately forty students. It was taught by Satish who lectured for coaching centers in Delhi when he could, but often traveled to Lucknow, Varanasi, or Patna to teach batches for branches of the same center there. Satish explained that he had taught batches in English before, but that he preferred to teach in Hindi because he had studied Hindi poetry in university. I audio-recorded Ram’s, Manish’s, and Satish’s three-hour lectures and lingered between classes in Ram’s and Manish’s coaching centers to observe their interactions with students. I  conducted three open-ended interviews with each of the three coaching instructors and with six students of each instructor. After the work in Delhi, I traveled to Varanasi where I visited for four weeks a branch of the Hindi-medium coaching center that employed Satish. I interviewed the director, the operations manager, and twelve students, and attended lectures in preparation for the mains exam as well as in the biology subject paper. All courses at the center were taught by instructors on contract, like Satish. In the monsoon season of 2018, I visited the two centers in Delhi, the center in Varanasi, and Satish. I audio-recorded lectures by Ram, Manish, and Satish and conducted follow-up interviews with them. In the winter of 2020 I visited Ram and Manish (Satish was teaching a batch in Patna) and conducted observations in Ram’s brand new office several blocks from his old office and classroom. Ram noted that his new office would give the best impression to prospective students and provide a proper space for meeting with former students. 26

M edium and coaching centers in N orth I ndia

Medium and language ideology In an effort to describe and explore the involvement of language as a reflexive resource in situations such as the 2014 protests in Delhi, linguistic anthropologists have developed the notion of language ideology (Errington 2000; Gal 2016; Gal and Irvine 1995; Kroskrity 2004; Silverstein 1979; Woolard 1998a; Woolard and Schieffelin 1994).1 Their work has noted that language is a vehicle of discourse, but also that people give evidence that cultural constructs help them to find ongoing interaction meaningful. Irvine and Gal define language ideology as “the ideas with which participants and observers frame their understanding of linguistic varieties and map those understandings onto people, events, and activities that are significant to them” (2000, 35). Linguistic boundaries themselves can become a focus of ideology in interaction. Journalists and coaching center teachers and students used language difference to explain why the protests happened. Given that the protests took place primarily in Delhi, most of the attention was given to Hindi, the standardized language with official recognition and sanctioned use in schools and other official domains across a number of states in North India (Aggarwal 1997; Brass 1990; Das Gupta 1970; Dua 1994; Fox 1990; Kaviraj 1992; Khubchandani 1983, 1984; King 1994; Kumar 1990, 1991; Lelyveld 1993; Orsini 2002; Pattanayak 1981; Sonntag 1996; Sridhar 1987, 1991; Srivastava 1990). All of the teachers and most of the students I worked with had moved to Delhi from other areas of North India where Hindi is a standardized variety that is represented in schools to the exclusion of other language varieties (LaDousa 2004, 2014; Simon 1986, 1993). Outside of contexts like coaching centers and schools, people sometimes associate more local varieties with Hindi, but this is not true within where textual artifacts point to Hindi’s separate status (LaDousa 2004, 2005, 2006). Some journalists writing about the UPSC were careful to point out that the situation pertaining to Hindi could be extended to any “vernacular language,” referring to other Indian languages sanctioned for use in schools and official domains in states outside of the “Hindi Belt” of North India. No matter which vernacular language was at issue, English played a role in discussions of changes to the examination (Dasgupta 1993; Faust and Nagar 2001; LaDousa 2007; Mohan 1995; Mohanty 2010; National Policy on Education 1968; Rajan 1992; Ramanathan 2004, 2005; Rao 2008).2 Thus, the rubric of medium pits two languages against one another, sifting out other languages relevant to teachers’ and students’ lives. The opposition of Hindi- and English-medium institutions grows in complexity and detail as one extends the semiotic potential of stereotyping from the institutions to the people associated with them. The medium distinction in coaching borrows from the schools from which coaching students come. Across North India, a set of contrasts has come to stereotype schools 27

C haise L a D ousa

and their students by their medium designation (Bhattacharya 2013, 2017; LaDousa 2012, 2014; Proctor 2014; Ramanathan 2004, 2005; Sandhu 2014, 2015). A semiotic process Irvine and Gal (2000) call “fractal recursivity” involves the projection of contrasting qualities at one level of difference onto another (see Chapter 7). For example, Hindi-medium schools are thought to be cheap, run by the government, and the option for those who are too poor to attend English-medium schools. In contrast, Englishmedium schools are thought to be expensive, affiliated with a number of private school boards, and the option for those who can avoid attending a Hindi-medium school. Fractal recursivity, therefore, helps to instantiate the medium designation of a school as a major “axis of differentiation” in Indian society (Gal and Irvine 2019). When signs emergent from context are understood instead for their mere similarity, “rhematization” is at play (Irvine and Gal 2000). Thus, any one of the distinctions thought to be prescient to the medium divide can cue the understanding of a student as being from a humble background (Hindi medium) or as possessing an especially vibrant, ambitious personality (English medium). Finally, “semiotic erasure” is the process by which signs are construed such that other possibilities are hidden or disappeared (Irvine and Gal 2000). For example, the notion of medium sets Hindi- and English-medium schools in opposition such that private Hindi-medium schools are largely ignored. The ways in which people used the ideological constructions of medium distinctions to understand the ramifications of changes to the UPSC exam, however, did not simply reproduce the general dichotomy of Hindi- and English-medium institutions and students borrowed from the world of schools. Indeed, the study of the dynamics of language ideology, as Nakassis (2016) and others have argued, must always be oriented to the actual circumstances in which practices emerge. Nakassis notes: “It is important to see that there are as many kinds of ideologies as there are phenomena or media to which social actors’ practices are reflexively oriented. Further, this proliferation of ideologies beyond the linguistic is implied by the language ideology construct” (2016, 334). In the case of changes to the UPSC exam, different sets of actors, practices, and understandings of language produced different ramifications. And, of course, those ramifications were shaped by the specific procedures and technologies of the exam, as well as by the coaching center affiliation of the person imagining the ramifications. A reporter for the Hindustan Times (Kohli) quoted another journalist (Chaturvedi), to explain the controversy, employing two different language ideological constructs in turn: “Test candidates say that there are two main flaws in the CSAT paper. ‘First, the Hindi version of the question paper, is just a virtual translation of the English paper. Second, there is a compulsory English comprehension component which automatically puts Hindimedium students at a disadvantage,’ says Chaturvedi” (Kohli 2014). Most all of the coaching center students and teachers with whom I spoke invoked 28

M edium and coaching centers in N orth I ndia

language ideological constructs matching those invoked by the reporter for the Hindustan Times. On the one hand, there was the notion that Hindi and English are different languages, and that one might be employed in ways to match (or not match) the referential value of an utterance offered in the other. On the other hand, there was the notion that language difference can differentiate types of people such that the particular language of the exam might best match a particular person. Many people focused on the UPSC’s use of technology to provide a Hindi translation for certain sections of the English version of the examination. Indeed, a professor of education at a central university in Delhi explained that some of the questions had been indecipherable in the 2014 iteration of the Hindi-medium version of the test. The professor told me that the English version of the exam had been run through Google Translate to produce the Hindi version of the exam. Some really unfortunate translations had resulted. Whereas the English version of the exam included reference to the North Pole, the translator had produced the word in the Hindi version for staff or stick: khambhā. Students taking the test in Hindi were confused, whereas students taking the test in English were engaging with the untranslated questions. The professor explained that he had seen his students use Google Translate toward the production of similar kinds of errors in their papers and that he and his friends found much amusement in discussing them. Ram, Manish, Satish, and several students were familiar with the use of Google Translate in the creation of the Hindi version of the exam. Alternatively, people focused on the people taking the test to account for the poor performance of Hindi-medium test takers. Ram, Manish, and Satish all told me that students who opted to take the test in Hindi had studied in such a way that they were unable to answer questions successfully in the second part of the preliminary exam. They explained that such students had studied in Hindi-medium schools. Ram and Satish, especially, were quick to explain to me that Hindi-medium students are not “stupid” or “dull.” Rather, they are used to the rote learning that takes place in Hindimedium schools (Majumdar and Mooij 2011; Vaish 2008). All of the teachers explained that students from a Hindi-medium background are unable to answer questions unless they are phrased in such a way that provides an elicitation of material learned by heart from a primer or textbook. Indeed, every coaching instructor with whom I spoke, whether in Delhi or Varanasi, vociferously decried the belief that differential intelligence had played a part in precipitating the controversy. That Hindi-medium students are not flexible in their answering strategies and that Hindi-medium students lack the confidence to exhibit such flexibility was the focus of every conversation I  had with teachers at coaching institutes, whether coaching in Hindi or English. While all of the teachers at coaching centers explained that students from a Hindi-medium background did well as long as they could provide 29

C haise L a D ousa

information on a test as they had learned it, a few teachers extended the idea to describe students from a Hindi-medium background as “inflexible” and “lacking in adaptability.” Satish explained, “For this only the students from the Hindi background do not cope up with the CSAT. They cannot change the point of view of the material. It is not a matter of intellect, intelligence. They are just as intelligent as those students coming from the Englishmedium background.” A focus on medium remains even when teachers try to take a sympathetic stance toward those whose fortunes in the exam have suffered since the introduction of the CSAT in 2011. Online posts show that students beyond the coaching centers where I observed used the medium distinction to configure their chances of success at the examination. On the website quora.com, an anonymous post asked, “I am Hindi medium student, if I choose English medium for UPSC exam then what types of problems I have to face? Or is it better or not for me?”3 A respondent posted on September 11, 2015: After thing [thinking?] a lot. I want to suggest you to analyse yourself whether you are able to judge your command over English or not. . . . Those who are writing answers here on Quora or are answering to Insights Secure Initiative [a website for UPSC examination preparation]. They have been studying English language since their childhood and in touch with English language through several ways. Another reply to the anonymous post, dated April 18, 2015, came from a coaching service: There is no problem when it comes to language. What you have to focus is your content. Good, well presented content in any language will fetch you marks. You need to work upon the power of your expression in either of these two languages. And then practise writing answers in that only. We, at Synergy are running answers in both Hindi and English – and you can see our Mains Preparatory Programme answers for the same. All the best! While the individual respondent intimated that the very identification of the poser of the question as a Hindi-medium student might reveal her to be unlike the other people posting on the website, the coaching center refocused the discussion on “content” and made explicit that it offers such content in either Hindi or English. In other words, the website promised a product to the person who asked the question – and to the reader of the post – and configured needs by the medium division between Hindi and English.

30

M edium and coaching centers in N orth I ndia

A third answer to the initial post, dated April 29, 2015, warned: I read your question. . . . Not to be rude . . . But there were quite a lot of grammatical errors. I am not claiming proficiency in English either but for such an important exam don’t take chances and go for what you are comfortable in. If it’s hindi . . . Choose Hindi. Or you might not be able to understand one or more questions and failing because of this will be a stupid move. Regards. The response pointed to errors to substantiate the mismatch between the medium background of the person who posted the question and the medium of the website. The respondent suggested that bringing the medium of the examination into line with the medium background of the aspirant would make for comfort and an avoidance of misunderstanding. Insights IAS, the UPSC coaching service referred to in a response shown, describes itself thus: “This initiative famously known as Insights Secure is for those who want to hone their writing skills and improve their answer writing abilities to highly dynamic IPSCIAS [UPSC IAS?] Mains questions. Answer writing practice is the backbone of IAS exam preparation. Good answer writing skills help you get the highest marks in Mains” (insightsonindia.com).4 Under the website menu item “IAS Myths,” one finds, “My English is very poor. They say I  am out of the race. Am I?” Insights IAS responds: No. You are still part of the race. Now you have figured out the problem  – that your English is poor. Work on it. All you need is basic English. Moreover, you can write this exam and give the interview in your mother-tongue. Buy a basic Grammar book – read it, listen to English news on TV and radio, try to write something in English, everyday (don’t worry if it is very bad, keep trying). Necessity should push you to learn. Push yourself. Win the race. (insightsonindia.com)5 At the same time that the website argues that either medium will serve just as well, it describes the disposition one must have to match the qualities of the examination as “highly dynamic.” This is precisely the quality that teachers argued that students from a Hindi-medium background lacked. Thus, while coaching center advertisements offer services in either medium and urge students to be comfortable, and while teachers argue that Hindimedium students do not lack intelligence, they nevertheless associate the qualities of the section of the test introduced in 2011 with a single medium, English.

31

C haise L a D ousa

What makes coaching valuable . . . or, why do students continue to attend Hindi-medium centers? While medium distinctions served as the frame of students’ and teachers’ reflections on the controversy, coaching centers themselves, whether offering courses in Hindi or English, were seen as valuable. When students reflected positively on coaching centers, they focused largely on the role of the teacher. Ram was one of the most successful coaching teachers I  met in Delhi given his large number of students and his ability to purchase a new office in 2020. This new office provided him a venue in which to meet prospective students while his classroom and old office were located a few blocks away in the heart of Mukherjee Nagar’s cluster of multi-story buildings devoted to coaching tutorials. To reach the classroom, one entered a waiting room that was adjacent to Ram’s old office. To the side of the office was a narrow hallway that led to Ram’s assistant’s office and a bathroom divided by a small partition. Ram’s old office was furnished with a large desk behind which he received long lines of students after class, workers from nearby print shops running errands, or former students who had come to pay a visit and often inform him of business dealings. Students would wait in the room outside of the office until Ram’s assistant would motion for a student to join a queue of students sitting on a couch perpendicular to Ram’s desk. A large portrait of Mahatma Gandhi hung on the wall behind Ram and several nameplates on the desk had Ram’s name engraved on them. Across the way from the waiting room was a lecture hall that accommodated approximately forty students. The room was equipped with a chalkboard mounted above a slightly raised platform from which Ram delivered his lectures. Such was the setup of all of the coaching teachers I  met who had been working for anywhere between ten and twenty-five years. For more junior teachers there was no office, but rather an endless rotation through other people’s rented spaces. Though such teachers would not tell me how much, they all mentioned that they received less than what students pay because the space through which they pass belongs to someone else. These teachers compared themselves favorably, however, with those tutors who visit students more informally for coaching. Often, after Ram’s lectures, I  would not quite make it across the hall quickly enough to join the rush of students entering Ram’s office. I would sit in the lobby with anywhere from five to twenty students who themselves waited their turn to be able to join Ram’s queue. A routine developed whereby students would address me and ask me, rhetorically, whether I could see the attention that they were receiving face to face with the teacher. Consistently, students explained that Ram truly cared about them. If I asked students to explain how, they answered that Ram would allow them to ask a question and would always provide an answer. They argued that this contrasted starkly with their experience in university 32

M edium and coaching centers in N orth I ndia

where teachers did not care about them and certainly would never entertain any unsolicited questions. While this contrasts sharply with my own limited observations of university teaching in India, the students unanimously praised Ram and other coaching instructors by invoking their communication with professors as disappointing. While teachers were often late to the lecture hall, every teacher whose lecture I  attended in Mukherjee Nagar lingered after the lecture, whether in an office or in the lecture hall itself, to take students’ questions. These were often about the test questions and strategies for answering, but they often were about student financial difficulties, batch dates and travel obligations, or discussion of plans for special subject study. On several occasions, a student’s tears would prompt a teacher to tell the other students to leave to give privacy. The first time this happened in Ram’s office, I went to leave, but he told me to stay. This happened with other teachers too. I came to feel that I was being invited to witness the ways in which the teacher cared about the student and offered the student comfort and advice. Many of the students explained that their parents were terribly upset at their insistence on continuing to study for the UPSC, usually in the face of several failed attempts. Young women often shared with the teacher their concerns over the postponement of marriage. Satish and several other teachers who rotated among offices or even cities told me that they had begun to rent a space to house an office where they could meet students after lecturing at an allotted time in a small lecture hall nearby. Such coaching teachers served batches of students numbering anywhere from twenty to forty. Sometimes the teachers taught one of the two subject papers for which students would sit. Sometimes the teachers would only have one batch of a subject at a time, but some had as many as three to accommodate students’ schedules (and to accommodate more students, of course). Students in those batches had already passed the preliminary exam and were preparing for the mains exam. Sometimes the teachers taught additional batches of students who were studying for other parts of the exam, such as one of the language papers or one of the four general studies sections of the mains exam. Several teachers remarked that Ram’s charisma had enabled him to teach a lecture in a giant cinema hall that had been converted into a lecture hall. On some days, Ram taught as many as four three-hour lectures, one in a hall that accommodated approximately 800 students. Thus, Ram taught small batches out of his office, but also rotated through a larger lecture hall where a number of other teachers known for their charisma were also teaching. In all of these contexts, he lingered after lectures to answer students’ questions, and students mentioned to me that he expressed his love for them in his willingness to talk to them while eating. Indeed, students explained to me that even with so many students, Ram was willing to spend as much as an hour or two after his last class of the day to stay and answer questions. Evidence of Ram’s success came in the form of his ability to purchase 33

C haise L a D ousa

a large flat in Mukherjee Nagar where real estate values had skyrocketed since coaching centers had come to the area. Ram was also able to afford a car in which his nephew drove him from home to office to lecture hall. One teacher was rumored to have such a large fleet of cars that people in the neighborhood could no longer park near their flats. What was undoubtedly true is that most teachers involved in coaching from their own offices could not afford to live in Mukherjee Nagar and had lengthy commutes from their homes further north or further east. These aspects of the political economy of coaching, however, never played a part in students’ or teachers’ reflections on coaching. Rather, students and teachers alike remarked on the attention and love students received, all in contrast to the relationship between students and teachers in university settings. All of the teachers I met had failed the UPSC exams. Some of the teachers explained that after finishing their university studies they attempted to take the exams for several years in a row before giving up and beginning to participate in coaching services. One of the coaching teachers reported that he had tried to take the examination six times before finally deciding to start offering coaching services. A  recent blog was started by someone who explains that he appeared in the UPSC exam several times but was unsuccessful. His goal in hosting the blog is to help others by sharing his experiences: Even if one single individual benefits from my experience, my effort in starting this blog would be justified. Aspirants are welcome to ask queries relevant to the UPSC preparation, which I  would be answering either personally or through a separate posting in the blog, depending on the relevance of the question. (www.tehelka.com/2015/03/the-dreamdom-called-upsc/)6 The kind of relationship between the aspirant and the blogger differs from the relationship between the aspirant and the coaching teacher. Neither does the aspirant have to pay the blogger, nor does the aspirant have to make accommodations to attend his coaching lectures. One can imagine, however, that the blog could serve as an advertisement for the coaching services the blogger explains he now offers. Several features of the blog post itself, however, resonate with the offer of coaching tutorials. The blogger, for example, failed the exam several times. He claims that if his services help even a single aspirant, his efforts would be justified. And finally, he offers bloggers the chance to ask specific questions. Coaching teachers in Mukherjee Nagar told me often that even a single instance of success makes the teacher’s efforts worthwhile. Here, the competitiveness of the test aided in fueling the imagination of a kind of success against all odds rather than adding a dose of realism to efforts to succeed at the odds of something like three to one hundred. Students were much more 34

M edium and coaching centers in N orth I ndia

varied in their explanations of why they were engaged in tutorial services for the exam. The desire to fight corruption was the central theme of many explanations to pursue the exam. Some students explained that the prospects for a good job were so bad that they had decided to continue their studies after university rather than having to look for work. Most of the students were from smaller metros or from small towns, and explained that the prospects for work, either at home or where they had gone to university, were particularly bad. Such students’ reflections on the poor prospects of decent jobs are reminiscent of the participation in student politics described by Craig Jeffrey (2010) as “timepass.” Some students mentioned their desire to postpone or avoid work in favor of their interest in or passion for a particular subject. For example, a student from a rural area just outside of Jaipur in his late twenties spoke of his love for Ruskin Bond’s literature, and mentioned that he would rather study for the UPSC’s exam in history than sacrifice his time to a job in which he had little interest. Another student mentioned her desire to be able to further her passion for classical music, and noted that being able to do so was incompatible with what was required to find and keep a job. Never did the medium distinction play a part in students’ or teachers’ explanations of the value of coaching or in students’ explanations of why they were pursuing coaching. Rather, the medium of instruction of the coaching center was imagined as something that had to be overcome, but by Hindi-medium students only. And coaching instructors were there to help students do just that.

Innovation in the hinterland After spending five weeks rotating among coaching centers in Mukherjee Nagar in 2014, I  traveled to Varanasi where I  have been visiting schools and investigating people’s notions of medium and schooling for approximately two decades (LaDousa 2014). Satish gave me contact information for a “new branch” in Varanasi of the Hindi-medium coaching center for which he worked. He mentioned that he enjoyed visiting the new branch in Varanasi from Delhi for teaching batches of students because their Hindi was particularly good and that they had special ability when it came to the subject paper for which he coached, Hindi literature and poetry. When I asked him to elaborate on what made the Hindi of the students in Varanasi good, he mentioned that they could produce language that is “pure” (shuddh) in comparison to his students in Delhi, and that they can speak Hindi relatively free of English.7 These predictable distinctions between center and periphery and English and Hindi were what I had come to expect from fieldwork in schools. In Varanasi, in reflections on schooling generally, Hindi is a language associated with the nation (rāṣṭṛa, deś), whereas English is a language associated with the international (antarrāṣṭṛīya). People explain that to gain employment, 35

C haise L a D ousa

and certainly to attend especially prestigious boarding schools, one must move (ghūmnā) to a more cosmopolitan locale. In such conversations, people often mention Delhi as an especially attractive destination for economic mobility, and people often mention that no school exists in Varanasi with nationally recognized prestige. In the city, Hindi-medium schools are often assumed to be cheap because they are run by the government (sarkār), and English-medium schools are assumed to be comparatively expensive because they are private (fīz lenā vāle). Varanasi’s position in reflections on Hindi is a special one, and people mention the place of the city in the history of Hindi’s literary production and standardization (Dalmia 1999; Orsini 2002; Simon 1986). Some people also contribute to Varanasi’s salience in the contrast between Hindi and English and Hindi- and English-medium education when they note that the city’s schools – especially Hindi-medium ones, but English-medium ones too – could not teach students to speak in English free of Hindi. The coaching teacher from Delhi drew on associations between Varanasi and Hindi to highlight the city’s positive attributes. What I was wholly unprepared for, however, was the warning from the coaching center in Varanasi not to record the lectures I observed. I could take notes, but not record. In Delhi, not a single teacher had expressed displeasure at my request to record the three-hour lecture that most coaching sessions turn out to be. The director in Varanasi explained that students all over eastern Uttar Pradesh and western Bihar were watching the lectures on closed-circuit television (CCTV), and that the lectures belonged to the teachers who were delivering them. My look of incomprehension prompted the director to explain that in rooms in small towns like Mirzapur, Ara, Ghazipur, and Robertsganj, groups of students were watching the lecture being delivered in Varanasi’s coaching center on CCTV. Such towns serve as district headquarters, and students watching the CCTV broadcasts had traveled from villages to see them. The director explained that the coaching institute was going to keep the lectures in a database in case they could be shown to future batches. On a visit to the center the next day, the assistant director asked me at length why I thought students attended coaching services. He became impatient with what were likely obvious replies – that students were unhappy with corruption and might make a difference in the nation’s future. He explained that the CCTV was the director’s idea, and that his contribution would be the building of a coffee shop at one of Varanasi’s malls at which tutorial services would be urged on patrons. He explained that university students in places like Varanasi, far outside of Delhi, represent a huge untapped market. In contrast to places like Delhi, where the idea of coaching is well known, Varanasi presents a large number of university graduates who could become involved with coaching and try to master the UPSC exam. The assistant director went on to argue that such students spend time at malls, and that a coffee shop would be an ideal place to catch their attention and have them 36

M edium and coaching centers in N orth I ndia

commit to coaching classes.8 It would seem that these two innovations – the use of closed-circuit television and the spread of coffee shops in malls or stand-alone arrangements – are happening in precisely those areas associated with rote learning and a lack of innovation. Furthermore, such innovations sideline the cachet of the teacher’s care and attention entirely.

Conclusion Teachers and students at coaching centers  – as well as journalists  – drew on the highly salient notion of medium of instruction to reflect on changes made to the UPSC examination in 2011 and the 2014 protests that followed. Different explanations accounted for the cause of the increasingly poor performance of aspirants opting to take the exam in Hindi. Some people noted that faulty translations affected the Hindi rather than the English version of the exam while other people noted that students from Hindi-medium schools could not answer questions apart from a memorized response. The ideological opposition between Hindi- and English-medium institutions and students was salient in both explanations, but the latter explanation that focused on students served coaching centers particularly well. Coaching center teachers were quick to point out that students coming from Hindi-medium schools were not incapable of passing the new exam’s CSAT section, but, rather, were used to providing memorized answers. And reflections on Hindi-medium students were not always defensive. As long as students from eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar were the focus, positive attributes like fluency in Hindi free of English could emerge. Thus, medium of instruction was pervasive but explanations varied in their focus, whether it was on the technology used to translate the test from English to Hindi, on the habits of the test takers, or on the regional stereotypes of student origin and residence. Further complicating the ways in which the medium of instruction figured in reflections on the UPSC examination were the advertisements meant to project the identity of a coaching institute to potential customers. While coaching center teachers defended Hindi-medium students, advertising by coaching centers claimed that medium difference in the UPSC exam is inconsequential and that aspirants should choose the medium that is comfortable. In order to assuage the anxiety of would-be test takers, such advertising must ignore the complicated inequalities that emerge from relationships between changes to the exam and the division between Hindi- and English coaching instruction. While coaches and students use medium distinctions to understand changes to the UPSC exam and the protests that followed, and consider the chances of success for Hindi-medium aspirants to be low, students continue to attend Hindi-medium coaching centers. Indeed, some of the centers have recently expanded. From students’ point of view, the benefits of 37

C haise L a D ousa

coaching inhere in the relationship between teacher and student – regardless of medium. They argue that teachers express care and concern with their presence and gestures. And yet, in rural locations around small metros like Varanasi, technological innovations in the form of CCTV are obviating the context of such gestures. It would seem that, in precisely the places where students can be praised for their capabilities in Hindi, rural students must begin their coaching endeavors without the benefits of interaction and care so valuable to students in Delhi. Medium is thus crucial for understanding the ways social actors apprehend the changes in which they are involved, but medium distinctions and the stereotypes about success and failure they project do not predict all of the ways social actors will engage with institutions. Nor do they predict the changing circumstances of institutional participation and the potential for new dimensions of inequality. A  more complete view of the partial ways in which institutions are ideologized by language thus requires ethnographic fieldwork.

Acknowledgments Because of the promise of anonymity, I cannot thank those to whom I owe the most, the coaching students and teachers who let me sit in their classes and who answered my incessant questions. Krishna Kumar, Nita Kumar, Ravi Kumar, Manabi Majumdar, and Srinivas Rao provided warm hospitality and stimulating conversation about the medium phenomenon and coaching services in education. Once again, NIRMAN provided a warm home in Varanasi. Latika Gupta and Nishaant Choksi were wonderful interlocutors and hosts in Delhi and Gandhinagar, respectively. This chapter began as a paper delivered at the Annual Conference on South Asia in Madison, Wisconsin where Daniel Bass, Sonia N. Das, Christina P. Davis, and Priti Sandhu gave excellent feedback. An anonymous reviewer and Christina P. Davis helped me clarify and tighten the chapter’s argument and I  am extremely grateful.

Notes 1 This line of work relies on the Peircian apprehension of a system of signs. See Peirce (1998) among many examples. 2 The term is “bivalent” in the parlance of Woolard (1998b) in that the term “medium” can be found in expressions understood as English, and can be found in expressions understood as Hindi when madhyam or mīḍīam is used. 3 Accessed December 2, 2020. 4 Accessed August 1, 2019. 5 Accessed August 1, 2019. 6 Accessed August 1, 2019. 7 Shuddh is an attribute of language that speakers employ to describe a number of different phenomena. These include, for example, the absence of lexical items in other languages, the absence of phonetic features associated with other languages,

38

M edium and coaching centers in N orth I ndia

or the presence of lexical items derived from Sanskrit. These may or may not cooccur, and speakers’ awareness of such co-occurrence may vary too. 8 Indeed, the coffee shop in question had recently opened in a mall built on the site of one of Varanasi’s oldest cinema halls. Varanasi has seen the demolition of many such venues to make way for new commercial spaces in which retail outfits rent space. Many people speak of the demolished structures with nostalgia, both for the buildings themselves as well as for the youthful memories of going to them regularly.

References Aggarwal, Kailash. 1997. “What’s Indian About Indian Plurilingualism?” Language Problems and Language Planning 21: 35–50. Bansal, Samarth. 2016. “Students Prefer English in UPSC Exams.” The Hindu, June 23. Accessed December 18, 2020. www.thehindu.com/data/Students-preferEnglish-in-UPSC-exams/article14401273.ece Bhattacharya, Usree. 2013. “Mediating Inequalities: Exploring English-medium Instruction in a Suburban Indian Village School.” Current Issues in Language Planning 14 (1): 164–84. ——— 2017. “Colonization and English Ideologies in India: A Language Policy Perspective.” Language Policy 16: 1–21. Brass, Paul. 1990. The Politics of India since Independence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dalmia, Vasudha. 1999. The Nationalization of Hindu Traditions: Bhāratendu Hariśchandra and Nineteenth-century Banaras. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Das, S. K. 2013. The Civil Services in India. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Das Gupta, Jyotirindra. 1970. Language Conflict and National Development: Group Politics and National Language Policy in India. Berkeley: University of California Press. Dasgupta, Probal. 1993. The Otherness of English: India’s Auntie Tongue Syndrome. New Delhi: Sage Publications. Davis, Christina P., and Chaise LaDousa. 2020. “Introduction: Sign and Script in South Asia.” Special Issue, Signs and Society 8 (1): 1–7. Dua, Hans. 1994. “Hindi Language Spread Policy and Its Implementation: Achievements and Prospects.” International Journal of the Sociology of Language 107: 115–43. Errington, Joseph. 2000. “Ideology.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 9 (1–2): 115–17. Faust, David, and Richa Nagar. 2001. “Politics of Development in Postcolonial India: English-medium Education and Social Fracturing.” Economic and Political Weekly, July 28, 2878–83. Fox, Richard. 1990. “Hindu Nationalism in the Making, or the Rise of the Hindian.” In Nationalist Ideologies and the Production of National Cultures, edited by Richard Fox, 63–80. Washington, DC: American Anthropological Association. Gal, Susan. 2016. “Scale-Making: Comparison and Perspective as Ideological Projects.” In Scale: Discourse and Dimensions of Social Life, edited by E. Summerson Carr and Michael Lempert, 91–111. Berkeley: University of California Press.

39

C haise L a D ousa

Gal, Susan, and Judith T. Irvine. 1995. “The Boundaries of Languages and Disciplines: How Ideologies Construct Differences.” Social Research 62: 967–1001. ——— 2019. Signs of Difference: Language and Ideology in Social Life. New York: Cambridge University Press. Government of India. 2015 [1949]. The Constitution of India. New Delhi: Ministry of Law and Justice. Hafeez, Sarah. 2014. “Protest by UPSC Aspirants Turns Violent, Police Vehicles Torched.” The Indian Express, July  25. Accessed December  18, 2020. http://indianexpress.com/article/cities/delhi/protest-by-UPSC-aspirants-turnsviolent-police-vehicles-torched/ Irvine, Judith T., and Susan Gal. 2000. “Language Ideology and Linguistic Differentiation.” In Regimes of Language: Ideologies, Polities, and Identities, edited by Paul V. Kroskrity, 35–83. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press. Jeffrey, Craig. 2010. Timepass: Youth, Class, and the Politics of Waiting in India. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Kapoor, Atul. 2016. “Dismal Performance by Hindi Medium Candidates Persists even in Civil Services Examination 2012.” IASPassion.com. Accessed December 2, 2020. www.iaspassion.com/2900 – dismal-performance-by-hindi-mediumcandidates-persists-even-in-civil-services-examination-2012-ias.eng Kaviraj, Sudipta. 1992. “Writing, Speaking, Being: Language and the Historical Formation of Identities in India.” In Nationalstaat und sprachkonflikt in Süd- und Südostasien, edited by Dagmar Hellman-Rajanayagam and Dietmar Rothermund, 25–65. Stuttgart: Steiner. Khubchandani, Lachman. 1983. Plural Languages, Plural Cultures: Communication, Identity, and Sociopolitical Change in Contemporary India. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ——— 1984. “Sociolinguistics in India: The Decade Past, the Decade to Come.” International Journal of the Sociology of Language 45: 47–64. King, Christopher. 1994. One Language, Two Scripts: The Hindi Movement in Nineteenth Century North India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Kohli, Gauri. 2014. “Unfair Advantage.” Hindustan Times, August  1. www.hin dustantimes.com/education/unfair-advantage/story-Yhk8OH7ByDWYPfREcSd vMO.html ——— 2016. “UPSC CSAT: A Civil War to Get into the Services.” Hindustan Times, June 7. Accessed December 18, 2020. www.hindustantimes.com/education/upsccsat-a-civil-war-to-get-into-the-services/story-zjERUgZqCvCaUPr6O6xtEI.html Kroskrity, Paul V. 2004. “Language Ideologies.” In A Companion to Linguistic Anthropology, edited by Alessandro Duranti, 496–517. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. Kumar, Krishna. 1990. “Quest for Self-Identity: Cultural Consciousness and Education in Hindi Region, 1880–1950.” Economic and Political Weekly 25 (23): 1247–49, 1251–55. ——— 1991. Political Agenda of Education: A Study of Colonialist and Nationalist Ideas. New Delhi: Sage Publications. LaDousa, Chaise. 2002. “Advertising in the Periphery: Languages and Schools in a North Indian City.” Language in Society 31 (2): 213–42.

40

M edium and coaching centers in N orth I ndia

——— 2004. “In the Mouth but not on the Map: Visions of Language and Their Enactment in the Hindi Belt.” Journal of Pragmatics 36 (4): 633–61. ——— 2005. “Disparate Markets: Language, Nation, and Education in North India.” American Ethnologist 32 (3): 460–78. ——— 2006. “The Discursive Malleability of an Identity: A Dialogic Approach to Language ‘Medium’ Schooling in North India.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 16 (1): 36–57. ——— 2007. “Liberalisation, Privatisation, Modernisation, and Schooling in India: An Interview with Krishna Kumar.” Globalisation, Societies and Education 5 (2): 137–52. ——— 2012. “On Mother and Other Tongues: Sociolinguistics, Schools, and Language Ideology in Northern India.” In Making Sense of Language: Readings in Culture and Communication, edited by Susan Blum, 2nd ed., 544–58. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ——— 2014. Hindi Is Our Ground, English Is Our Sky: Education, Language, and Social Class in Contemporary India. New York: Berghahn Books. ——— 2018. “Mind the (Language-Medium) Gap.” In Handbook of Education in India: Debates, Practices, and Policies, edited by Krishna Kumar, 81–96. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. ——— 2020. “Language, Script, and Advertising in India’s Hindi Belt: Institutional Voices in Flux.” Special Issue, Signs and Society 8 (1): 155–84. LaDousa, Chaise, and Christina P. Davis. 2018. “Introduction: Language and Schooling in India and Sri Lanka: Language Medium Matters.” Special Issue, International Journal of the Sociology of Language 253: 103–24. Lelyveld, David. 1993. “The Fate of Hindustani: Colonial Knowledge and the Project of a National Language.” In Orientalism and the Postcolonial Predicament: Perspectives on South Asia, edited by Carol Breckenridge and Peter van der Veer, 189–214. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Majumdar, Manabi, and Jos Mooij. 2011. Education and Inequality in India: A Classroom View. New York: Routledge. Mohan, Peggy. 1995. “Market Forces and Language in Global India.” Economic and Political Weekly April 22: 887–90. Mohanty, Ajit. 2010. “Languages, Inequality, and Marginalization: Implications of the Double Divide in Indian Multilingualism.” International Journal of the Sociology of Language 205: 131–54. Nakassis, Constantine. 2016. “Linguistic Anthropology in 2015: Not the Study of Language.” American Anthropologist 118 (2): 330–45. National Policy on Education. 1968. Education and National Development: Report of the Education Commission 1964–66. New Delhi: National Council of Educational Research and Training. Orsini, Francesca. 2002. The Hindi Public Sphere 1920–1940: Language and Literature in the Age of Nationalism. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Patel, Devji M. 2016. “The Private Coaching Centres Regulatory Bill, 2016.” Introduced in the Lok Sabha as Bill No. 94 (March 10). Pattanayak, D. P. 1981. Multilingualism and Mother Tongue Education. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

41

C haise L a D ousa

Peirce, Charles Sanders. 1998 [1894]. “What Is a Sign?” In The Essential Peirce: Selected Philosophical Writings, Volume 2 (1893–1913), edited by Nathan Houser, Jonathan Eller, Albert Lewis, André De Tienne, Cathy Clark, and D. Bront Davis, 4–10. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Poonam, Snigdha. 2018. Dreamers: How Young Indians Are Changing Their World. Gurgaon: Penguin Random House India. Proctor, Lavanya. 2014. “English and Globalization in India: The Fractal Nature of Discourse.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 24 (3): 294–314. Rajan, Rajeswari. 1992. “Fixing English: Nation, Language, Subject.” In The Lie of the Land: English Literary Studies in India, edited by Rajeswari Rajan, 7–28. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Ramanathan, Vaidehi. 2004. The English-Vernacular Divide: Postcolonial Language Politics and Practice. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters. ——— 2005. “Ambiguities About English: Ideologies and Critical Practice in ­Vernacular-Medium College Classrooms in Gujarat, India.” Journal of Language, Identity, and Education 4: 45–65. Rao, Srinivasa. 2008. “India’s Language Debates and Education of Linguistic Minorities.” Economic and Political Weekly 43 (36): 63–69. Sandhu, Priti. 2014. “ ‘Who Does She Think She Is?’: Vernacular Medium and Failed Romance.” Journal of Language, Identity, and Education 13 (1): 16–33. ——— 2015. “Stylizing Voices, Stances, and Identities Related to Medium of Education in India.” Multilingua: Journal of Cross-Cultural and Interlanguage Communication 34 (2): 211–35. Sikdar, Shubhomoy. 2014. “UPSC Biased Against Hindi, Allege Aspirants.” The Hindu, June  28. Accessed December  18, 2020. www.thehindu.com/news/cities/ Delhi/UPSC-biased-against-hindi-allege-aspirants/article6157580.ece Silverstein, Michael. 1979. “Language Structure and Linguistic Ideology.” In Papers from the Parasession on Units and Levels, edited by P. Clyne, W. Hanks, and C. Hofbauer, 193–247. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society. Simon, Beth. 1986. “Bilingualism and Language Maintenance in Banaras.” PhD diss., University of Wisconsin, Madison. ——— 1993. “Language Choice, Religion, and Identity in the Banarsi Community.” In Living Banaras: Hindu Religion in Cultural Context, edited by Bradley Hertel and Cynthia Ann Humes, 245–68. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Sonntag, Selma. 1996. “The Political Saliency of Language in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.” Journal of Commonwealth and Comparative Politics 34 (2): 1–18. Sridhar, Kamal. 1987. “Language Variation, Attitudes, and Rivalry: The Spread of Hindi in India.” In Language Spread and Language Policy: Issues, Implications, and Case Studies, edited by Peter Lowenberg, 300–19. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. ——— 1991. “Bilingual Education in India.” In Bilingual Education: Focusschrift in Honor of Joshua A. Fishman on the Occasion of His 65th birthday, edited by Ofelia Garcia, vol. 1, 89–101. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Srivastava, A. K. 1990. “Multilingualism and School Education in India: Special Features, Problems, and Prospects.” In Multilingualism in India, edited by Debi Pattanayak, 37–53. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters.

42

M edium and coaching centers in N orth I ndia

Vaish, Viniti. 2008. Biliteracy and Globalization: English Language Education in India. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters. Woolard, Kathryn A. 1998a. “Introduction: Language Ideology as a Field of Inquiry.” In Language Ideologies: Practice and Theory, edited by Bambi B. Schief­ felin, Kathryn A. Woolard, and Paul V. Kroskrity, 3–47. New York: Oxford University Press. ——— 1998b. “Simultaneity and Bivalency as Strategies in Bilingualism.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 8 (1): 3–29. Woolard, Kathryn A., and Bambi B. Schieffelin. 1994. “Language Ideology.” Annual Review of Anthropology 23: 55–82.

43

3 MEDIUM DISCOURSES AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF SELF AND OTHER IN SOCIAL MEDIA IN POSTCOLONIAL BANGLADESH Iffat Jahan and M. Obaidul Hamid

This chapter examines the construction of “self” and “other” identity by students and graduates affiliated with Bangla-medium public schools and English-medium private schools in social media spaces. Typically, identity construction in medium of instruction (medium) debates in different countries has utilized a handful of identity markers (Tanu 2014). For example, students attending schools in national languages are represented as more patriotic and loyal to their nation and national symbols pertaining to language, history, and culture compared to students who receive their education in a non-national language, including English (David and Tien 2009; Hamid and Jahan 2015). However, the former are also represented as local, parochial, or even illiberal, while their counterparts from English-medium schools are seen as global, liberal, and cosmopolitan (Hamid and Jahan 2015; Tanu 2014). More notably, medium serves as an expression of social class and class identity. For example, although low-cost English-medium schooling has been experimented with in different societies (Desai 2016; Endow 2015, 2018), students affiliated with English-medium education are often considered social elites (Jahan and Hamid 2019). This class character of English-medium education has colonial origins, as English-medium education was introduced for local elites during colonial rule. Consequently, medium debates usually serve as class debates in which groups representing different mediums try to construct and reconstruct self- and other-­identities using linguistic and non-linguistic factors as markers of class identity (LaDousa 2014; LaDousa and Davis 2018; Ramanathan 2005; Sandhu 2016). Although social class is an essential variable in sociolinguistics (Block 2018; Mallinson 2007; Rampton 2010), it has turned into a controversial concept over the years. Defining and operationalizing class is not problem-free 44

S elf and other in postcolonial B angladesh

(Jahan and Hamid 2019). Traditionally, education, occupation, and income have served as class markers. However, Bourdieu’s (1986) sociological theory has popularized different forms of capital – economic, cultural, social, and symbolic  – as ingredients of class (Bennett et  al. 2020). In addition, tastes and consumption are also key markers of class identity. In constructing group identity, people may utilize all of the aforementioned markers, usually favorably for their own group and unfavorably for their other. In this chapter, we examine different markers of class identity that were used by Bangla-medium- and English-medium-educated Facebook participants in medium debates in Bangladesh. Utilizing translingual (mixed Bangla and English) colloquial expressions that are rich in crudeness and vulgarity to construct some kind of a social media “manosphere,” they advanced a discursive identity battle that reflected a “shitty” social divide. Our analysis of the debates substantiates multiple unconventional markers of class alongside more conventional ones deployed by the two groups, prompting us to underscore the semiotic and ideological robustness of medium debates in producing and reproducing class identity. The debates can be seen as indexing a moral map of class divisions based on stereotypical representations of Bangla-medium and English-medium groups. This chapter contributes to understandings of language ideology in relation to digitally-mediated discourse and class, gender, and sexuality.

Background Schools and universities in many parts of the world have recently introduced English as a medium in light of the promised benefits of English as the global lingua franca of knowledge, information, science, and technology (Bowles and Murphy 2020; Dearden 2014; Macaro 2018). While this growth may naturalize English as medium policy and pedagogy, it is important not to lose sight of its ideological character (LaDousa 2014; LaDousa and Davis 2018). English as a medium is not new, even though the current policy trend fueled by discourses of English, on the one hand, and the dominance of neoliberalism, on the other hand (Hamid and Baldauf 2014; Piller and Cho 2013), may give the impression of a recent origin. English-medium education was first introduced in British India in the interest of colonial rule (Viswanathan 1987). This origin needs to be revisited to appreciate English as a medium, not just as policy or pedagogy, but also as politics, ideology, and sociology (LaDousa and Davis 2018). At least three points about the colonial origin of English as a medium deserve our attention. The first is epistemological. English-medium education was introduced as the linguistic and policy artifact of a supposedly superior civilization imposed on colonized societies represented as superstitious, backward, and knowledge-deficient (Said 1978). Apparently, the policy was benevolent, as it aimed to connect Oriental people to Western 45

I ffat J ahan and M . O baidul H amid

knowledge, science, and civilization through English. However, this language policy also marked the beginning of a global divide and inequality in knowledge and knowledge production that has received attention in recent years (Connell 2007; Pennycook and Makoni 2019). The second point is sociological and can be related to the social divide within colonized societies. It was practically impossible to introduce English education on a massive scale in the colonies. Even if such a provision of English had been practical, it would have gone against the interest of colonial rule. What served the interest of the rulers was the limited provision of English, which created a division between the English-proficient minority and the English-ignorant majority. This class production along linguistic lines was in line with the “divide and rule” policy, which, for example, set Hindus and Muslims against one another in British India. The official adoption of Macaulay’s 1835 Minute on Education paved the way for the introduction of English education in India. English education was set to create “a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals and in intellect” (cited in Evans 2002, 271). The new class was an embodiment of the power of English, which was alienated from the masses. The third point is discursive but no less political. English as a medium was introduced in the context of Orientalist discourses that constructed the colonial self and the colonized other not only as different but also as constitutive of each other (Said 1978). English as a “noble” language was used to identify the colonial self which was made available for emulation by the colonized other (see Pennycook 2007). The English language was meant to serve as a concrete reminder to the colonized about their inferiority against the superiority of the colonial master (Viswanathan 1987). However, this does not essentially mean the colonized embraced English as a signifier of colonial rule. Scholars have also highlighted the emancipatory potential of English (see Nandy 1983), as well as the possibility of domesticating the colonial language for the maintenance of class, culture, religion, and patriarchy within and beyond the colonial framework (Chandra 2012). Contemporary discourses of self and other, found in many fields, originated in this context of English, colonial rule, and its varied meanings and significance. English education during colonial rule was therefore more than education. From the mainstream perspective, it was an embodiment of class, power, privilege, and mobility. The adoption of English as the language of colonial administration in 1837 replacing Persian unleashed the symbolic power of English in India. The power would have been experienced as symbolic violence by those who desired English but did not have the capital to learn it. They might have succeeded in developing social mistrust toward those that were separated by the wall of English. The self and other that were originally constructed for the colonial and the colonized were re-­contextualized to refer to different social groups in the postcolonial era 46

S elf and other in postcolonial B angladesh

(Reyes 2017). At the end of colonial rule, English and the associated discourses of self and other were retained. The association of language (English vs. the local/national languages) with the self and other became contested among elites, who wanted to impose either an elite form of the vernacular (such as metropolitan Bengali or standardized Hindi) or an elite form of imperial English. Medium debates in South Asia need to be located against this background.

Language debates, language ideologies, and medium Language debates have a long history of scholarly interest (Blommaert 1999). Such debates involve language ideologies, which are expressions of societal beliefs about various aspects of language and language use. They have been defined as “ideas with which participants frame their understandings of linguistic varieties and the differences among them, and map those understandings onto people, events, and activities” (Gal and Irvine 1995, 970). In language ideologies, “ideas about language are not about language at all” (Rosa and Burdick 2017, 103); language serves as “a proxy” (Suleiman 2006) or “a mask” (Chidsey 2018). One critical theoretical tool for language ideologies is social indexicality (Hanks 1999), which involves the associations of linguistic signs with non-linguistic phenomena such as people, their behaviors, characters, identities, and tastes (Bucholtz and Hall 2004; Woolard 2021). Language debates are thus ideological debates in which different language groups construct their own identities and identities of the other using linguistic and non-linguistic identity markers. Language debates are linguistic/discursive struggles in which debaters may deploy strategies of offense as well as defense. In terms of offense, they may impose specific identities on their opponent while asserting their own identity positions. At the same time, they may defend their own identities against the discursive onslaught from their opponent. Given such discursive struggles, the genre of language debates may serve as a site for manipulation or fabrication of truths, or construction of preferred truths identified as “post-truths” (Block 2019; Kalpokas 2019). Although the points of the debates may refer to things outside language, discursive constructions of self and other emergent from the debates may be partial and limited (see Hamid and Jahan 2020). As Bucholtz and Hall (2004, 388) argue, both sameness and difference, “the raw material” for identity, are constructed by language ideologies. The discursive construction of self and other can be usefully framed using positioning theory. Social positioning (Davies and Harré 1990; Wortham 2004), defined as an act of discursive attribution of identities, helps to understand processes of identity struggles. Positioning can be reflexive or interactive (Davies and Harre 1990). Reflexive positioning involves construction of self-identity while interactive positioning refers to construction 47

I ffat J ahan and M . O baidul H amid

of other-identity. Self-identity generally appears to be positive while otheridentity tends to be negative. Therefore, positive self-representation and negative other-representation may characterize language debates (Van Dijk 2006). Although language debates foreground many issues, one issue that has achieved prominence in postcolonial societies is related to medium in education. Medium debates are usually between the choice of an ex-colonial language (e.g., English) and a local/national language. Examples include English  – Hindi in India, English  – Urdu in Pakistan, English  – Bangla in Bangladesh, English – Malay in Malaysia, and English – Cantonese in Hong Kong. While the power of English did not decline at decolonization, the choice of English has not been unproblematic in the postcolonial era, as the local/national language has emerged as a contender for the position of medium in education. Medium debates have turned into class debates because the potential use of the local/national language as a medium means the denial of the power of English-educated elites and the rise of local language-educated elites (Jahan and Hamid 2019). In the early days of independent Bangladesh, for example, Bangla, the national language, was considered more important because of the history of the language movement during Pakistani rule and the rise of linguistic nationalism that inspired the national movement for independence from Pakistan. As post-independence politics came to be dominated by a Bangla-centric nationalist imaginary, English-educated elites searched for a new identity associated with a de-territorial global/cosmopolitan imagination. Traditionally, medium debates have been enacted in the public media. However, Internet technology has brought these debates to the virtual world in such forms as Google groups and blogs. More recently, social media such as Facebook have become the prime space for such debates. The transition of genres for such debates – from print public media to digital social media – has had a significant impact on traditional gatekeeping associated with texts produced for public consumption. Letters to the editor and, to some extent, Internet-based Google groups, ensure content relevance and decency due to gatekeeping by editors or moderators. As gatekeeping has disappeared from user-generated content in social media, content relevance, decency, and respect have been compromised. Moreover, the new genres and the conditions of their production and dissemination are shaping what is said and how it is said in medium debates. What can be said on social media is probably unthinkable to read in letters to the editor. Our analysis of medium debates on Facebook thus raises questions about the social truths that are constructed for self and other in technology-mediated platforms. Given the easy-to-produce and easy-to-delete posts on social media, how seriously should we take those creative truths (Block 2019) about medium and the construction of self and other? Would people even have bothered to write 48

S elf and other in postcolonial B angladesh

with pen and paper what they can easily produce on social media using hand-held devices anytime, anywhere?

Medium debates in Bangladesh English-medium schools have attracted critical social attention in Bangladesh mainly on economic, social, and cultural grounds. While mainstream Bangla-medium education is attended by students from all social classes, English-medium schools are meant for the wealthy. The high school fees and education facilities of many of these schools are in stark contrast to those in the mainstream system, except for elite Bangla-medium private schools. The remarkable cultural differences can be related to the Western curriculum with limited presence of local language, culture, and history, and the lifestyles of students and their families (Hamid and Jahan 2015). These features of English-medium education have socially isolated Englishmedium students and their families from the Bangla-dominant mainstream society. The Bangla-educated general public is critical of an elite subculture in a nation that is believed to have been created to pursue common social goals ensuring equality and justice for all. Members of mainstream society see a connection between the medium in which elites study and who elites are. Medium can become a proxy for identity. Medium debates have been recorded in Bangladeshi public media since the early 1990s (Hamid and Jahan 2015). While they are generally dormant, they can be activated or intensified by specific incidents. For example, February is the national language month in Bangladesh. During this month, a lot of media attention is given to Bangla, the history of the Bangla language movement, and the UN recognition of February 21, Bangladesh’s Language Martyrs’ Day, as the International Mother Language Day. The public display of love for and loyalty to Bangla during this month is an opportunity to speak against English and English-medium education. Politically incorrect language choices by individuals or institutions may also trigger Banglamedium – English-medium debates.

Data sources and analytical procedures The data for this study consist of Facebook posts written by self-­confirmed Bangla-medium/English-medium students. Facebook falls under the umbrella genre of social media that communicate ordinary and everyday life and mediate everyday communication through the Internet (boyd 2008; Lüders 2008; Lomborg 2011, 2013). Social media contrast with mass media in that they are distinctly projected for interpersonal communication and personalized expression of ordinary users (Lüders 2008). Social media accommodate user-generated content, as users are “producers” who “facilitate not only classic broadcasting (e.g., TV, radio, newspaper) through one-to-many 49

I ffat J ahan and M . O baidul H amid

communication, but also one-on-one and many-to-many forms of communication, thus implying a more distributed agency” (Lomborg 2011, 57). Facebook also helps extract and illustrate authentic voices, attitudes, and perceptions that are absent from traditional genres because of their unique filtering features. The posts constituting the dataset were sourced from a Facebook forum entitled “English Medium Students vs Bangla Medium Students.”1 The forum started its journey on June 28, 2009 and it was active until November 28, 2012. It still exists on Facebook but there have been no posts since 2012. Although there were over 900 members in the early days, as of October  2020, it has eighty-six members who are from both English-medium and Bangla-medium education backgrounds. However, occasionally nonmembers also contributed, as this was an open forum. The forum sought to establish the superiority of Bangla-medium and/or English-medium education and of those affiliated with Bangla-medium/English-medium ­education. The members are mostly young males. Only five female participants are identifiable and, of them, only a couple actively contributed posts. The members’ age ranges are identifiable from their Facebook profiles and from the choice of typical topics for this age group such as romance, sex, and friendship (or animosity). In addition, the participants themselves claimed that they were going to/had just finished either Bangla-medium or Englishmedium schools at the time of their contribution to the forum. There were three members with admin/moderation capacity. Although they occasionally blocked a few posts and cancelled one membership, these gatekeeping practices were not significant. Out of a total of 1,500 posts in the forum, we selected 903 for their relevance to the construction of self- and other-identity. We labeled each post based on the identity of their authors: “BM” for posts authored by the Bangla-medium-educated, “EM” for posts by the English-medium-­educated, and “NK” (not known) for posts whose authors either chose not to identify with any group or identified with both since they had gone to both Banglamedium and English-medium institutions at different stages of their student careers. We then numbered each post for ease of reference, such as BMn, EMn, and NKn. The Bangla-medium-educated contributed 499 posts, the English-medium-educated 400 posts, and the NK 54 posts. All references to the data presented in this chapter are the result of this labeling process. After labeling, we read the posts repeatedly and searched for ideas or themes that were used as markers of social class identity for self and other. We used Van Dijk’s (1988, 2006) framework of discursive structure, which examines properties of text, taking into account its structural and semantic characteristics for theme generation. The framework shows hierarchical construction of meanings in which global and local meanings complement each other. It draws on an analytical distinction between semantic macrostructures and microstructures (see Aj-Hejin 2015). The former refer to 50

S elf and other in postcolonial B angladesh

themes or topics belonging to “the global or macro level of discourse” (Van Dijk 1988, 31), while the latter refer to linguistic elements. Social class appeared as a complex identity feature in the data, which was associated with multiple markers including affluence, affordability, morality, decency, taste, presentability, gender, and sexuality. Although there is overlap, we illustrate five of these identity markers/themes reflecting the macrostructures of the social class identity discourse.

Analysis and findings Our analysis of each identity marker points to self- and other-identity. Selfidentity is given a positive representation in the data while the identity of other is given a negative representation. The data reflect the dominance of interactive identity. In other words, rather than seeking to establish self-identity, both groups were more occupied with representing their other in a negative way. Wealth and affluence Socioeconomic indicators such as occupation, income, and capital are foundational markers of class identity. Not surprisingly, these markers were used by the Bangla-medium-educated and the English-medium-educated, turning the Bangla-medium  – English-medium debates into one essentially between privilege and denial (Hamid and Jahan 2015). The Englishmedium-­educated seemed to be aware of their wealth and higher social status, as indicated by EM98:

Example 1 Da [The] fellow students of all english medium skuls [schools] are 4rm aristocratic families (EM98) The data indicate a perception that the English-medium-educated were from affluent social classes while the Bangla-medium-educated from more modest social strata. This socioeconomic divide is part of the established social discourses. In broad terms, while the Bangla-medium-educated accused the English-medium-educated of having disproportionate wealth  – as if their wealth were their crime  – the English-medium-educated highlighted the Bangla-medium-educated members’ alleged destitution, which, in their views, correlated with tastes and behaviors. The Bangla-medium-educated noted that the English-medium-educated were obtrusively rich, manifested by their lavish expenses in education, not just in terms of school fees but also stationery used. As BM531 pointed out: 51

I ffat J ahan and M . O baidul H amid

Example 2 EM a tmra ja khata pencil kinte khoroch koro.ta diya ai desh ar 60% family ar pura bochor ar khoroch cholto. BM ar onk stdnt e khata r bodol a paper a likhe ssc r hsc te gpa 5 pay. [In EM, the amount of money that you spend on pencils and writing books would have been sufficient for all expenses of 60% family in this country. BM students use paper instead of writing books but they obtain GPA 5 in the secondary school and higher secondary certificate exams.] (BM531) The acknowledgment of wealth and affluence sought to indicate that ­English-medium students had a lower level of academic achievement in proportion to financial investment, compared to investment in Bangla-medium education. Such an assertion is controversial because lower level of academic achievement, particularly in terms of English proficiency, is usually associated with Bangla-medium education. For example, while English proficiency was not an issue for the English-medium-educated, it was a national concern for the Bangla-medium-educated (Jahan and Hamid 2019). As EM147 commented on the English spoken by them and the typical Banglamedium accent:

Example 3 bangla medium [. . .] ki j english koy hunle ja hashi ashe ar vai ak ak tar accent ki re pura matha noshto koira daowar moto . . . lolz [The kind of English spoken by the Bangla-medium people will make you burst out in laughter. In particular, if you think of their accents, it is almost like going crazy . . . lolz.] (EM147) The Bangla-medium-educated also followed another line of argument to construct the identity of the English-medium-educated with reference to wealth:

Example 4 E.M. r nuthing [nothing] widout [without] their DADDY’S MONEY$$$$$. (BM110) It is noted that English-medium-educated members were rich due to family inheritance. This may be linked to the traditional discourse of elitism that 52

S elf and other in postcolonial B angladesh

is based on unearned privilege (Khan 2011). It is further noted that the families of the English-medium-educated attained their wealth by corrupt means:

Example 5 tora to boro lok hobi . . . toder baap ra duurniti kore tk kamay . . . tahole tora hobi na to ki amra hobo???amar baap army person nd ma banker . . . tor baap maa ar moto nyt club a nacha nachi kore na [Who else will be rich other than you, when your dads earn money by engaging in corrupt activities . . . then won’t you be rich rather than us??? My dad is an army person and my mom is a banker . . . unlike your parents they don’t visit nightclubs to dance.] (BM563) A clear contrast is established between the English-medium- and Banglamedium-educated based on wealth. As Bangla-medium-educated members argued, their parents were honest and so were not as rich as the parents of the English-medium-educated. It is also noted that the parents of the Bangla-medium-educated did not engage in the practice of going to nightclubs. The “nightclub culture” was not considered part of their understanding of a socially conservative local culture. The view also refers to the language ideological distinction in which medium maps onto morality as well as wealth. The English-medium-educated protested such an identification. It is also claimed that the parents of the English-medium-educated often paid for their dishonest, corrupt, and immoral ways of obtaining wealth. These parents, it is claimed, had to go to jail at least once a year on corruption charges:

Example 6 amra sobai jani j EM ar pola paan ra hoy,,,”““BORO LOK BAAP AR CHOTO LOK POLA”““.  .  . amader baap r[a] struggle kore earn kore . . . tomader baap ar moto churi baatpari or gambling kore earn kore na . . . nd tomader baba ra year a minimum 1bar jail a jay [We all know that EM kids are “rich daddy’s mean kids” . . . our dads struggle to earn, they don’t earn by stealing, deception or gambling . . . and your dads go to jail once a year in the minimum.] (BM553) While corruption is a common problem in Bangladesh, the allegation that the parents of the English-medium-educated landed in jail at least once a year was a fictional representation. 53

I ffat J ahan and M . O baidul H amid

The wealth of the English-medium-educated was not denied, but some Bangla-medium-educated members also represented themselves as rich. For example, BM529 noted:

Example 7 tk amader ja asay tumi gontay o parba na ok. [You (the EM) can’t even finish counting all the money that we have.] (BM529) This representation may be uncontroversial because Bangla-medium schools are attended by children from all social strata. It is likely that some families of the Bangla-medium-educated will be very rich. However, it is Englishmedium education, as previously noted, which has traditionally been associated with affluence and elitism. As the higher social status of the English-medium-educated was already established in society, the English-medium members did not have to defend their identity on this ground. Therefore, they were found to be more occupied with ascribing lower-class identity to the Bangla-medium-educated, which has manifold implications:

Example 8 to all BM students out dere . . . u all suck big tym jst as much as ur fokirini skuls . . . u all masterbate thnkin of ur kamerbetis . . . sum of u are in luv wid rickshawalas . . . u fuckin Faggots . . . Hijrar dol . . . fokirni pola ra fokirnir moto thako . . . beshi bairo na . . . bostir polapin tora  .  .  . homosexual freaks  .  .  . darwan re chudos. . . .[To all BM students out there, you all suck big time just as much as your beggar schools  .  .  .  you all masturbate thinking of your maidservants . . . some of you are in love with rickshaw pullers . . . you fucking faggots, you group of intersex . . . beggar’s child, act like beggar  .  .  .  don’t you try to be smart  .  .  .  you are all from slum . . . homosexual freaks . . . you fuck your security guards.] (EM151, emphases added) As Example 8 illustrates, the English-medium-educated sought to represent the Bangla-medium-educated as “beggars” (having no money), who lived in “slums” (meant for homeless people) and had sexual relationships with low-income people such as “maidservants,” “rickshaw pullers,” and “security guards.” These occupations are linked to modest income and are suggestive of lower social class. Non-normative sexual orientations such as homosexuality and intersexuality are equated with this social class and 54

S elf and other in postcolonial B angladesh

are imposed on the other. The morality imposed on working-class lifestyles shows an interesting contrast to the invocation of the nightclub culture previously mentioned. The imposition suggests how sexual orientations and behaviors are represented to have an economic dimension and are considered markers of class identity. Negative attitudes toward non-conventional sexualities, prevalent in both groups’ posts, reflect existing social norms and expectations that acknowledge heterosexuality denouncing other sexual orientations. This is why non-recognized sexualities serve as swear words in the debates. Consumerism Wealth and affluence are related to purchasing power, which, in turn, is related to consumerism. Consumption is a manifestation of class and identity (Reeves 2019). Not surprisingly, the Bangla medium  – English medium discursive battles relied on consumerism for identity construction for self and other. As a reflection of their young age, many of the Bangla-medium- and the English-medium-educated are digital natives. Thus, electronic gadgets and other digital devices are unsurprising consumer goods in their discourses. Expectedly, this is linked to wealth and purchasing power. Both groups talked about digital devices as part of consumerism. For example, EM551 in Example 9 highlighted the limited purchasing power of the Bangla-medium-educated who could not afford to buy high quality mobile phones. This purchasing power is linked to employability and income of Bangla-medium graduates. It is pointed out that graduating from a Bangla-medium institution means that the Bangla-medium-educated will only qualify for jobs earning around 20,000 Taka (US $240) as a monthly salary. Because they cannot afford to spend the whole month’s salary on a phone, they have to be satisfied with cheap phones.

Example 9 Nokia r I Phone t por Ericsson best so set baje karon BD te je nokol Chinese gula anae ai karona jeigola 20 tousand ache oigula kino oigula faltu lagbe na I  guarantee o sorry kinte parbna na BM te pass korle 20 thousand to salary paba akta job a at best so taila akta set kinta gia tmr pora salary noshto hoya jabe!!! hahahahaahah lame people!! [(Talking about buying mobile phones) Nokia and I-Phone and then Ericsson are the best . . . but because Bangladesh imports fake Chinese phone sets, the cheap ones are not good. Buy the ones that cost 20 thousand taka and you will be satisfied I guarantee. O, sorry, you can’t buy? After you pass from BM you will earn 20 thousand per month at best . . . then you will have to 55

I ffat J ahan and M . O baidul H amid

spoil your one month’s salary on one phone set!!! hahahahaahah lame people!!] (EM551) EM551 identified the Bangla-medium-educated with the metaphor of “lame people,” which refers to their financial disability and limited purchasing power. Although there seemed to be a general agreement that the Bangla-mediumeducated had less wealth, the latter also tried to assert their superiority by referring to digital consumption. The debates were enacted between 2009 and 2012, when smart phones were very expensive and only wealthy families would have afforded them. To challenge the English-medium representation of the Bangla-medium-educated on the use of low-cost mobile phones, BM542 ironically noted:

Example 10 amra BM ar polar onek gorib buzcho tai net use kori r tomra to rich ta phone a use koro . . . lolzzzzzz [We BM guys are very poor, so, you know, we use internet [on the phone], while you use phone [only as phone] because you are rich.] (BM542) BM542 denied the limited purchasing power of the Bangla-medium-­ educated by indicating that had they been poor, they could not have bought expensive phones to access the Internet. Therefore, digital devices and Internet access were used as markers of class identity linked to wealth. To the English-medium-educated, however, this was unqualified boasting by the Bangla-medium-educated. It is suggested that the modest socioeconomic condition called for humility and modesty from the Bangla-mediumeducated, not bragging. As EM114 noted:

Example 11 all they wish is to be as cool as us which they can’t never be [can never be]! shala 5tk damer underwear pore aber boro kotha koy! [(slang) while they put on underwear worth 5 taka (i.e., very cheap) they dare to be articulate [against us]!] (EM114) EM114 observed that the Bangla-medium-educated tried to be as cool as the English-medium-educated, but they could never achieve this goal due probably to the different social positions of the Bangla-medium- and the Englishmedium-educated. Using a common Bangladeshi slang expression, “wife’s 56

S elf and other in postcolonial B angladesh

brother,” EM114 noted that it was ridiculous for the Bangla-medium-educated to brag when they were forced to wear underpants worth 15 US cents. Thus, an essentialist relationship between discourse and material power is suggested. The most striking example of Bangla-medium – English-medium consumerism is provided by EM31 who noted:

Example 12 Dude We EM boyz Rule Wid CARz . . . Were BM studnts Rule Wid Ur GORUz n CHAGOLz n [Dude, we EM boys rule with cars . . . where BM students rule with your cows and goats.] (EM31) As illustrated, English-medium students associated themselves with cars while they associated Bangla-medium students with cattle and goats. Such associations are meant to provide clear identity contrasts between the Bangla-medium- and the English-medium-educated: cars stand for modernity, urbanity, luxury, and mobility, while cows and goats symbolize backwardness, rusticity, lack of comfort, and mobility. Even if Bangla-medium students may have been attending schools and universities in cities, they could still be associated with rusticity from an ideological point of view. This category appeared to be more about consumption and purchasing power than geography. Taste and presentability Although both groups identified their other as being devoid of taste and lacking presentability, the English-medium-educated seemed to utilize these markers more effectively than the Bangla-medium-educated. The Bangla-mediumeducated identified the English-medium-educated as “3rd class sorry, classless pola-maya [boys and girls]” (BM255) since they were not considered, in their views, smart or masculine. The Bangla-medium-educated equated taste and presentability with masculinity, such as in the next section where they accused the English-medium-educated of being effeminate (e.g., “girly” or “half-lady”). Moreover, they frequently blamed the English-medium-­educated for using slang to indicate that using slang was an epitome of bad taste. Both groups, however, were generous in their use of slang and swear words. In Example 13, the Bangla-medium-educated indicated that the ­English-medium-educated were repugnant because of their frequent use of slang:

Example 13 em toder gali marte iccha kortasa but kan kori na janos coz gali amar kase req korse r bollo vai amader opoman koiran na . . . ora 57

I ffat J ahan and M . O baidul H amid

to amader khoar joggo na . . . dak tora gali o toder nia opoman bodh kore. . . [EM, I feel like using slang for you, but do you know, why I don’t? Slang has requested me not to bestow them on you since that would be an insult for them  .  .  .  see even slangs feel insulted to be with you.] (BM361) Interestingly, slang is personified and that personification is used to demean the identity of the English-medium-educated. BM361 stated that based on his interaction with “Slang,” the person, “Slang” refused to be associated with the English-medium-educated because the latter were even worse than “slangs” (a category of person). BM361 asserted that this was the reason for his reluctance to use slang, although they kept using it in the debates. The Bangla-medium-educated argued that use of slang by the Englishmedium-educated was part of an alien culture that was polluting the ­mainstream culture:

Example 14 of course e.m guyz r da best. dey r da best in filling up deir empty boneheadz wid slangz, dey r da bst in polluting our culture, in making lousy gangz such as venum, dlr, bluez etc. [Of course EM guys are the best. They are the best in filling up their empty boneheads with slangs. They are the best in polluting our culture, in making lousy gangs (musical bands) such as Venom, DLR, Blues etc.] (BM122) BM122 refers to band music, which is another major interest of Bangladeshi youths, as elsewhere in the world. Band groups have been formed by both Bangla-medium- and English-medium-educated singers. However, the Bangla-medium-educated suggested that English-medium-educated singers were “lousy gangs” who did not have cultural taste. Thus, there is an invocation of the moral element in the representation. BM122 asserted that the English-medium-educated were only good at using slang, a strategy that the English-medium-educated also used to construct the identity of the Bangla-medium-educated. The English-medium-educated were more assertive in identifying the Bangla-medium-educated as being devoid of taste and presentability. They generalized the Bangla-medium-educated as stinky “rotten eggs” and “so cheap . . . so nasty” (EM748) to imply that the Bangla-medium-educated could not be considered presentable. They referred to the weakest trait of the Bangla-medium-educated, their English proficiency (Jahan and Hamid 2019). It is suggested that the English language accent and pronunciation of 58

S elf and other in postcolonial B angladesh

the Bangla-medium-educated was an unfailing marker of their lack of taste and presentability.

Example 15 nd u talkin abt presentation??? dnt get me evn started on dat . . . bangla med er pronounciation shune kukurer chilani ta aro bhalo. [and you talking about presentation??? Don’t even get me started on that  .  .  .  Bangla medium students’ pronunciation seems even worse than dogs’ growl.] (EM710) The comparison of the English pronunciation of the Bangla-medium-­ educated with a dog’s barking indicates a lack of presentability. The comparison also invokes the symbolic notion of impurity as dogs in Bangladesh are generally treated as stray animals found in dirty places. Both groups frequently animalized their other through comparison with dogs and other animals such as, monkeys, cows, crows, lizards, and rats. These references were used to refer to betrayal, pollution, infection, hypocrisy, pretension, and alienation. The English-medium-educated identified the Bangla-medium-educated as “slum dwellers”, as previously noted, and associated their lack of taste with lifestyle and affordability:

Example 16 B.M = BNP (bostir nangta polapain) [naked slum kids] [. . .] dey [they] are all lame ass faggots . . . bostir theike uitha ashche [all rising up from slums] (EM119) The Bangla-medium-educated are labeled khat “unsmart, rustic, naive, and awkward” (see Sultana in press), an expression developed by urban youth to other a particular lifestyle and endow this lifestyle with a particular class identity relating to unsophistication, rusticity, lack of culture, manner, and polish, all indicative of a problematized social group:

Example 17 BM ra sudhu chele bele marte pare sudhu aita te ora valo r baki shob a BMK (Bangla medium is khat). [BMs are able only to physically assault people; they are good at only this activity. In all other activities, they are BMK (Bangla medium is khat).] (EM504) 59

I ffat J ahan and M . O baidul H amid

It is pointed out that the only thing the Bangla-medium-educated were good at was committing violence and assaulting others. This may be an identification of the Bangla-medium-educated with the student wings of the major political parties in the country, particularly the student members of the party that has occupied power controversially since 2009. These student members are found to be involved in assaulting, abducting, raping, and killing (Dhaka Tribune 2019). It is asserted that except for harming others, the Bangla-medium-educated were khat in all other instances. This is emphasized by the use of the acronym BMK, which stands for “Bangla-Medium Khat” (see Sultana in press). Tanu’s (2014) research with students in Englishmedium international schools in Indonesia documented a comparable Indonesian concept used for local vernacular-medium students called norak “uncivilized, unrefined, vulgar, and tacky” (595). Thus, khat, like norak, becomes a “proxy” for low taste and lack of presentability (Suleiman 2006). Masculinity Both groups considered masculinity as the norm, a desirable identity trait, and femininity as something to be avoided. One reason for this preference may be related to male dominance of the forum (see also Sultana 2019), turning it into a “manosphere” with limited female participation. Not many female students either from a Bangla-medium or English-medium background would be comfortable using slang or talking about crudeness related to sexuality. If the English-medium-educated dominated the use of taste and presentability, the Bangla-medium-educated seemed to be more dominant in the use of masculinity. To indicate their other’s inferiority, the Bangla-medium-educated recurrently identified the English-medium-educated as maigga “girly,” “halflady,” hijra “intersex,” and farmer murgi “chicks raised on a farm.” These are common metaphors used in medium debates in social media (Sultana 2019). Specifically, the metaphor of “farm chickens” has become established in popular social discourses. Children growing up in Dhaka, in particular, have very limited experience of rural life and society. Their everyday life revolves around a few known destinations such as home, school, tutors’ house(s), select restaurants, and shopping malls. This may be seen as feminine in a traditional agrarian society that has valued hard work, struggle, and adventure. Therefore, masculinity is used as a parameter of identity, and, accordingly, the self is presented as masculine while the other is represented as its opposite. The specific meaning that is emphasized by the Bangla-medium-educated through this comparison is that the Englishmedium-educated were weaker, having less sexual prowess and vigor. Branding the English-medium-educated male members as hijra “intersex,” a Bangla expression that signifies lack of masculinity, the Bangla-educated suggested that the female members of the English-medium group should 60

S elf and other in postcolonial B angladesh

invite the Bangla-medium male members – or even cats and dogs (another instance of animalization) – to satisfy their sexual desire:

Example 18 ao ao ao ao ao ao ao ao, English mediumer hijra gulare dekhle mone hoe bap ma ki khayaia poida disilo???jai hok english mediumer maia gular jonno dukhkho hoe.hijraar dol!!! [Looking at the people in English medium, I wonder what their parents had to provide themselves with, that they gave birth to such intersexes!!! Anyway, I feel bad for English medium girls!!] (BM96) The Bangla-medium-educated questioned the birth of the English-mediumeducated as a way of making sense of the ascribed identity of lacking manliness. It is also pointed out that they felt pity for the female English-medium members who, it is implied, were destined to live an unhappy sexual life with their English-medium-educated partners who lacked manliness. Thus, the Bangla-medium – English-medium divide is taken to the realm of romance and the dating market to suggest that the English-medium-educated choose their sexual partners from the English-medium-educated while the Banglamedium-educated from the Bangla-medium-educated. Medium is thus associated with love and sexual relationships, an association substantiated by Sandhu’s (2016) research in India which put forward language background (Hindi or English) as one of the criteria for selecting marriage partners (see Chapter 8). The English-medium-educated protested such identification by the Bangla-medium-educated and reasserted their masculine identity:

Example 19 B.M er student B.M er moto thak na . . . dnt try to compete wid us man . . . ur nt in our league . . . xcept dat fact . . . u sons of bitches . . . half lady togo bap, togo ma ar togo choddo gusti . . . amra na . . . we are guyz. . . [BM students, act like BM . . . don’t try to compete with us, man!!! you are not in our league . . . accept that fact . . . you sons of bitches . . . half lady is your dad, your mom and your ancestors up to 14 generations back, not us . . . we are guys.] (EM120) It is argued that the English-medium-educated were manly enough, and that there were no issues regarding their masculinity. Using an imported slang, “sons of bitches,” to address the Bangla-medium-educated, it is pointed out that it is actually the Bangla-medium-educated and their past fourteen 61

I ffat J ahan and M . O baidul H amid

generations who might have been “girly” or “half-lady.” A more important point in the extract refers to the suggestion that Bangla-medium-educated should stay like the Bangla-medium-educated and should not try to compete with the English-medium-educated. This may point to the “shitty” divide between the two medium groups and how the English-medium-educated preferred to maintain the status quo, probably in the best interest of both groups. In defending their masculine identity, the English-medium-educated also pointed to a bodily marker of masculinity. In doing this, they questioned whether the Bangla-medium-educated boys possessed testicles. It is suggested that they might not have them, as one might have been left in their mother’s womb while the other might have been fried and eaten by their father. Thus, the feminized identity of the Bangla-medium-educated is linked to their parents. The Bangla-medium-educated were called “faggots” who lived in slums:

Example 20 Shalader bichi ase naki akta toh baap fry kore khay se arekta toh mayer pate thuya aise! Alll little bostir faggots! [(slang) do they have testicles (guts) at all! Their dads fried and ate one and they left another in their mothers’ womb! All little slum faggots!] (EM114) The Bangla-medium-educated are given a lower-class  – almost subhuman – social existence that is world apart from the aristocratic life of the English-medium-educated. Sexuality and sexual behavior This identity attribute is most vulgar in the debates. As some of the posts are very crude, we use more moderate examples to make the point that the self- and other-identity construction utilized this uncommon identity marker in the medium space. The two groups were found to vilify not only their other but also the families of their other. The Bangla-medium-educated were found to target female English-medium members who were represented as, for example, having lost their virginity (before marriage) and contracting sexually transmitted diseases due to, it is implied, sexual promiscuity. As BM2 noted:

Example 21 ENGLISH MEDIUM Girls Sob – – HIB+ – – – Kono Virgin ny. . . [English medium girls are all HIB+, none of them are virgins.] (BM2)

62

S elf and other in postcolonial B angladesh

HIB should be read as HIV. Noteworthy is the generalization that is indicated by the Bangla word “sob,” meaning all were HIV positive. This is followed by a logical assertion that none of them were virgins. While the male Bangla-medium members identified the self with manliness and sexual adventure, they had different expectations of the Englishmedium members, in general, and the English-medium females, in particular. It is suggested that while maintaining virginity in youth (prenuptial age) was the norm for the female other, its opposite was the norm for the male self. Thus, the English-medium-educated female members were the subject of double-othering: they were English-medium-educated and females. This stance of the Bangla-medium-educated points to the essentialist nature of identity construction in medium debates (Bucholtz and Hall 2004). What is permissible for the self may not be so for the other. This is also demonstrated in our previous research that showed that while foreign migration of the Bangla-medium-educated was not presumed to affect their national identity, it was seen as making the English-medium-educated less Bangladeshi (Hamid and Jahan 2015). This feminization of the elite may be linked to the association of English with an upper-class feminine sexuality during British rule (see Chandra 2012). The Bangla-medium-educated male members advised that the Englishmedium female members should consider them as their sexual partners because the English-medium “boys” were sexually incompetent, as previously mentioned. This can be read as an invitation to pre-marital sexual acts that may potentially lead to the loss of virginity and the contraction of HIV. However, implicitly, the Bangla-medium-educated might have represented themselves as being immune from both the disease and the loss of virginity – showing double standards. The English-medium members were also adept at imposing negative sexuality on their other and the latter’s family members. They recurrently identified their other as “gay,” meaning sexually incompetent and bisexual:

Example 22 Prothome Bichi bana Bm er polpain tar por asis tor bichi kayte tor bf er hatey dhoray dimu! FUKCEN GAYS! [First grow your testicles, then come to us, BM guys, you fucking gays!] (EM54) EM54 invited the members to grow testicles in the first place, meaning that, as previously mentioned, they were lacking in their masculinity. Bangla-medium members were also identified as gays, who were represented as having sexual relationships with their male teachers, as noted by EM121.

63

I ffat J ahan and M . O baidul H amid

Example 23 togo teacher togo re punishment hishebei definitely togo bicchi kaita falaise . . . cuz tora tik moto blowjob dite paros nai . . . bt BM ppl, dnt be jealous of us cuz we hav balls nd u dnt [Your teachers definitely took out your testicles as punishment because you could not give them blowjob satisfactorily; but BM people, don’t be jealous of us because we have balls and you don’t.] (EM121) The debates turned most vulgar when both Bangla-medium and Englishmedium members narrated funny fictionalized accounts of sexual adventures in which they slept with members of the families, including the mothers, of their other. The level of obscenity in these fictionalized sexual activities indicates no sense of decency, respect, and decorum. Importantly, both groups were found to impose obscenity on family members, teachers, and schools, going beyond their immediate other. While the members of the forum would have understood that these were all fictional representations, what motivated them to engage in such representations and how such practices were related to medium remains an open question.

Discussion and conclusion Based on our analysis of the Facebook posts, we identified five sets of identity markers including wealth and affluence, consumerism, taste and presentability, masculinity, and sexuality and sexual behavior used by the two groups. Considering medium debates as class debates (Jahan and Hamid 2019), the deployment of the first three sets of markers can be justified by referring to our understanding of social class. However, the last two sets of markers are unconventional, as their links to class may not be direct or obvious. Noteworthy in our analysis is the ideological potential of the debates. While, as language ideologies, medium debates are expected to refer to questions beyond language, it may not be a case of random association of aspects of language and those of society or materiality. Although the semiotic or indexical relationship is enabled by the context, some form of conventionality or logic is expected. As we have demonstrated, the two medium groups referred to many factors under the five major macrostructures that were used as ingredients for identity construction. The discursive space of the debates appeared to be a fertile one in which people could freely propose ideas or phenomena as markers of self- or other-identity (Bucholtz and Hall 2004). We make this point because nobody in the forum ever spoke of parameters for what was acceptable to talk about in the context of language and medium from a semiotic (indexical) point of view. It can be noted that 64

S elf and other in postcolonial B angladesh

class construction in the context of language ideologies may rely on gender and sexuality alongside more traditional markers including capital and consumption. Perhaps more important than topic relevance is the manner in which the debates were carried out. As we pointed out, the posts were characterized by extreme forms of crudeness and vulgarity that were devoid of decency, (ne)tiquette, and respect (see Sultana 2019). Apart from a deliberate departure from facts, truths, or norms and recourse to exaggeration and fictionalization, members of both groups also engaged in vulgarity and sexual fantasizing. The target of the fictionalized sexual adventures was the other, their family members, and teachers. There were no limits to what could be said and how it could be said. Both groups seemed to be guided by the view that the best defense against the verbal onslaught was the verbal offense of a higher degree of crudeness, vulgarity, and fictionalizing. Only occasionally there were mild protests from some members regarding the linguistic immorality (Hamid 2020). Members proposed a discontinuation of the discursive transgression, but this did not occur until 2012, and it is unknown why the members chose to go silent. How can we explain this situation where a group of young and bright minds demonstrated their incapacity to debate language and social issues in a meaningful, decent, and respectful manner? Our previous research on medium debates in Bangladesh enacted in letters to the editor and asynchronous Google groups did not indicate any instance of indecency or disrespect (Hamid and Jahan 2015; Jahan 2016; Jahan and Hamid 2019), not to speak of vulgarity. While exaggerations and other rhetorical strategies were used by both groups to inflate the self and deflate the other, all writers appeared to be on task and discussed questions related to education, society, nation, and citizenship. However, the texts that we have examined in this chapter do not provide any sense of direction, or social and citizenship concerns, guiding the debaters. The social media platform and how it works may account for the evolution of the medium debates in the form documented in this chapter. The absence of gatekeeping may have encouraged transgression at multiple levels. The first is the linguistic level where we can see translanguaging (Canagarajah 2011; García and Li 2014), or the liberal mixing of Bangla and English, as the norm (Sultana 2019). It is hard to find even a few sentences written entirely in English or Bangla. English is of course more dominant, which is illustrated by the use of Roman script, even for Bangla expressions. Importantly, even though members were fiercely debating the question of language – the English-medium-educated taking the side of English and the Bangla-medium-educated of Bangla – the debate becomes pointless when we consider that, regardless of the medium of schooling that they had been exposed to, both groups landed in the same linguistic territory where there were no borders between the respective languages. Such linguistic 65

I ffat J ahan and M . O baidul H amid

transgressions, which have also been researched by Sultana (2014, 2019) in the context of private universities, betray the fundamental identity of the students (Bangla medium or English medium) and the forum (Bangla medium vs. English medium). More notable is the social or moral transgression that can be understood from the members’ discussion of vulgarity and sexual fantasies. The important point to consider here is how medium serves as an entry point to refract larger questions of class, desire, tastes, and sexuality. This transgression can be interpreted as suggesting the need for effective gatekeeping to ensure topic relevance and etiquette in debates, however hateful. But gatekeeping may be critiqued as restrictive by liberal views given its potential for curbing individual freedom. Thus, there is a dilemma where we have to choose between individual freedom and social decency. The platform itself may not be entirely responsible for the kind of linguistic licentiousness and social transgression reported. There are many other forums on Facebook that pursue debates on many issues without necessarily sacrificing linguistic, social, and moral norms and expectations. The genre of the debate itself – in which the self has to establish its superiority over the other – may have significantly incentivized the process. The nature of the debates and the processes of self- and other-identity construction probably suggest the level of division, hatred, and enmity that exists between the two medium groups in Bangladesh. From our lived experiences, the divide is real, and we, as educators, cannot predict how it can be minimized for a harmonious social existence of all curricular and social groups. Despite the intensity of the hatred and animosity reflected in the construction of self- and other-identity, the debates also heavily relied on fictional representation. In fact, the discursive representation makes it impossible to draw boundaries between truth, falsehood, opinion, and fiction. The members themselves would have understood that this was only a theoretical battle. This raises the question of how seriously we should take the debates and self- and other-identity construction. While this may be an empirical question demanding engagement with the two groups to understand their perspectives, the divisiveness of Bangladeshi society along linguistic/curricular (Bangla medium and English medium) and material/social/cultural/political dimensions needs to be highlighted. The divide is so strong and pervasive that it invokes strong emotions in relation to questions of language, culture, nationalism, and social class and an acute sense of inequality and injustice. Such emotions may culminate in an overpowering hatred that looks for unfiltered avenues for free expressions without linguistic, social, or moral norms and boundaries. Facebook may have provided this free space for playing the discursive game of hatred in a transgressive manner, linguistically, socially, and morally. 66

S elf and other in postcolonial B angladesh

Acknowledgments We would like to thank the reviewers of the chapter and the editors, Chaise LaDousa and Christina P. Davis, for their helpful comments, feedback, and support. All errors are our own.

Note 1 facebook.com/groups/96104586447 (accessed December 5, 2020).

References Aj-Hejin, Bandar. 2015. “Covering Muslim Women: Semantic Macrostructures in BBC News.” Discourse & Communication 9 (1): 19–46. Bennett, Tony, David Carter, Modesto Gayo, Michelle Kelly, and Greg Noble, eds. 2020. Fields, Capitals, Habitus: Australian Culture, Inequalities and Social Divisions. London: Routledge. Block, David. 2018. Political Economy and Sociolinguistics: Neoliberalism, Inequality and Social Class. London: Bloomsbury. ——— 2019. Post-Truth and Political Discourse. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan. Blommaert, Jan, ed. 1999. Language Ideological Debates. New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1986. “The Forms of Capital.” In Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education, edited by John Richardson, 241–58. New York: Greenwood Press. Bowles, Hugo, and Amanda C. Murphy, eds. 2020. English-Medium Instruction and the Internationalization of Universities. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan. boyd, danah. 2008. “Facebook’s Privacy Trainwreck: Exposure, Invasion, and Social Convergence.” The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 14 (1): 13–20. Bucholtz, Mary, and Kira Hall. 2004. “Language and Identity.” In A Companion to Linguistic Anthropology, edited by Alessandro Duranti, 369–94. London: Blackwell Publishing. Canagarajah, A. Suresh. 2011. “Translanguaging in the Classroom: Emerging Issues for Research and Pedagogy.” In Applied Linguistics Review 2, edited by Li Wei, 1–28. New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Chandra, Shefali. 2012. The Sexual Life of English: Languages of Caste and Desire in Colonial India. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Chidsey, Megan. 2018. “The Language Medium ‘Divide’: Ideologies of HindiEnglish Use at Four All-Girls’ ‘Public Schools’ in North India.” Special issue, International Journal of the Sociology of Language 253: 27–53. Connell, Raewyn W. 2007. Southern Theory: The Global Dynamics of Knowledge in Social Science. Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin. David, Maya K., and W. Y. M. Tien. 2009. “Conceptualisation of Nationalism through Language  – an Analysis of Malaysian Situation.” Language in India 9 (1): 303–16.

67

I ffat J ahan and M . O baidul H amid

Davies, Bronwyn, and Tom Harre, T. 1990. “Positioning: The Discursive Production of Selves.” Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 20 (1): 43–63. Dearden, Julie. 2014. English as a Medium of Instruction – a Growing Global Phenomenon: Phase 1 Interim Report. London: British Council. Desai, Zubeida. 2016. “Learning through the Medium of English in Multilingual South Africa: Enabling or Disabling Learners from Low Income Contexts?” Comparative Education 52 (3): 343–58. Dhaka Tribune. 2019. “The Brand of Shame that is Chhatra League.” Dhaka Tribune, October 10. Accessed December 4, 2020. www.dhakatribune.com. Endow, Tanuka. 2015. “English-Medium Low-Cost Private Schools: How Are the Children Learning?” Indian Journal of Human Development 9 (2): 261–68. ——— 2018. “Inferior Outcomes: Learning in Low-Cost English-Medium Private Schools  – a Survey in Delhi and National Capital Region.” Indian Journal of Human Development 12 (1): 1–19. Evans, Stephen. 2002. “Macaulay’s Minute Revisited: Colonial Language Policy in Nineteenth-century India.” Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 23 (4): 260–81. Gal, Susan, and Judith T. Irvine. 1995. “The Boundaries of Languages and Disciplines: How Ideologies Construct Differences.” Social Research 62 (4): 967–1001. García, Ofelia, and Wei Li. 2014. Translanguaging: Language, Bilingualism and Education. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan. Hamid, Obaidul M. 2020. “The Rising Scourge of Linguistic Corruption in Bangladesh.” South Asia Journal, September 16. Accessed December 4, 2020. http:// southasiajournal.net/the-rising-scourge-of-linguistic-corruption-in-bangladesh/ Hamid, Obaidul M., and Richard B. Baldauf Jr. 2014. “Public-Private Domain Distinction as an Aspect of LPP Frameworks: A  Case Study of Bangladesh.” Language Problems & Language Planning 38 (2): 192–210. Hamid, Obaidul M., and Iffat Jahan. 2015. “Language, Identity and Social Divides: Medium of Instruction Debates in Bangladeshi Print Media.” Comparative Education Review 59 (1): 75–101. ——— 2020. “Beneficiary Voices in ELT Development Aid: Ethics, Epistemology and Politics.” Language Policy. link.springer.com/article/10.1007/ s10993-020-09559-9 Hanks, William. F. 1999. “Indexicality.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 9 (1–2): 124–26. Jahan, Iffat. 2016. “Medium of Instruction and the Discourses of “Self” and “Other” in Print and Social Media in Bangladesh.” PhD diss., The University of Queensland. Jahan, Iffat, and M. Obaidul Hamid. 2019. “English as a Medium of Instruction and the Discursive Construction of Elite Identity.” Journal of Sociolinguistics 23: 386–408. Kalpokas, Ignus. 2019. A Political Theory of Post-Truth. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan. Khan, Shamus R. 2011. Privilege: The Making of an Adolescent Elite at St Paul’s School. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. LaDousa, Chaise. 2014. Hindi Is Our Ground, English Is Our Sky: Education, Language, and Social Class in Contemporary India. New York: Berghahn Books.

68

S elf and other in postcolonial B angladesh

LaDousa, Chaise, and Christina P. Davis. 2018. “Introduction: Language and Schooling in India and Sri Lanka: Language Medium Matters.” Special Issue, International Journal of the Sociology of Language 253: 1–26. Lomborg, Stine. 2011. “Social Media as Communicative Genres.” Mediekultur: Journal of Media and Communication Research 27 (51): 55–71. ——— 2013. Social Media, Social Genres: Making Sense of the Ordinary. London: Routledge. Lüders, Marika. 2008. “Conceptualizing Personal Media.” New Media & Society 10 (5): 683–702. Macaro, Ernest. 2018. English Medium Instruction. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Mallinson, Christine. 2007. “Social Class, Social Status and Stratification: Revisiting Familiar Concepts in Sociolinguistics.” University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 13 (2): 149–63. Nandy, Ashis. 1983. The Intimate Enemy: The Loss and Recovery of Self under Colonialism. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Pennycook, Alastair. 2007. “ELT and Colonialism.” In International Handbook of English Language Teaching, edited by J. Cummins and C. Davison, 14–24. New York: Springer. Pennycook, Alastair, and Sinfree Makoni. 2019. Innovations and Challenges in Applied Linguistics from the Global South. New York: Routledge. Piller, Ingrid, and JinHyun Cho. 2013. “Neoliberalism as Language Policy.” Language in Society 42: 23–44. Ramanathan, Vaidehi. 2005. The English-Vernacular Divide: Postcolonial Language Politics and Practice. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters. Rampton, Ben. 2010. “Social Class and Sociolinguistics.” Applied Linguistics Review 1: 1–22. Reeves, Aaron. 2019. “How Class Identities Shape Highbrow Consumption: A  Cross-National Analysis of 30 European Countries and Regions.” Poetics. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.poetic.2019.04.002 Reyes, Angela. 2017. “Inventing Postcolonial Elites: Race, Language, Mix, Excess.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 27 (2): 210–31. Rosa, Jonathan, and Christa Burdick. 2017. “Language Ideologies.” In The Oxford Handbook of Language and Society, edited by Ofelia García, Nelson Flores, and Massimiliano Spotti, 103–24. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Said, Edward. 1978. Orientalism. New York: Pantheon. Sandhu, Priti. 2016. Professional Identity Constructions of Indian Women. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Suleiman, Yasir. 2006. “Constructing Languages, Constructing National Identities.” In Sociolinguistics of Identity, edited by Tope Ommniyi and Goodith White, 50–74. London: Continuum. Sultana, Shaila. 2014. “Heteroglossia and Identities of Young Adults in Bangladesh.” Linguistics and Education 26: 40–56. ——— 2019. “Language Crossing of Young Adults in Bangladesh.” Journal of Multicultural Discourse 14 (4): 352–72. ——— In press. “ ‘Khaet’ (Hick) vs. ‘Fast’ and the Construction of Others: Educational Background and Identification of University Students in Bangladesh.” In

69

I ffat J ahan and M . O baidul H amid

The Routledge Handbook of English Language Education in Bangladesh, edited by Shaila Sultana, M. Moninoor Roshid, Md. Zulfeqar Haider, Mian Md. Naushaad Kabir, and Mahmud Hasan Khan. London: Routledge. Tanu, Danau. 2014. “Becoming ‘International’: The Cultural Reproduction of the Local Elite at an International School in Indonesia.” South East Asia Research 22 (4): 579–96. Van Dijk, Tuen A. 1988. News Analysis: Case Studies of International and National News in the Press. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. ——— 2006. “Politics, Ideology, and Discourse.” In Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, edited by Keith Brown, 728–40. Boston: Elsevier. Viswanathan, Gauri. 1987. “The Beginnings of English Literary Study in British India.” Oxford Literary Review 9 (1): 2–26. Woolard, Kathryn A. 2021. “Language Ideologies.” In The International Encyclopedia of Linguistic Anthropology, edited by J. M. Stanlaw, 1–21. London: John Wiley & Sons. Wortham, Stanton. 2004. “From Good Student to Outcast: The Emergence of a Classroom Identity.” Ethos 32 (2): 164–87.

70

4 MEDIA OF MEDIUM Language boundaries and multimodal semiotic ecologies in Nepali schools for deaf students Erika Hoffmann-Dilloway

On a warm spring morning in 2005, I joined a stream of students passing through the gates leading to the Central Secondary School for the Deaf in Naxal, Kathmandu. Established in 1966, the Naxal School was the first in Nepal to offer specialized instruction for deaf children. Classes initially prioritized oral methods: teaching students to speak and lip-read Nepali. In 1988, however, the school shifted to primarily sign language-medium instruction due, in part, to the efforts of school graduates who advocated for the use of the far more sensorially accessible Nepali Sign Language (NSL). A  hearing American, I  had been conducting research with Nepali signers since 1997 and had become fluent in NSL. Consequently, I had visited the school many times, sometimes in the company of graduates who I had befriended, sometimes to observe and record classroom sessions. That morning, however, was the first time I had the opportunity to sit down and speak at length with the school’s principal, a hearing woman named Mrs. Indira Shrestha. Shrestha often went abroad in order to learn about pedagogical innovations for deaf education in other countries, her frequent travels being the primary reason why I  had not spent time with her prior to this meeting. On one of these trips, Shrestha had learned about the Total Communication (TC) approach to deaf education. In contrast to an oralist approach, which sought to channel deaf children’s attention solely toward speech, TC encouraged teachers to draw on a wide range of languages and sensory channels, ostensibly prioritizing sense-making over insistence on the use of narrowly defined codes or modalities. Shrestha noted that her adoption of a TC philosophy had made her receptive to deaf signers’ demands that the Naxal School should shift to sign language-medium instruction.

71

E rika H offmann - D illoway

As we chatted over tea in her office that morning, Shrestha discussed her commitment to working with leaders of Nepal’s associations of deaf persons to ensure use of standard NSL signs in the school. However, she also noted with pride that, unlike some of the other schools for deaf children more recently established in the country, her graduates were able to sit for Nepal’s School Leaving Certificate (SLC) exam. This distinction was due to the fact that the Naxal School was recognized by the state as providing Nepalimedium education (which was at that time required by the then Kingdom of Nepal for the SLC). How could the school be both NSL medium and Nepali medium? The term “medium,” when used in reference to schooling in Nepal, typically refers to the named linguistic code said to be primarily employed in instruction. This chapter explores how notions of medium-ascode intersect with another common use of the term in English: the physical channels through which particular semiotic modes are conveyed. There are bilingual-bimodal approaches to deaf education that center use of both a signed and spoken language, carefully demarcating each code (Bagga-Gupta 2000; Humphries and MacDougall 2000). However, in making this claim, Shrestha was referring to the fact that teachers in the Naxal School had come to treat Nepali and NSL as the same language, differentiated primarily by the modality of performance. Indeed, during my visits to the school I had frequently seen teachers (who were predominantly hearing) speaking and signing simultaneously, understanding themselves to be producing one code across two modalities. This was the case in spite of the fact that NSL sentences, as performed by fluent deaf signers, frequently did not map onto spoken Nepali structures, but rather employed spatial grammatical constructions grounded in the manual-visual affordances of signing. This practice is not atypical of TC approaches in other countries, which often prioritize signing based on spoken language structure over the grammars of recognized sign languages (Baker and Knight 1998). At the time of my visit, however, the school’s perspective that NSL could be understood as simply Nepali in a manual medium co-existed with a range of other beliefs about the relationship between Nepali and NSL. For example, NSL had become a language category in Nepal’s 2001 census, which recorded 5,743 “speakers” of the language (Gordon 2005). This number was sufficiently large that linguists at Tribhuvan University, concerned with language endangerment within the country, considered NSL one of Nepal’s relatively safe languages. For the purposes of this survey, any deaf people communicating via visual-manual channels were considered NSL users (irrespective of the details of code) and were generally not listed as Nepali users. From this perspective, modality distinguished NSL and Nepali as different languages. Furthermore, leaders of Nepali deaf associations did not frame NSL as a form of Nepali, but rather argued that NSL should be recognized as a distinct language in both modality and code as the mother tongue of deaf Nepalis. 72

M edia of medium

This framing aligned NSL signers with other marginalized and politically active ethnolinguistic groups in Nepal who were resisting the state’s centering of the Nepali language (reflected in the rules regarding Nepali-medium education as a prerequisite for the SLC exam). The stakes of these disparate framings were highly consequential; during my 2005 visit to the Naxal School, Nepal was embroiled in the Maoist Civil War (1996–2006), driven, in part, by such language politics and the broader forms of social inequality they both reflected and helped produce. Indeed, as LaDousa and Davis (this volume) note, language medium invokes, along with a particular code, associated historical, economic, political, and social distinctions. This chapter investigates how medium in the sense of modality and channel can likewise invoke, or mask, such distinctions. Drawing on long-term ethnographic data and analysis of classroom interactions, I show that differences in how code and mode were related by actors across institutions for deaf persons created slippages between various senses of medium, such that different stakeholders could collapse or sharpen the distinction between Nepali and NSL, with a range of pragmatic effects. In so doing I seek to contribute to the growing literature in linguistic anthropology and applied sociolinguistics that analyzes the practices through which participants work to align diverse multimodal linguistic repertoires in the context of situated interactions (e.g., Bagga-Gupta 2014; Blackledge and Creese 2010; Canagarajah 2011; García 2009; Reynolds 2014). Such work typically sheds light on the ways in which notions of languages as discrete systems participate in the maintenance of social hierarchies. As the material in this chapter suggests, however, blurring such boundaries does not, in and of itself, redress such hierarchy. Rather, the effects of such ideologies are always complexly bound up with other ambient language ideologies and the complexities of sociopolitical and historical context.

Multimodal semiotic ecologies and Nepali deaf education A large body of literature demonstrates that named languages, while frequently understood to be internally homogeneous and discrete, objectively object-like, are, in fact, practices characterized by considerable “internal” variation and overlap across “boundaries” (e.g., Ahmad 2011; García, Otheguy, and Reid 2015; Gumperz 1958; Irvine and Gal 2000; Pennycook and Otsuji 2015).1 Similarly, while modality distinctions are also often treated as objective, scholarship shows that communicative phenomena are always complexly multimodal, and what (aspects of) languages count as being materialized in, for example, written, signed, or spoken modalities can vary within and across contexts (e.g., Bagga-Gupta 2000; Harkness 2017; Hoffmann-Dilloway 2013; Tulbert and Goodwin 2011). The perception and naturalization of both code and mode boundaries are therefore subject to language ideologies, “systems of ideas about social and linguistic 73

E rika H offmann - D illoway

relationships, together with their loading of moral and political interests” (Irvine 1989, 255). Spoken languages are typically ideologically framed as sound based (e.g., Saussure 1986), while signed languages are generally characterized as visual (e.g., Veditz 1912). However, this dichotomy ignores a great deal: the fact that visual modalities, including but not limited to co-speech gesture, facial expression, and writing, are deeply involved in the performance of “spoken” languages (e.g., Gullberg 1998; Kendon 2008; McNeill 1985; Streeck, Goodwin, and Lebaron 2011); the ways in which deaf signers may engage sound as a resource (e.g., Friedner and Helmreich 2012; Tapio 2014); and the overlapping tactile, kinesthetic, and proprioceptive modalities through which both spoken and signed language are produced (Edwards 2014; Goodwin 2017; Hoffmann-Dilloway 2018). Furthermore, language users often draw objects and other aspects of the contextual surround into processes of meaning-making (Goodwin 1991; Kress and Van Leeuwen 2001), extending issues of multimodality beyond the body. Engagement with such resources is always influenced by the ways in which people are socialized to ideologically mediated habits of perception, action, and interpretation (Keane 2018). All of these embodied, material, and interpretive resources are drawn together by social actors in semiotic ecologies (Goodwin 2018; Kusters et al. 2017). Within a given semiotic ecology, particular codes and modalities may be relatively more recognized, demarcated, and prioritized in comparison to others. Further, access to and control over such codes and modalities may be unevenly distributed among participants (e.g., Sharma 2014). Such dynamics are clearly at play in the ethnographic case at hand. Deaf persons’ sensory ecologies differ from those of hearing persons, making spoken languages inaccessible (or significantly less accessible) through audible channels. Linguistic research dating back to the early 1960s (Stokoe 1993) demonstrates that sign languages are a “a visual-spatial mode of communication [that] can express the full complexity of human experience and serve as a vehicle to impart knowledge” (Kisch 2008, 238). Nevertheless, due to the social dominance of spoken languages in many contexts, including Nepal, deaf children are often discouraged from signing and are encouraged to use spoken languages through the other modalities in which they are enacted (e.g., visual mouth movements, the felt sensation of speech production, writing) and/or through technologically enhanced forms of hearing (Goico 2019; Pfister 2017). Kiran Acharya (1997, 1), one of the Naxal school’s first students, writes of his experience during the institution’s oralist era: “in order to suppress our natural tendency to communicate (with signs), the teachers would scold us, hold our hands down, twist our ears, and pull our hair.” As recent literature demonstrates, such approaches to deaf education can lead to a “chronic lack of full access to a natural language during the critical period 74

M edia of medium

of language acquisition (when there is an elevated neurological sensitivity for language development)” (Hall, Leonard, and Anderson 2017, 762; see Humphries et al. 2016; Ochs 1996). Such deprivation can have “life-long effects on language fluency, the development of cognitive and social skills that emerge through interactive language use, access to social roles, and emotional well-being” (Hoffmann-Dilloway and Pfister in press). But though the school discouraged manual communication, by gathering together a critical mass of deaf children, the school ultimately created conditions for the establishment of signing practices and deaf sociality through which NSL could emerge and through which the worst potential effects of language deprivation could be staved off (Acharya 1997; Khanal 2013; Sharma 2003). Indeed, Acharya (1997, 4) notes that during class hours, signs were not used. However, when 1:00 came, the time for tiffin (lunch), students could surreptitiously communicate through visual and gestural modalities. After 4:00 in the afternoon, we were free to talk to each other using signs after leaving school. There was no particular reason to return home early if we did not have to, since we were not able to communicate effectively with our families. So we would gather in a specific place after school to socialize until 7:00 or 8:00 in the evening.”2 NSL is thought to have emerged from the communicative interactions of the first several cohorts of the Naxal school’s students (Acharya 1997; Khanal 2013; Sharma 2003).3 Naxal graduates went on to form clubs or associations, where they socialized via sign language without interference; by 1995, there were eight regional associations and one national one run by and for deaf Nepalis. These institutions, with support from international associations of deaf people, began the work of naming and demanding recognition of NSL. In response to the local dominance of a modernist linguistic monolith language ideological frame (Irvine and Gal 2000; Makoni and Pennycook 2007; Rymes 2014), deaf leaders sought to objectify NSL through the production of NSL dictionaries that could legitimate signing practices as bounded and discrete. The success of this project, as evidenced by the state’s inclusion of NSL as a category in the 2001 census, was impressive, given that deaf leaders were working against entrenched local ideologies that understood signing as nonlanguage (see Graif 2018). That said, as mentioned earlier, recognition of NSL as a distinct language was uneven across institutional contexts. While the Naxal school shifted to sign language-medium instruction in 1988 and began to use the association-produced NSL dictionaries as the primary source of signed lexical items for classroom use in order that graduates be permitted by the state to sit for SLC exams, the Naxal school framed NSL 75

E rika H offmann - D illoway

and Nepali as the same language realized across different mediums, and prioritized signing based on spoken language grammar. Why was Nepali-medium education required by the state in a country in which over half of the population claimed a mother tongue other than Nepali? While the country’s history included shifts of power between monarchs and hereditary prime ministers, since unification under Prithvi Narayan Shah in 1743, the state located its authority in middle hills Hindu cultural symbols, of which the Nepali language was one (Turin 2005; Phyak and Ojha 2019). When statewide educational systems were established, starting in 1951, all classes were required to be taught in Nepali (Skinner and Holland 1996; Taylor 2014). Following the 1990 Jana Andolan (People’s Movement), constitutional reforms were instituted that recognized the right to mother tongue education in primary grades. However, despite this official change, schools continued to primarily educate students in Nepali (and alternatively, English) in part because of requirements regarding the SLC (Gellner 2005). Following the Maoist People’s war, through which the country was transformed from a Hindu kingdom to a secular republic, the 2007 and 2015 postwar iterations of the Constitution have recognized all mother tongues of Nepal, including NSL, as national languages and have insisted that all students have the right to education in their natal language, though medium choices and social hierarchies remain complexly intertwined (e.g., Phyak 2013; Pradan 2019). Furthermore, the 2017 Nepali Rights of Individuals with Disabilities Act guarantees deaf Nepalis the right to use NSL across a range of educational and governmental contexts. However, such legislation does not specify any particulars about what communicative practices “count” as NSL: modality, rather than specifics of code, continues to be the primary determining factor. Nor are there any provisions to ensure that hearing teachers of deaf children are fluent signers. Approximately three quarters of teachers in schools for deaf students are hearing and receive very little training in NSL (Green 2014; Snoddon 2019). Consequently, despite the fact that the Naxal school is no longer obligated to frame themselves as a Nepali-medium institution, signing in Nepali word order while simultaneously speaking Nepali remains the most common mode of teaching by hearing instructors. In the following section, I analyze the multimodal semiotic ecologies at play in such a setting, comparing them to the signing practices of fluent deaf adults.

Classroom interactions across deaf educational institutions NSL lexical items As alluded to in the introduction, even when the Naxal school framed itself as offering Nepali-medium education, Principal Shrestha voiced her 76

M edia of medium

commitment to employing the standardized NSL signs collected in the a­ ssociation-produced dictionaries. Not all hearing instructors in the schools supported this decision, occasionally proposing that they should take the lead in developing signed terminology for specialized subjects. Nepali, rather than NSL, was framed as the appropriate source for such coinages, as hearing teachers held that the former language already had sufficient vocabulary. As Hofer (2020, 100–1) points out, the notion that languages with a greater number of “documented words and signs are better, resonates with ideologies in many other places about the status of the respective languages and their users.” Further, some hearing Naxal teachers proposed modifying NSL signs to make them adhere more closely to equivalent Nepali words. For example, teachers proposed to change the NSL sign “ORGANIZE.” The morphemes in the associated Nepali term, ayojaana, include ayo “to come” and jaana “people.” Hence, teachers suggested replacing the existing sign with a compound sign of the signs “COME” and “PEOPLE.” Another sign some hearing educators saw as problematic was that for the town “KIRTIPUR.” This sign did take the form of a compound sign, the second half derived from the sign “BRIDGE.” This form was an artifact of the school’s early oralist period – when deaf students who were being taught to lip-read mistook the “pur” in Kirtipur (a Sanskrit-derived morpheme referencing fortifications and often a part of city names in South Asia) for pul “bridge,” because the sounds were indistinguishable for lip-readers. While the form of this sign is influenced by Nepali, the fact that it takes an “incorrect” form marks it as deviant from the hearing educators’ perspectives. Despite these objections, hearing teachers in the Naxal schools overwhelmingly used signed lexical items from the standard NSL dictionaries produced by the associations for deaf people. Teachers usually learned these signs via short courses held in the deaf association and taught by adult deaf signers. Having observed many such classes between 1997 and 2017, I provide a representative example of how the standard signs were generally presented to learners, drawing from a 2002 class I video-recorded in Kathmandu. The instructor, Mr. Pradan, was a graduate of the Naxal School and someone widely considered in the deaf associations to be an exemplary NSL signer.4 Each lesson focused on a different chapter or two from the NSL dictionary; on this day, he had chosen an entry focusing on signs for a range of action verbs and adjectives. Having written the Nepali equivalents of the signs on the board in the Devanagari script, Mr. Pradan pointed to each word in turn, modeling the sign forms for the class. Thus, his teaching style involved clustering together and treating as equivalent NSL signs and written Nepali words. Such pairing could be taken to support a range of ideological perspectives about the relationship between the languages. For some this presentation may have bolstered the deaf association’s stance that NSL is a “real” language in that 77

E rika H offmann - D illoway

it was framed as translatable into and thus equivalent with Nepali. However, it may also have been taken to reinforce hearing teachers’ supposition that the lexical items are “the same” language across modalities, a perspective that further supported their practice of basing their signing on Nepali grammar in their classrooms. After Mr. Pradan’s recitation, the students were called in turn to the board to perform each sign, and were corrected on any mistakes in form. Mr. Pradan’s attention in this respect extended beyond monitoring the shape, location, orientation, and movement of the hands to include non-manual aspects of each sign, including those indicating affect. For example, a hearing student named Bina performed the sign for HAPPY with a serious look on her face. Mr. Pradan interrupted her to explain to her that doing so was inappropriate – a smile was necessary to correctly perform the sign. While Mr. Pradan closely attended to some details of form, his introduction of these signs did not include any instruction concerning their deployment in the context of sentences or larger patterns of discourse, though, in practice, both Nepali and NSL modify verbs, often in distinct ways, to reflect concepts such as person and tense. Students were left to glean grammatical rules by observing and modeling their behavior on the signing of their instructors and peers in more conversational contexts or by drawing on their own intuitions. Because hearing teachers of deaf students rarely spent time socializing with deaf adults on completing their training, they almost universally adopted the latter strategy, plugging NSL lexical items into Nepali-derived sentence structures, included signing in subject-objectverb word order and modifying signs with post-fixes rather than employing spatial grammatical constructions. Spatial grammar in deaf social interactions If hearing teachers did routinely spend a significant amount of time with adult deaf signers, what kinds of grammatical constructions might they have observed and absorbed? The repertoires of many deaf signers, particularly those who were trained by hearing teachers, did include signing influenced by Nepali grammar. Such practices are sometimes referred to as “LONG” signing. However, many deaf Nepalis more frequently employed another form of signing, sometimes called “SHORT” signing (Green 2014). The latter did not map onto Nepali grammatical structures but rather took advantage of the affordances of visual-manual modality to employ “diagrammatic” (Bechter 2009) grammatical features. As Green (2014, 37) notes, long and short signing may be framed as “occupying end points on a multi-dimensional continuum” of local signing practice. These labels likely refer to the fact that compared to both speech and diagrammatic signing, it takes longer, temporally, to manually perform 78

M edia of medium

sentences based on spoken language structures. Diagrammatic signing, on the other hand, takes advantage of an affordance of a visual-manual modality: the fact that meaning can be simultaneously encoded across a range of visible articulators, rather than be linearly expressed.5 Such signing also typically assigns points in signing space to referents, such “diagrams” structuring the movement of signs that modify them. These strategies allow complex information to be conveyed rapidly. For example, one afternoon in 2006 I was socializing at the Kathmandu Association of the Deaf when Tenzin unexpectedly walked in. He was a member of the Sherpa ethnic group, known to foreigners as expert mountaineers. His family had established a business leading tourists on treks. We were surprised to see Tenzin this afternoon because we had expected him to be away from Kathmandu leading a group at this time. Sitting down to join us, he explained his early return to the city (see Transcript 1).

Transcript 1: (The top line of each numbered section contains an English gloss of the signing, with parenthetical details about the diagrammatic nature of the signing when relevant. The second line contains an English translation.)   1 FIVE-PEOPLE TOGETHER. (We were leading) five people altogether.   2 ARRANGEMENTS-ALL GOOD, FOREIGNERS GOOD. The arrangements and the foreigners were good (in the sense of “all set”).   3 I-LED (verb form moves from the center of Tenzin’s chest up and to his left, toward his shoulder), WALKED (the verb form continues up the incline established via first sign’s movement). I led (them) as we walked up along the trail.   4 VILLAGE ARRIVE (both signs performed above Tenzin’s left shoulder). We arrived at the village.  5 SNOW MUCH (his hands signing MUCH move around in the area above Tenzin’s shoulder). There was a lot of snow.   6 ENJOY (as Tenzin performs the sign he moves his gaze across the area over his shoulder in which he had signed SNOW). We enjoyed the snow. 79

E rika H offmann - D illoway

  7 LOOK TAKE-PHOTOS (Tenzin twisted his torso to face the area above his left shoulder and performed these verb forms while sliding across that space from left to right). We looked at and photographed the snow.   8 WALKING, SLIPPING-WHILE-WALKING, FAIL (the sign forms move further diagonally up, past Tenzin’s shoulder).   9 MUCH SNOW CHEST-DEEP (the signs MUCH SNOW are performed above Tenzin’s shoulder). 10 RETURN KATHMANDU (the verb form moves from the space above Tenzin’s shoulder back to the center of his chest. KATHMANDU is performed just in front of his chest). We returned to Kathmandu. As Tenzin explained that he and his trekking group had returned to the city early due to excessive snow blocking a mountain pass, he took advantage of the spatial possibilities of signing to modify standard NSL lexical items to convey complex nuance. As his use of signing space moved up and over from his chest to above his shoulder, he created a map or diagram of his group’s route. Once this spatial configuration was established, through eye gaze and body positioning he was able to convey an idea like “we looked at and photographed the snow,” without having to use lexical items of either “we” or “snow.” Rather, by gazing toward the area in space in which he had previously signed “SNOW,” and moving both the signs for “LOOK” and “PHOTOGRAPHED” horizontally through space, the agents (and their pluralization) and the patient of the sentence were efficiently implied. Additionally, when Tenzin signed “RETURN,” this verb form moved from the area near his shoulder that had been assigned to the snowy village and mountain pass, and moved to the front of his chest, where he signed “KATHMANDU.” The direction in which the verb moved made clear that Tenzin had returned from the village to Kathmandu (if the verb form had moved in the opposite direction, it would suggest that the group returned to the pass, perhaps in order to try again). Sign language linguists label this kind of construction, in which movement through signing space marks the verb’s arguments, an “agreeing” or “depicting” verb (Dudis 2004; Padden 1983). As mentioned earlier, while such “SHORT” signing characterizes a great deal of the signing practices employed by deaf adults, hearing teachers almost exclusively use “LONG SIGNING,” the characteristics of which are detailed in the next section. Naxal classroom signing practice To provide an example of hearing teachers’ communicative practices in the Naxal School, I return to the morning in 2005 with which the chapter 80

M edia of medium

opened. After my visit with Principal Shrestha, I spent the day visiting and video-recording classes, starting with a visit to the school’s youngest students. School-going age in Nepal is typically around age 5. For children born deaf, or deafened before acquiring a spoken language, entering this class can be their first sustained exposure to a recognized conventional language. However, most deaf children enter school with experience employing and elaborating on the co-speech gestures used in their community. Kusters and Sahasrabudhe (2018) point out that hearing Indians use a wide range of emblematic gestures when speaking, which deaf persons can draw on in communicating across sensory and linguistic divides; Nepali co-speech gestures offer a similarly rich resource. In some cases, the students’ gestural repertoires can be characterized as homesign systems, more complexly language-like systems that range in complexity and are relatively idiosyncratic, though they often overlap as a result of incorporating conventionalized local gestures. Despite the communicative resources the incoming children may have had, their teachers regarded them as language-less. For example, as I settled in to observe class that morning, the teacher, Miss  Narayan, noted that, “with these children we have to start from scratch.” She then voiced a trope I frequently encountered in discussions of deaf children’s linguistic and social impoverishment: “they come to school not even knowing that people have names!” She then launched into the morning roll call, through which the progress students had made with regard to the concept of naming could be displayed. One by one, Miss Narayan called each of the roughly twenty students to the front of the class. Facing her, each was asked to fingerspell their given name. Finger-spellings are systems of manual signs used to represent the characters of a writing system. The associations of deaf people in Nepal had codified a set of handshapes and movements to designate the characters of the Devanagari syllabary. Such finger-spellings had come to be productively incorporated into NSL signs’ morphology via what are known as initialized signs; lexical items in which the sign’s hand shape is derived from a fingerspelled letter (typically the letter with which the spelling of an associated word in a spoken language begins). For example, name signs (signed alternatives to spoken language names, typically bestowed by deaf peers) often had an initialized component, combined with a feature relating to some distinctive quality of the person named. A curly-haired woman with the given name Kamala, for instance, might receive a name sign constituted by a hand making the shape for the letter “ka” (क) and spiraling out from the side of the head. Linguists have debated the status of finger-spellings as “belonging” to a sign language, spoken/written language, or both simultaneously (e.g., Battison 1978; Liddell and Johnson 1989; Lucas and Valli 1992). Native signers may grow up performing finger-spellings as part of their signing practice 81

E rika H offmann - D illoway

before they realize that, or how in particular, they may be linked to the written form of a spoken language (Padden 1991; Padden and LeMaster 1985). The Naxal teachers, on the other hand, typically treated Devanagari finger-spelling as a form of writing Nepali in a different modality (on the hands rather than via an implement leaving marks on a surface). Thus, for differently situated actors, finger-spelling Nepali words could be experienced as both resemiotization (processes yielding what is interpreted as “the same” or comparable signification across different semiotic systems or codes) and remodalization (processes realizing what is interpreted as “the same” or comparable signification across modalities [see Iedema 2003; Tapio 2014]), or simply as a form of remodalization. After each student finger-spelled their name (students were not permitted to offer name signs in lieu of a full Nepali spelling), Miss Narayan gestured toward a box that contained paper cards on which the students’ names were written out in Devanagari script. The students were to flip through the cards until they located their own name, and then pin their nametag onto a cork board underneath a simple black and white drawing of the school, a way of marking attendance. Once each student had completed this task, the teacher pinned a card with her own name to the board, then addressed the class in simultaneous speech and sign to say, “This is my card. I am Miss and I have come to school today.” She then began a routine of questioning the students, as detailed in Transcript 2 below.

Transcript 2: (The top line of each numbered section contains an English gloss of the manual channel [in capitals], the spoken Nepali channel [in italics], and an English translation. Points at which the manual and spoken channels diverge are marked in bold.) 1 WE PL SCHOOL GO WHAT DO? Haamiharu school maa gayera ke garne? Having gone to school what do we do? (students reply “PLAY”) 2 ONLY? Ho . . . matra? Hoina. Yes . . . only? No. 3 READ, WRITE NOT? (nothing in spoken channel) Not to read and write? (some students reply “TO READ” and/or “TO WRITE”) 82

M edia of medium

4 YES, YES, YES, YES . . . Ho, ho, ho, ho. yes, yes, yes, yes . . . 5 WE PL SCHOOL IN GO WHAT DO? Haamiharu school maa gayera ke garne? Having gone to school, what do we do? 6 SLEEP IS? NO. WHAT? Sutne ho? Hoina. Ke garne? To sleep? No. What is done? (A student points to an illustration on the wall of children playing on a school playground) 7 THEY ALL PLAY ONLY? Yahaa subhai khel – khelne matra? Here they all play – only play? As both the roll call and this short excerpt from a lesson demonstrate, Miss Narayan drew on a range of semiotic resources across a range of codes and modalities: her voice (speaking quite loudly for the presumed benefit of any children with residual hearing), the visual information provided by her lip movements as she spoke, NSL lexical items, gestures, images, and objects. Further, these resources were juxtaposed via a pedagogical practice often termed “chaining” – “complex layering and mixing of communicative resources, including modalities” to create “bridges of links between the different language varieties and the different cultural meaning systems” at play in a given setting (Bagga-Gupta 2014, 113; Humphries and MacDougall 2000). However, Miss Narayan’s deployment of these resources did not only link different varieties, but also implied a hierarchy among them in which Nepali was prioritized. For example, while her speech and use of NSL lexical items were produced simultanously, this lamination was not perfect. In some cases, when the spoken and manual channels diverged, the manual channel contained more information. For example, in line 3 in the aforementioned transcript Miss Narayan prompted the students to give the correct answer to her query about school activities (“to read and write”) by signing “READ NOT? WRITE NOT?” after which several children indeed replied “TO-READ” and “TO-WRITE.” This prompt did not appear in her spoken channel. More frequent, however, in this class and the others I observed, were moments in which the spoken channel contained more information than the manual, conveying an implicit ideological stance that NSL was not only a manual version of Nepali but also an impoverished version. 83

E rika H offmann - D illoway

For example, in lines 1 and 5, Miss Narayan’s spoken discourse included the phrase school maa gayera ke garne. Her verb (gayo “to go”) + era (past perfective) construction translates to “having (Verb)ed.” Hence her question was “having gone to school, what do we do?” She did not provide an equivalent to this grammatical construct in the accompanying manual communication that she provided. Rather, the manual channel (WE PL SCHOOL IN GO WHAT DO?) is somewhat ambiguous, and could potentially be understood as “what do we do to go to school?”; a student could conceivably reply, “WALK.” In fact, one child did so; this answer was ignored in favor of other students’ responses focusing on school-based activities.6 Such instances, in which a teacher’s spoken and manual channels potentially yielded different interpretations, and in which an interpretation based on an understanding of Nepali grammar was treated as correct, were common. To provide another example (which I’ve previously analyzed in HoffmannDilloway 2008, 2016), after leaving Miss  Narayan’s class, I  visited Mrs. Joshi’s class 2 session. After securing the children’s attention, Mrs. Joshi held up a drawn image of a cow and asked the questions detailed in Transcript 3.

Transcript 3: (The top line of each numbered section contains an English gloss of the manual channel [in capitals], the spoken Nepali channel [in italics], and an English translation. Points at which the manual and spoken channels diverge are marked in bold.) 1 THIS YOU-PLURAL PLURAL POSESSIVE HOUSE IN IS THIS? Yo timiharu ko ghar maa chaa? Do you all have this in your house? 2 YOU-ALL HOUSE THIS ISN’T. Chha, ghar maa? Chhaina. It is, in the house? No. 3 CITY HOUSE IN MILK COW LIVE PLACE ISN’T. Sahar ko ghar maa gai basne tau chhaina. City houses don’t have a place for cows. 4 VILLAGE GO, OWN OWN HOUSE COW IS. Gau ho. Gau, gau aphno aphno ghar maa gai chha. The village, yes. In the village each person’s house has a cow.

84

M edia of medium

5 IS THIS WE- WE TO WHAT GIVE THIS? Yo gai le haami, haami laai ke dinchha? What does the cow give to us? (Student replies, “GRASS”) 6 (NOTHING IN THE MANUAL CHANNEL) Gai le ghas ho? Grass from the cow? (Another student replies, “MILK”) 7 THANK-YOU. IS MILK GIVE GIVE. Shabash! Dudh dinchha ho! Good work/congratulation! It gives us milk! In line 2 of transcript 3, Mrs. Joshi signs, “YOU-ALL PL.” In this instance, by adding the plural postfix, she follows spoken Nepali word order, in which the pluralization of the pronoun takes the form of the postfix haru. In the signed channel, however, this was redundant, as the form of the pronoun (sweeping the index finger across the front of the signing space rather than pointing to one location) had already encoded the pluralization. This kind of redundancy is characteristic of codes of manual communication that are based on a spoken language model, and highlights the fact that the hearing teachers promoted spoken word order signing over the visual grammar possible in the manual channel (the potential of which they were likely unaware). At the same time, the pronoun used in the spoken Nepali channel, “timi,” encoded social information about the relationship between the speaker and the addressee(s). Nepali has a fairly elaborate system of honorific pronouns, with which verb endings usually agree (though there are varieties of Nepali that do not inflect verb endings in this way). Mrs. Joshi’s use of timi, the familiar form of “you,” was culturally appropriate in this context. If the children were producing spoken Nepali, they would have asymmetrically returned tapaain, the respectful form of “you,” when addressing the teacher. However, NSL does not formally encode these differences in pronouns, though it is possible (if rare in deaf adults’ signing practice) to encode two levels of respect/familiarity in verb endings. Hence, the linguistic and social information conveyed in the two channels differed and, once again, the teacher’s manual output contained less information than the spoken. Finally, in line 6 of the transcript, the teacher asked the students what the cow gives us, searching for the answer “MILK.” The formal properties of her question varied across the two channels, leading several students to misunderstand her question. The spoken Nepali channel included the grammatical marker le, an ergative construction that indicates the agent of an

85

E rika H offmann - D illoway

action (i.e., gaai le = “by the cow”). The spoken sentence also included the marker laai, which indicates to whom or to what an action was performed (haami-laai = “to us”). In the spoken Nepali channel it was quite clear that what was being asked was “what does the cow give to us?” rather than the other way around. In the teacher’s manual channel, this was much less clear. While she included the sign “TO,” which represents the word laai, lexical items representing these kinds of spoken grammatical markers are not generally formally introduced to children at this grade level. More typically, in signing practice that takes advantage of spatial grammatical possibilities, “COW” and “WE” would be set up in signing space and then the sign “TO-GIVE” would move from the agent to the patient. This kind of spatial grammar characterizes the signing of most fluent signing deaf adults in Kathmandu, such as Tenzin’s comments in Transcript 1, and can also be seen in the crosstalk of the children conversing with one another in the classroom, as the children seemed to be working out among themselves the potential diagrammatic affordances of a visual – manual communicative medium. However, Mrs. Joshi performed the sign “GIVE” moving from her chest out. This was how the NSL dictionary from which Mrs. Joshi had learned the sign represented the sign. Further, this was how the sign was introduced in NSL classes, such as that described here. She may not have been aware that it was possible to modify the verb by moving it through space in different ways. However, because some of the deaf students did employ such spatial grammatical constructions, it is perhaps unsurprising that the first answer ventured to her question was “GRASS,” as the student read this sign as suggesting that the item was given from the teacher (us) to the cow. After responding critically to this response, Mrs. Joshi was very pleased and congratulatory when another student, grasping the significance of the Nepali language word order and lexical grammatical markers, answered, “MILK,” reinforcing as superior a response to her question that treated Nepali word order as correct and relied on lexical items as grammatical markers, rather than the spatial relationships that are used in many other signing contexts. Gaps and disconnects between hearing teachers’ communicative practices and that of most deaf adults increased in higher grade levels. For example, in classes geared for older students, I frequently observed hearing teachers opting to write out a lesson in Nepali on a chalkboard, and then read the information out to the class, trailing a finger along the written counterpart to each word they uttered. If NSL was conceived of as Nepali in a visual medium, such a practice could be treated as not too fundamentally different from signing and speaking at once. Further, teachers taking this approach often justified it by arguing that standard NSL items did not provide the needed vocabulary. This perspective, of course, was reinforced by hearing teachers’ lack of understanding concerning how to modify signed lexical items to convey nuanced meaning. Thus, while communicative practices in 86

M edia of medium

the school presented speech, writing, and signing as different channels for the Nepali language, signing was typically implicitly or explicitly framed as the most impoverished of such channels.

Conclusion As Makoni and Pennycook (2007, 27) state, treating languages as discrete objects is a “convenient fiction” for “understanding the world and shaping language users,” while creating inconvenience “to the extent that they produce particular and limiting views on how language operates in the world” (see Kusters and Sahasrabudhe 2018). Further, framings of language that posit (or idealize) firm boundaries between codes and modalities have been shown to reflect and reproduce social hierarchies and inequalities (e.g., Hill and Hill 1986; Irvine and Gal 2000). Indeed, looking past the assumption that linguistic resources will be neatly compartmentalizable can help validate the full, complex, multimodal linguistic resources people draw on in making meaning together. That said, as this chapter shows, blurring boundaries between codes and modalities does not, in and of itself, lead to greater understanding of linguistic complexities or redress discriminatory dynamics and structures. Critics of a TC approach to deaf education in other contexts have noted that attempts to speak and sign simultaneously can not only result in a clunky and confusing manual channel  – as seen in this chapter  – but can also make the spoken channel less intelligible (e.g., Hyde, Power, and Leigh 1998). Further, blurring of code and modality distinctions between NSL and Nepali has, in this context, continued to privilege hearing Nepalis’ access to positions as teachers in schools for deaf students. While NSL is now accepted as an appropriate medium for schooled education: 1) teacher licensing and testing continues to take place via spoken language; and 2) there continue to be no substantive ways to ensure that teachers in schools for deaf students are fluent signers (Snoddon 2019). Consequently, deaf signers face greater linguistic barriers to these positions, ensuring that hearing teachers and Nepali-based signing continue to predominate in these contexts. More critical local attention to how medium-as-modality influences perception of medium-as-code could help realize an NSL-medium education that reflects and reproduces the linguistic and social expertise of deaf Nepalis.

Acknowledgments I thank everyone at the Kathmandu Association of the Deaf and the Central Secondary School for the Deaf. The Fulbright Institution of International Education/Commission for Educational Exchange between the United States and Nepal, the U.S. Department of Education’s Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship Program, and Oberlin College’s Powers Grant 87

E rika H offmann - D illoway

provided funding. I am grateful for comments on earlier drafts of this chapter (and associated conference papers and talks) provided by Barbra A. Meek, Nishaant Choksi, Sonia N. Das, Christina P. Davis, Sarah Hillewaert, Judith T. Irvine, Michele Koven, Chaise LaDousa, Jennifer Reynolds, and Chantal Tetreault. All errors are my own.

Notes 1 My use of the terms bracketed by scare quotes in the previous sentence points to how pervasively ideologies that frame languages as objects influence how we speak about them. 2 While oralist pedagogies put deaf children at risk of linguistic deprivation, a significantly greater threat comes from educational policies that separate deaf children from deaf peers (e.g., Goico 2019; Pfister 2017). 3 As I have previously discussed (Hoffmann-Dilloway 2016), is not clear whether NSL emerged without any influence from other previously existing sign languages or was influenced by Indian Sign Language (see also Sharma 2003). 4 When I provide only a first or last name I am employing a pseudonym. Otherwise, I am using a real name. 5 Though, of course, a view of speech as solely linear excludes the fact that sighted hearing people employ facial expression, gesture, and other modes of meaning making that draw on a range of articulators and can be expressed simultaneously with speech sounds. 6 It would have been quite possible to sign in such a manner as to indicate the precise sense conveyed in Miss Narayan’s Nepali channel. A gloss of such a sentence might be, “SCHOOL COME COMPLETE WE WHAT DO?” However, as mentioned earlier, such constructions were not explicitly taught in the training a hearing teacher of the deaf would have undergone. Rather, such grammatical practices were learned through extended linguistic and social interaction with fluent adult deaf signers, of which hearing teacher did not typically partake.

References Acharya, Kiran. 1997. A History of the Deaf in Nepal. Translated to English in 2004 by Erika Hoffmann and Dambar Chemjong. Kathmandu: National Association of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. Ahmad, Rizwan. 2011. “Urdu in Devanagari: Changing Orthographic Practices and Muslim Identitiy in Delhi.” Language in Society 40 (3): 259–84. Bagga-Gupta, Sangeeta. 2000. “Visual Language Environments: Exploring Everyday Life and Literacies in Swedish Deaf Bilingual Schools.” Visual Anthropology Review 15 (2): 95–120. ——— 2014. “Languaging: Ways of Being-with-Words Across Disciplinary Boundaries and Empirical Sites.” In Language Contacts at the Crossroads of Disciplines, edited by H. Paulasto, Heli, L. Meriläinen, H. Riionheimo, and M. Kok, 89–130. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Baker, R., and P. Knight. 1998. “Total Communication  – Current Policy and ­Practice.” In Issues in Deaf Education, edited by S. Gregory, P. Knight, W. McCracken, S. Powers, and L. Watson, 77–87. London: David Fulton.

88

M edia of medium

Battison, Robbin. 1978. Lexical Borrowing in American Sign Language. Silver Springs, MD: Linstok. Bechter, Frank. 2009. “Of Deaf Lives: Convert Culture and the Dialogic of ASL Storytelling.” PhD diss., University of Chicago, Chicago. Blackledge, Adrian, and Angela Creese. 2010. Multilingualism: A Critical Perspective. London: Continuum International. Canagarajah, Suresh. 2011. “Codemeshing in Academic Writing: Identifying Teachable Strategies of Translanguaging.” Modern Language Journal 95 (3): 401–17. Dudis, Paul. 2004. “Body Partitioning and Real-Space Blends.” Cognitive Linguistics 15 (2): 223–38. Edwards, Terra. 2014. “From Compensation to Integration: Effects of the ProTactile Movement on the Sublexical Structure of Tactile American Sign Language.” Journal of Pragmatics 69: 22–41. Friedner, Michele, and Stefan Helmreich. 2012. “Deaf Studies Meets Sound Studies.” Senses and Society 7 (1): 72–86. García, Ofelia. 2009. Bilingual Education in the 21st century: A Global Perspective. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. García, Ofelia, Ricardo Otheguy, and Wallis Reid. 2015. “Clarifying Translanguaging and Deconstructing Named Languages: A Perspective from Linguistics.” Applied Linguistics Review 6 (3): 281–307. Gellner, David. 2005. “Ethnic Rights and Politics in Nepal.” Himalayan Journal of Sociology and Anthropology 2: 1–17. Goico, Sara. 2019. “The Impact of ‘Inclusive’ Education on the Language of Deaf Youth in Iquitos, Peru.” Sign Language Studies 19 (3): 348–74. Goodwin, Charles. 2018. Co-Operative Action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Goodwin, Marjorie. 1991. He-Said She-Said: Talk as Social Organization among Black Children. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ——— 2017. “Haptic Sociality: The Embodied Interactive Construction of Intimacy through Touch.” In Intercorporeality: Emerging Socialities in Interaction, edited by C. Meyer, J. Streeck, and J. S. Jordan, 73–102. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gordon, Raymond, ed. 2005. Ethnologue: Languages of the World 15. Dallas, TX: SIL International. Accessed May 5 2019. www.ethnologue.com/. Graif, Peter. 2018. Hearing and Being: Making Intelligible Worlds in Deaf Kathmandu. Chicago: HAU Books. Green, Elizabeth Mara. 2014. “The Nature of Signs: Nepal’s Deaf Society, Local Sign, and the Production of Communicative Sociality.” PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley. Gullberg, Marianne. 1998. Gesture as a Communication Strategy in Second Language Discourse: A Study of Learners of French and Swedish. Lund: Lund University Press. Gumperz, John. 1958. “Dialect Differences and Social Stratification in a North Indian Village.” American Anthropologist 60 (4): 668–82. Hall, Wyatte, Leonard Levin, and Melissa Anderson. 2017. “Language Deprivation Syndrome: A Possible Neurodevelopmental Disorder with Sociocultural Origins.” Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology 52: 761–76.

89

E rika H offmann - D illoway

Harkness, Nicholas. 2017. “The Open Throat: Deceptive Sounds, Facts of Firstness, and the Interactional Emergence of Voice.” Signs and Society 5 (S1): 21–52. Hill, Jane H., and Kenneth C. Hill. 1986. Speaking Mexicano: Dynamics of Syncretic Language in Central Mexico. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Hofer, Teresia. 2020. “ ‘Goat-Sheep-Mixed-Sign’ in Lhasa – Deaf Tibetans’ Language Ideologies and Unimodal Codeswitching in Tibetan and Chinese Sign languages, Tibet Autonomous Region, China.” In Sign Language Ideologies in Practice, edited by Annelies Kusters, Mara Green, Erin Moriarty, and Kristin Snoddon, 83–109. Berlin: de Gruyter. Hoffmann-Dilloway, Erika. 2008. “Metasemiotic Regimentation in the Standardization of Nepali Sign Language.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 18 (2): 192–213. ——— 2013. “(Don’t) Write My Lips: Interpretations of the Relationship between German Sign Language and German across Scales of SignWriting Practice.” Signs and Society 1 (2): 243–72. ——— 2016. Signing and Belonging in Nepal. Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press. ——— 2018. “Feeling Your Own (or Someone Else’s) Face: Writing Signs from the Expressive Viewpoint.” Language and Communication 61: 88–101. Hoffmann-Dilloway, Erika, and Anne Pfister. In press. “Access to and Access through Sign Languages.” In Language and Social Justice: A Global Perspective, edited by Kathleen Riley, Bernard C. Perley, and Inmaculada M. García-Sánchez. New York: Bloomsbury Publishers. Humphries, Tom, Poorna Kushalnagar, Gaurav Mathur, Donna Jo Napoli, Carol Padden, Christian Rathmann, and Scott Smith. 2016. “Language Choices for Deaf Infants: Advice for Parents Regarding Sign Languages.” Clinical Pediatrics 55 (6): 513–17. Humphries, Tom, and Francine MacDougall. 2000. “ ‘Chaining’ and Other Links: Making Connections between American Sign Language and English in Two Types of School Settings.” Visual Anthropology Review 15 (2): 85–94. Hyde, Mery, Des Power, and Greg Leigh. 1998. “Oral-Only and Simultaneous Communication Speech Characteristics of Teachers of the Deaf.” In Issues Unresolved: New Perspectives on Language and Deaf Education, edited by Amatzia Weisel, 117–25. Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press. Iedema, Rick. 2003. “Multimodality, Resemiotization: Extending the Analysis of Discourse as Multi-Semiotic Practice.” Visual Communication 2 (1), 29–57. Irvine, Judith T. 1989. “When Talk Isn’t Cheap: Language and Political Economy.” American Ethnologist 16: 248–67. Irvine, Judith T., and Susan Gal. 2000. “Language Ideology and Linguistic Differentiation.” In Regimes of Language, edited by Paul Kroskrity, 35–84. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press. Keane, Webb. 2018. “Perspectives on Affordances, or the Anthropologically Real.” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 8 (1/2): 27–38. Kendon, Adam. 2008. “Some Reflections on the Relationship between ‘Gesture’ and ‘Sign.’ ” Gesture 8 (3): 348–66. Khanal, Upendra. 2013. “Sociolinguistics of Nepali Sign Language with Particular Reference to Regional Variation.” BA thesis, University of Central Lancashire and Indira Gandhi National Open University.

90

M edia of medium

Kisch, Stuart. 2008. “ ‘Deaf Discourse’: The Social Construction of Deafness in a Bedouin Community.” Medical Anthropology 27 (3): 283–313. Kress, Gunther R., and Theo Van Leeuwen. 2001. Multimodal Discourse: The Modes and Media of Contemporary Communication. London: Arnold. Kusters, Annelise, and Sujit Sahasrabudhe. 2018. “Language Ideologies on the Difference between Gesture and Sign.” Language and Communication 60: 44–63. Kusters, Annelies, Massimiliano Spotti, Ruth Swanwick, and Elina Tapio. 2017. “Beyond Languages, beyond Modalities: Transforming the Study of Semiotic Repertoires.” International Journal of Multilingualism 14 (3): 219–32. LaDousa, Chaise, and Christina P. Davis. (this volume). Liddell, Scott, and Robert Johnson. 1989. “American Sign Language: The Phonological Base.” Sign Language Studies 64: 195–278. Lucas, Ceil, and Clayton Valli. 1992. Language Contact in the American Deaf Community. San Diego: Academic Press. Makoni, Sinfree, and Alastair Pennycook. 2007. Disinventing and Reconstituting Languages. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. McNeill, David. 1985. “So You Think Gestures Are Non-verbal?” Psychological Review 92 (3): 350–71. Ochs, Elinor. 1996. “Linguistic Resources for Socializing Humanity.” In Rethinking Linguistic Relativity, edited by John J. Gumperz and Stephen Levinson, 407–38. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Padden, Carol. 1983. “Interaction of Morphology and Syntax in American Sign Language.” PhD diss., University of California, San Diego. ——— 1991. “The Acquisition of Fingerspelling in Deaf Children.” In Theoretical Issues in Sign Language Research, Psychology, edited by P. Siple and S. Fischer, 191–211. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Padden, Carol, and Barbara LeMaster. 1985. “An Alphabet on Hand: The Acquisition of Fingerspelling in Deaf Children.” Sign Language Studies 47: 161–72. Pennycook, Alistair, and Emi Otsuji. 2015. Metrolingualism. New York: Routledge. Pfister, Anne. 2017. “Forbidden Signs: Deafness and Language Socialization in Mexico City.” Ethos 45 (1): 139–61. Phyak, Prem. 2013. “Language Ideologies and Local Languages as the Medium-ofInstruction Policy: A  Critical Ethnography of a Multilingual School in Nepal.” Current Issues in Language Planning 14 (1): 1–17. Phyak, Prem, and Laxmi Prasad Ojha. 2019. “Language Education Policy and Inequalities of Multilingualism in Nepal.” In The Routledge International Handbook of Language Policy in Asia, edited by Andy Kirpatrick and Anthony Liddicoat, 341–54. New York: Routledge. Pradan, Uma. 2019. “Interrogating Quality: Minority Language, Education and Imageries of Competence in Nepal.” Compare: A  Journal of Comparative and International Education 50 (6): 792–808. Reynolds, Jennifer. 2014. “Translanguaging within Enactments of Quotidian Interpreter Mediated Interactions.” The Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 24 (3): 315–38. Rymes, Betsy. 2014. Communicating beyond Language: Everyday Encounters with Diversity. New York: Routledge.

91

E rika H offmann - D illoway

Saussure, Ferdinand de. 1986 [1906]. Course in General Linguistics. Chicago: Open Court. Sharma, Bal Krishna. 2014. “On High Horses: Transnational Nepalis and Language Ideologies on YouTube.” Discourse, Context, and Media 4–5: 19–28. Sharma, Shilu. 2003. “The Origin and Development of Nepali Sign Language.” MA thesis, Tribhuvan University. Skinner, Debra, and Dorothy Holland. 1996. “Schools and the Cultural Production of the Educated Person in a Nepalese Hill Community.” In The Cultural Production of the Educated Person, edited by B. Levinson, D. Foley, and D. Holland, 273–300. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Snoddon, Kristen. 2019. Report on Baseline Data Collection on Deaf Education in Nepal. Helsinki: World Federation of the Deaf. Stokoe, William. 1993 [1960]. Sign Language Structure: An Outline of the Visual Communication Systems of the American Deaf. Burtonsville, MD: Linstok Press. Streeck, Jürgen, Charles Goodwin, and Curtis Lebaron, eds. 2011. Embodied Interaction: Language and Body in the Material World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tapio, Elina. 2014. “The Marginalisation of Finely Tuned Semiotic Practices and Misunderstandings in Relation to (Signed) Languages and Deafness.” Multimodal Communication 3 (2): 131–42. Taylor, S. K. 2014. “From ‘Monolingual’ Multilingual Classrooms to ‘Multilingual’ Multilingual Classrooms: Managing Cultural and Linguistic Diversity in the Nepali Educational System.” In Managing Diversity in Education: Key Issues and Some Responses, edited by D. Little, C. Leung, and P. Van Avermaet, 259–74. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters. Tulbert, E., and Marjorie Goodwin. 2011. “Choreographies of Attention: Multimodality in a Routine Family Activity.” In Embodied Interaction: Language and Body in the Material World, edited by Jürgen Streeck, Charles Goodwin, and Curtis Lebaron, 79–92. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Turin, Mark. 2005. “Language Endangerment and Linguistic Rights in the Himalayas: A Case Study from Nepal.” Mountain Research and Development 25 (1): 4–9. Veditz, George. 1912. Proceedings of the Ninth Convention of the National Association of the Deaf and the Third World’s Congress of the Deaf, 1910. Philadelphia: Philocophus.

92

Part II MEDIUM, IDENTITY, AND THE PRODUCTION OF INEQUALITY

5 ROMANCE, AUSTEN, AND ENGLISH-MEDIUM SCHOOLING IN PAKISTAN Javaria Farooqui

The choice to offer education in a particular medium of instruction (medium) can play a complex and lasting role in shaping students’ imaginations and behaviors. In Pakistan, the English language has been associated with the power of the ruling class since the creation of the country, and, as a medium, it continues to define the educational and social patterns of society. Previous scholarship establishes that English is positioned as a superior language in policies and discourses around education (Ahmar 2002; Ali 2020; Rahman 2002a, 2002b, 2005a; Sandhu 2014; Shamim 2008; Suleri 1992; Viswanathan 1989). Tariq Rahman (2008, 80) notes that in the linguistic hierarchy, English stands at the first tier, followed by Urdu, then all other local languages. Students of English-medium schools are “indifferent” to Urdu, “read only books in English,” and, in Pakistani media, the term “Urdu-medium” refers to “less-sophisticated” things (79). What Rahman and other scholars have not yet explored is that the acquisition of this second language is not equivalent to the accumulation of “cultural capital” as broadly defined by Pierre Bourdieu (1973, 1977, 1984) (see Chapter 7). Learning English in a postcolonial country involves much more than gaining the ability to speak and write in the language; students are also taught to appreciate the literary traditions of that language. This study analyzes data from one urban, Anglophone, and popular fiction-reading subculture, which is a rather unexpected cultural formation influenced by this medium.1 Participants in my research were educated in Englishmedium schools and drew out similarities between the textual representations of Regency-era England, especially in the novels of Jane Austen, and the prevailing structures of social and economic class in Pakistani society. The descriptions of early nineteenth-century patriarchal English society in literature resonate with women educated in prestigious English-medium Pakistani schools, creating a distinctive reading taste. This sets them apart

95

J avaria F arooqui

from their peers educated in Urdu-medium schools. I contend that this reading taste is the academic legacy of reading Austen, which signifies the schism in national cultural capital produced by the two dominant mediums of education in the country: Urdu and English. The findings in this chapter are based on focus-group discussions with female readers of Anglophone romances and extensive observation of the retail ecosystem for the selling of new and used books in the major urban centers of Pakistan. All participants in the focus groups for my broader research project partly attributed their habit of reading Anglophone romances, particularly those set in Regency England, to their ­English-medium schooling. Extant scholarship on the learning and teaching of English literature in Pakistan (Ali 2020; Naqvi 2018; Rahman 2001, 2008; Tamim 2013; Zubair 2003) has not yet considered English-educated Pakistani readers who find their way to Western lowbrow fiction through a secondary school curriculum that invariably features Austen. Responses to the romance genre, as Pakistani readers find it in the fictional world of Austen, provides a distinctive way to study the complexity of the cultural capital produced by the different mediums of education in a postcolonial society. The readers in my focus groups frequently claimed that Regency historical romances, to quote a reader, “resonate” with them more than Anglophone novels with contemporary settings because they depict a storyworld that is closer to their lived reality. The contemporary Regency romances are set in the period of English history between the year 1780 and 1830 (Kloester 2005), and are written in “Austenesque language” (Wallace 2004, 156). This chapter extends Bourdieu’s (1977, 1984) theory of cultural taste to study the connection between the medium of education and the reading interests of a group of women educated in English-medium schools. It begins by outlining the research methodology and then explains the phenomenon of English-medium schooling in Pakistan. It then proceeds to comment on how the readers appropriate a Western popular reading practice toward the reproduction of a sociocultural distinction. This is the story of an agile community of readers who are schooled in the language of their colonizers and who claim to own, and relate to, a fictional time rooted in the culture of that language.

Methodology The research for the main ethnographic project took place in three stages: an initial reader survey, focus-group discussions in Pakistan, and fieldwork exploring the key sites where books are bought and sold in Pakistan. My approach to the focus groups was grounded in the assumption that people are a valuable source of information about themselves, and can honestly express their thoughts with a reasonable amount of clarity. I  contacted the readers through a questionnaire disseminated through social media 96

R omance , A usten , E nglish - medium in P akistan

designed to obtain basic demographic information and gauge their willingness to participate in group discussions.2 All respondents were Pakistani female readers of Anglophone romances living in the urban center of one of four provinces: Lahore, Rawalpindi, and Islamabad (Punjab province), Karachi (Sindh province), Quetta (Balochistan province), and Peshawar (Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province). I conducted the group discussions in accordance with established methods for qualitative research on the views and practices of clearly defined communities or social groups (Barbour 2014; Fern 2001; Hollander 2004; Rossi and Bader 1998). Structured with open-ended questions, the focus-group discussions sought flexibility in responses because the Anglophone romance reading culture of Pakistan has not been explored in extant scholarship. Four group discussions, including a total number of thirty-nine participants, were conducted in Lahore, Karachi, and Islamabad between August  2018 and December  2019.3 Each group discussion lasted for approximately one hour and was recorded for transcription. To ensure anonymity, the quotations from participants are identified according to the chronological order of the group and the numbers that I used to identify the participants. For example, where I write G1-P2, G stands for group and P for participant, followed by the number I allotted to both during transcription. Focus-group methodology is particularly useful for research on this under-researched community and cultural practice because it brings forth participants’ perspectives in their own words. Before analyzing the readers’ responses, or elucidating the Bourdieusian theoretical framework, I briefly look at the socioeconomic background and the teaching practices of elite Pakistani schools.

English-medium schools and the question of “Englishness” The use of English as a medium in Pakistan is a legacy of British imperial rule. The Indian subcontinent, which became a British colony in 1857, was divided into two countries in 1947. Studies have frequently discussed the role of English in the process of colonization (Ali Shah 2015; Caton 2018; Gunning 2013; McLeod 2010). Dave Gunning (2013) argues, “If we understand colonialism to be as much about cultural domination as political oppression, then language is a key tool in implementing this authority,” especially if not just the language, but the literature of the colonizer is also “transmitted” (24). That the teaching of the English language – and ­literature – in the Indian subcontinent is linked to the structuring of an elite socioeconomic class is most emphasized in Thomas Babington Macaulay’s language policy for the Indian subcontinent. Macaulay is notorious as the architect of English education in colonial India and his Minute on Indian Education has been widely explored by postcolonial scholars because of 97

J avaria F arooqui

its white supremacist language and planned exploitation of Indigenous culture (Bhabha 1994; Caton 2018; Cutts 1953; Frykenberg 1988; Loomba 2005; S. Evans 2002). Macaulay wrote the Minute in 1835 for Lord William Bentinck, governor-general of British India, in support of his education policy, which stipulated that “all Indian aspirants for college degrees must thoroughly learn a foreign language prior to embarking upon a career ­ inute, in higher education” (Cutts 1953, 824; see Chapter  8). In his M Macaulay claimed that a knowledge of the English language provides “ready access to all the vast intellectual wealth, which all the wisest nations of the earth have created and hoarded in the course of ninety generations” (1935, 350). He stated that the British were not ready to invest in the teaching of Oriental languages, Arabic and Sanskrit, as they were not as profound as English. The piece exhibits pomposity and grandiloquence, and the eventual consequences of the Anglicization plan are debatable. Critics, for example, have contended that Macaulay’s Minute brought “no radical change” and the idea of completely replacing the Oriental languages was considered risky by the governor-general (Frykenberg 1988, 313). Furthermore, the real Anglicizing impulse was initiated by evangelical movements, and by various other British groups, in the 1820s (S. Evans 2002, 264). Nonetheless, I focus on the creation of, or the intention to create, an elite class in colonial India – as described in Macaulay’s treatise – because it facilitates an understanding of the Englishness that still defines reading practices in postcolonial Pakistan. Macaulay wrote that, since teaching the superior ways of the British to every Indian individual was not possible, the rulers should “form a class” who should work as “interpreters” between them and the people they govern: “a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect” (1935, 359). I argue that no matter how influential the Minute was, the colonizers ultimately established this class of Indians with English taste. The British plan of constructing a “brown” British identity for the colonized in India was carried out through English schools established in the city centers. In his seminal postcolonial study, The Location of Culture, Homi K. Bhabha (1994) views the “absurd extravagance of Macaulay’s ‘Minute’ ” as the colonizer’s attempt to create “a mimic man raised ‘through our English school’ ” (87). Mimicry is ambivalent and “radically revalues” and “deauthorizes” the various forms of colonial authority (91). I extend my understanding of Bhabha’s concept of mimicry to Pakistani female readers of a specific genre of Anglophone romance fiction that is set in Regency England and anchored in Western culture. These readers appropriate colonial cultural practices because such practices highlight the hollowness of their own society. Later in the chapter, I  will explore the intricacies of this appropriation. I  now turn to analyze the significance of English-medium education in shaping my participants’ lifestyle 98

R omance , A usten , E nglish - medium in P akistan

or “habitus,” to use Bourdieu’s term. I  use Bourdieu’s theory of cultural taste to examine the Pakistani practice of reading Anglophone fiction set in Regency-era England to highlight the association between the medium and the reading of genre fiction in a postcolonial society that merits nostalgia as cultural finesse. Linguists have frequently explored the eminent status of the English language in Pakistan as a vestige of the British Empire. Studies by Tariq Rahman, Robert J. Baumgardner, Sabiha Mansoor, and Tayyaba Tamim analyze the complex relationships among language, power, and the ­English-medium schooling system in the country. Rahman (2005b) outlines the situation: The British used English in the domains of power  – government, administration, judiciary, military, higher education, higher ­commerce, media, the corporate sector – which made it the most prestigious and coveted language in this part of the world. Pakistani rulers have continued with this policy ensuring that it remains the principal language for acquiring power in the country. (35) In “No English, No Future!” Mahboob Ahmar (2002) explores the beginning of the relationship between power and the English language. English officially became a language of education in 1847; however, vernacular languages were not completely removed from the system. This resulted in the formation of two types of schools: English and vernacular. The English schools were expensive, restricted to the “moneyed class” of “the rajas and feudal lords who were loyal to the British authority” (2002, 19). Vernacular schools were less expensive and more accessible to the masses. Ahmar argues the dual system of education resulted in creating two different sections in society: an elite ruling class with a good command of English, and a subordinate class with no English. The English schools “served Macaulay’s purposes of creating an Indian elite, which would be educated in English and be employed by the British in the government as local representatives” (20). Writing in a similar vein, Rahman (2005a) argues that there are three types of schools in Pakistan: (a) state-influenced elitist public schools or cadet colleges, (b) private elitist schools, and (c) non-elitist schools. There are many subcategories within these categories, easily traceable to the dual education system created under the rule of the British Empire. Significantly, he writes, “English is still the key for a good future – a future with human dignity if not public deference; a future with material comfort if not prosperity; a future with that modicum of security, human rights and recognition, which all human beings desire. So, irrespective of what the state provides, parents are willing to part with scarce cash to buy their children such a future” (2005a, 24). 99

J avaria F arooqui

All readers participating in the focus-group discussions conducted for this study had a background of English schooling. This information did not surprise me when I was compiling the demographical data because of my own position as a Lahore-based reader of Anglophone fiction. The readers were more comfortable with the English language than their vernacular or regional languages, and more familiar with the works of Austen than any piece of acclaimed Urdu fiction. Although this reading preference, and the attendant perspective on romances, is rooted in the elitist English-medium schooling of the readers, it goes above and beyond a simple connection to medium. Richard McGill Murphy (2000) draws attention to the way in which education is used as a metaphor of class distinction in urban Pakistan. The society places great value on the sense of “belonging” to “established” families that are perceived as “living links to a time when society as a whole was better off” (2000, 207–8). People of the country are in the habit of using words like khandani and elite to denote everyday social distinctions.4 Murphy’s argument, focused on the representations of class in televised drama serials, is prescient in the context of my study as it emphasizes the collective conscience of the country’s urban community. Talking particularly about Lahore, he notes that the city is “permeated by nostalgia for an imagined society preserved out of time” (218). Upper-class Lahoris of “old-money background” refer to themselves in exclusionary terms, as Lahore society, expressing a clear stance on the difference between “inherited” and “achieved” status (211). I argue that the romance reading taste of upper-class women defines what Murphy calls a “fuzzy set of values” (211) that is linked to some vague point in the past. In Distinction, Bourdieu (1984) explains “habitus” as a collective schema of perceptions, cognition, and action, which is required within a particular class and which defines the idiosyncrasies of a particular lifestyle. It facilitates cultural classification, allowing different classes to set themselves apart from each other. In the relationship between the “capacity to produce classifiable practices and works” and “the capacity to differentiate and appreciate these practices and products (taste),” the “space of life-styles” is established (1984, 170). He assumes that we learn certain frameworks of thought and action from our everyday existence – through family, school, and the world of work – that enable us to respond effortlessly to different situations. Our tastes are thus formed at an early stage and determine our later choices/ actions: Through the habitus, the structure which has produced it governs practice, not by the process of a mechanical determination, but through the mediation of the orientations and limits it assigns to the habitus’ operations of invention. [.  .  .] Because the habitus is an endless capacity to engender products – thoughts, perceptions, expressions, actions – whose limits are set by the historically and 100

R omance , A usten , E nglish - medium in P akistan

socially situated conditions of its production, the conditioned and conditional freedom it secures is as remote from a creation of unpredictable novelty as it is from a simple mechanical reproduction of the initial conditionings. (Bourdieu 1977, 95) This shows that the habitus is an aspect of our life story and identity. During the long period of colonial rule, the colonized learned to associate the colonizers’ language, culture, and spaces with power. Postcolonial studies have widely analyzed the various implications of the teaching of English literature in British colonies. I argue that, in what I call the Pakistani readers’ “romance-habitus,” supreme importance is associated with the teaching and learning of the English language. Analysis of this romance-habitus enhances appreciation of the impact of the medium of education on the readers. Austen’s novels are an indicator of bourgeois taste and function as the touchstone for information on Regency England. The readers extend their interest in Austen to the reading of popular Regency romances, which provide more period details than Austen’s fiction. These readers’ attention to period details is similar to the Anglophone readers of the subgenre who, as Lisa Hopkins (2018) writes, treasure the novels of Georgette Heyer because she supplies “the precise details of coaches, fashions, and domestic furnishings which Austen herself does not give us” (63). In Pakistan, the journey of Anglophone historical romance reading starts with Austen, leads to Heyer, and continues with the contemporary writers of historical romances. The list of popular Regency authors widely read in the country includes, but is not limited to, Judith McNaught, Stephanie Laurens, Julia Quinn, Loretta Chase, Lisa Kleypas, Sabrina Jefferies, and Gaelen Foley. My broader argument is that the popular romance reading culture of the West assumes a quasi-literary position because of the readers’ complicated schema of historical pasts and the significance of English language in the country. The present study does not comment on the Anglophone popular reading culture generally and is limited to an exploration of the connections between the medium of education, class, romance, and the reception of Austen’s novels. In the Austen-inspired romance-habitus, readers are comfortable with the projection of British Empire as the source of social, cultural, and educational refinement for the colonized. Critics note that English literature emerged as a discipline in colonial India in 1813, before British imperial rule officially started, and after the East India Company took the matters of native education and the economy into its hands (Viswanathan 1987; Loomba 2005; Schwarz and Ray 2000). John McLeod (2010) describes the teaching of English literature in the British colonies as an imperialist methodology to assert the colonizers’ cultural superiority. He perceives the colonized subject’s act of reading Anglophone literature as a devaluation of Indigenous 101

J avaria F arooqui

culture and affirmation of Western supremacy, quoting the Antiguan writer Jamaica Kincaid’s memories of reading Charlotte Brontë, John Keats, and Thomas Hardy: The image of Jamaica Kincaid sitting under her tree in Antigua reading a series of texts that ostensibly concern British locations, culture and history is a striking example of the ways in which many of those in the colonies were asked to perceive of Western nations as places where the very best in art and learning were produced, the lasting value of which could survive in locations far removed from the texts’ point of origin. (140) This image holds truth in the context of Pakistani readers of Austen, but it is complicated by the enduring popularity of Anglophone popular romance, a genre that is extremely important to the readers I talked with. The readers construct their colonial past through oral history, family history, and school curricula. Their interest in the Regency era is generated and reinforced through the novels of Jane Austen that are taught widely in Englishmedium schools. They recognize, and relate to, the version of “Englishness” provided by representations of Regency England by Austen, Heyer, and contemporary romance novelists’ work. Therefore, these romances have an actual location within the post-colony, that is, the English-medium school. Readers are drawn to Austen’s language because it represents what Macaulay calls an English “taste” that resonates with their complicated schema of intertwining actual, imagined, and fictive pasts of Pakistan and the British Empire. They recognize, and relate to, a version of Englishness that conflates British and English identities. This conflation is not just a definitive trait of Pakistani readers, and Anglophone scholarship on Englishness acknowledges the blurred boundaries and interchangeability of Britishness and Englishness. Paul Langford (2000) looks at this phenomenon from the perspective of an outsider and writes, “The great majority of foreigners used the terms ‘British’ and ‘English’ indiscriminately and confusingly, sometimes as synonyms, sometimes not, and in most cases unaware of the confusion in which they were colluding” (12). In a political context, specifically between the years 1790 and 1870, Eric Evans (2002) observes that “neither ‘Englishness’ nor ‘Britishness’ is a separately identifiable phenomenon. Instead, they are the product of complicated cross-cultural developments” (243). In addition, the concept of Englishness played its role in the development of the broader narrative of “British Empire” at the state level. Rebecca Langlands (1999) notes the fluidity of Englishness, its easy conflation with Britishness, and asserts, “an English ethnicity embodied in a number of customs, traditions, codes and styles has existed at least since the early modern period, and this provided the basis for the state-aided development 102

R omance , A usten , E nglish - medium in P akistan

of the British ‘nation’ during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries” (59). In much the same strain, Robert Young (2005) maintains that Englishness is a cunning and politically correct word “invoked in order to mask the metonymic extension of English dominance over the other kingdoms” (3). He considers it an artificially fixed identity that sustained Britain through the instability and crisis of imperial rule. In the context of the present study, readers use as interchangeable the concepts of Britishness and Englishness, treating them as equivalent.

Locating the “us” in Austen Public schools’ syllabi focus only on the teaching of English as a second language (“Punjab Curriculum and Textbook Board”), while English literature is taught as a separate subject, apart from the English language, in elite schools. The literature books include excerpts from many classic British authors, but Austen inspires more interest and fandom in female readers. In focus-group discussions, the participants often asserted that while in school, they did not like the “dark and coldish England of Dickens” (G1-P3), but loved the “razzle dazzle” of what they call “Austen’s England” (G2-P4/P6). Englishness, as it exists in the schema of Pakistani readers of Regency romance, stands for a finesse in social manners, higher economic class, old English architecture, and attire, all as depicted in Austen’s fiction. Western scholarship notes that her writings have an infallible capacity to engage modern readers. In her introduction to After Austen: Reinventions, Rewritings, Revisitings, Hopkins (2018) maintains that although Austen observes only Regency culture, her work can be easily transported to other times and environments (13). There is a consensus among scholars that Austen’s fiction has inspired the entire subgenre of modern popular historical romances (Kloester 2005; Wallace 2012; De Groot 2009; Hughes 1993; Ramsdell 2012). De Groot (2009) calls the modern Regency romances “Austen attempt tonal pastiche” in which the past “is authenticated not by history but by the world of Austen’s fiction” (66). Of course, for Austen, the Regency era was not the past, but the present. Here, I will not analyze how criticism has traced the influence of Austen on contemporary historical romances, but will focus instead on the power of her fandom in the Anglosphere. Deidre Shauna Lynch (2005, 111) points out that, unlike any other literary giants, Austen fosters fervent dedication and “fantasies of personal access” in her readers that are “the hallmarks of the fan.” She quotes John Bailey to argue that the extraordinary success of “the cult of Jane Austen” is paradoxical because with the increase in distance between her era and her readers’, the intimacy of the author-reader relation has also been amplified. From the late Victorian period onwards, readers began thinking of Austen as an author with whom they might be on an intimate, first-name footing, 103

J avaria F arooqui

as someone they loved more than they esteemed (112). Most importantly, Lynch points out that the reception history of Austen goes back to the British Parliament’s Education Act of 1870, which aimed for universal literacy as a national priority and initiated the preservation of “Englishness” with “the distinction between elite and popular tastes” (113). This theorization holds true in the case of Pakistani readers who find similarities between their country and Regency-era England. It is also useful to consider the reading practices of Pakistani readers more generally. In a recent article published in Dawn newspaper, Shahana Afsar (2020) writes: Pakistanis read Jane Austen and Harper Lee the same way as people from other countries do and they enjoy the nuances, quibbles, romance and dialogues the same way as other people do. They can relate to the thought processes of Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice and with the lovable relationship of siblings Jem and Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird. It pains them when they cannot relate to characters in Pakistani English-language fiction. (para. 7) The readers’ inability to relate to Pakistani English fiction cannot be dealt with as a straightforward question of association with the language of colonizers. They cannot relate to it because it is not a part of their romancehabitus, does not contain the necessary Englishness, and lacks the inverse mimetic process that lies at the center of their reading experience. For example, a reader called Pakistani English fiction “unnatural” and asserted that reading Anglophone historical romances made her “feel good” most because of their “proper English vocabulary” (G4-P4). The most dominant pattern emerging out of my conversations with the readers is that they did not just draw parallels between Regency England and contemporary Pakistan but also distinguished themselves from their peers because of their ability to draw these parallels. This pattern can be seen as a distinct form of cultural appropriation. The concept of cultural appropriation is defined in Western philosophy as “the takings  – from a culture that is not one’s own – of intellectual property, cultural expressions or artifacts, history and ways of knowledge” (Ziff and Rao 1997, 1). It concerns the relationship between people and is useful in the study of the variety of ways in which social connections are formed. Cultural appropriation includes the representation of cultural practices or experiences by cultural “outsiders” in texts, use of artistic styles distinctive of cultural groups by non-members, and a continued possession of cultural artifacts by non-members/outsiders (J. O. Young 2010). Oxford English Dictionary defines it as “the unacknowledged or inappropriate adoption of the practices, customs, or aesthetics of one social or ethnic group by members of another (typically dominant) community or society” (OED Online n.d.). In 104

R omance , A usten , E nglish - medium in P akistan

Pakistan, female readers of Austen appropriate the themes of matrimony, class consciousness, female emancipation, and cultural restrictions to create a superior social distinction for themselves. I will now explain how this behavior is limited to the acquisition of cultural capital and argue that it does not include more concrete forms of textual appropriation. Comparisons between the modern Pakistani and the old Regency culture have become more visible in recent years, especially since Laaleen Sukhera founded the Jane Austen Society of Pakistan (JASP) in 2014 as a Facebook fan club. Most of the people who engaged with JASP on Facebook are urban Pakistani women from Islamabad and Lahore (Chatterjee 2017). Most useful in this context is an article by Moni Mohsin (2017) that characterizes the national disposition of Austen’s fandom. She claims that “the truth – universally acknowledged – is that Jane Austen is enduringly popular in Pakistan. Bookshops have whole shelves dedicated to her novels, critiques of her novels and novels inspired by her novels. Visit a DVD rental store and you will find film and tele­vision adaptations of her work. She is taught in schools and read at home” (2017). JASP arranges tea parties in which participants dress up in Regency costumes and draw parallels between Austen’s world and contemporary Pakistan. These parties acquired national fame when BBC Asia gave them coverage in 2017, drawing attention to Austen’s biggest fans: “an eclectic bunch of well-educated women who dress up Regencystyle and discuss her work over high tea in the country’s second largest city, Lahore” (“We Don’t Really See Mr Darcy” n.d.). The costume parties also resulted in the publication of an Austen-inspired collection of short stories entitled Austenistan, published by Bloomsbury, India (Sukhera 2017). In an interview given to Eleanor Turney, Sukhera (2018) talks about how JASP started as a non-traditional book club on Facebook, only later introducing cosplay-style eccentric tea parties: “What started as a casual what-if discussion over a JASP meet-up became fictional snapshots of our society as seen through Austen goggles, so to speak” (2018). Sukhera frequently asserts Austen’s relevance in present-day Pakistan: “Austen’s world is our world; in Pakistan, we often feel as if we’re caught between the twenty-first century and the Regency. We don’t just empathize with the social pressures and constraints that the Bennets and the Dashwoods endure; we live them. We understand the condescension of Lady Catherine de Bourgh and Sir Walter Elliot, and the ambitions of General Tilney, all too well” (Sukhera 2019, 488). In 2018, one year after the publication of Austenistan, expatriate Pakistani author Soniah Kamal’s novel Unmarriageable was published in the United States, and other territories, by Penguin Random House (2019a). Kamal currently lives in the United States and her audience is mostly American readers of Austen-inspired fiction. However, like Sukhera and JASP, she talks about the strength of comparisons between Pakistani and Regency-era cultures: “Pakistani society resembles Regency England’s in its emotional makeup, its morals, manners 105

J avaria F arooqui

and attention to social hierarchy” (Kamal 2019b). Her novel is subtitled Pride and Prejudice in Pakistan, and is set in the fictitious small town named Dilipabad. It is based upon Kamal’s memories of Lahore. Sukhera and Kamal both studied in prestigious Pakistani English-medium schools. To quote Sukhera, “Jane Austen is part of our lives, either through literature exams or just growing up with the books” (2018, para 2). Similarly, participants of my study drew comparisons between the patriarchal, social, and economic systems of present-day Pakistan and early nineteenthcentury England. They attributed this comparative point of view to their schooling during the group discussions: P2: I  have grown up reading British authors, but I  felt closest to Jane at school. I swear I have an aunt just like that Lady Catherine. Total manipulative bitch! P5: Uff. And that concept of parading girls around, finding suitors, and marrying the girl to the guy with most titles and lands? It is exactly like we ask her that larka kiya karta hey and larki shakal ki kaisi hey (all laugh). P7: Austen and Brontë are the class. [. . .] It’s like these women personalize history for you, you know? P9: I  get it. And now I  am thinking that perhaps that’s why I  like old worn copies. Knowing that someone out there in another country has read them over and over like me. (G4)5,6 Curiously, the readers showed an apparent disinterest in novels in English, romance or otherwise, by Pakistani authors. Many respondents in my groups were especially derisive toward the emerging genre of Austeninspired fiction, especially Austenistan. Although the prompting questions did not mention this book, the readers used it a reference to explain their attachment to the “real stuff,” or contemporary historical romances set in Austen’s England. Readers expressed their view that adaptive fiction by “desi authors” did not possess “that Heyer feeling” (G1-P5, G2-P1). At one point, they talked about Austenistan thus: P6: We didn’t like it. P8: No one did. P1: There are multiple stories, but they are very redundant. P6: It has such an artificial feeling. That wannabe touch. Matlab kiya na? P1: I could not go past two stories. P2: It’s very irritating. Like a blog post or something. You know harping about one thing. P6: Hai sach mein. It does not read like good literature. Just like someone is sitting and decide to write a story or Instagram post one fine day. 106

R omance , A usten , E nglish - medium in P akistan

P5: You can actually judge books, how books are good or not. You know those details make an impression. Regency novels have minor details explained beautifully. (G-3)7 The readers’ responses to the text can be used to explore the intricate thought processes initiated by medium of education. Adaptive fiction, with themes similar to those expounded in Austen’s fiction, and with familiar characters/ settings, does not speak to Pakistani readers. Looking at the responses in the light of cultural appropriation theory, I contend that these readers view the adaptive fiction from the lens of a genre insider. Austenistan has an “artificial feeling” (G3-P6) because its Pakistani authors have appropriated Western culture, whereas Regency romances are not appropriated and have what a reader called “the authentic language” (G2-P4). Talking about the process of cultural appropriation, Young (2010) notes the inherent controversiality of its nature. The “outsiders do not have access to the experience of insiders,” and they are bound to misrepresent the culture of “insiders,” which results in a production of “aesthetic flaws” (9). From their assumed position as genre insiders, Pakistani readers judge the adaptive fiction and other contemporary fiction by Pakistani authors. They are aware that these books are not written for them, but they own a specific genre subculture in a distinctive way: “Still it seems fake, on so many levels. Like you can relate to Jane’s times but not your own times” (G3-P1). This appropriative viewpoint is based on what Lisa Fletcher, Beth Driscoll, and Kim Wilkins (2018, 11) describe as the “genre competence” of a reader that enables her “to comprehend a text in relation to storytelling conventions that have been learned through reading.”8 A significant effect of the medium of education is Pakistani readers’ effort to imagine a world that is geographically and culturally distant from their own. Pakistani readers’ imagined colonized past becomes a part of their thinking at an early age through oral history, colonial architecture, and the academic teaching of Austen who “personalizes history” for them. In major cities of the country, daily sightings of buildings constructed during Britain’s Imperial rule and/or the bronze statues of rulers like Queen Victoria and King Edward VII augment the readers’ appropriative behavior. A  thirtythree old fan of historical romances stated: It’s the Englishness, you know. Whenever I used to go the museum as a little girl and look at the Queen Victoria statue, it would really fascinate me. I would sit there with my father and he would tell me what his father told him about the life before partition. In his stories, there was always this gori and that gori. And my grandfather had told my father details of the gori’s dresses too. I guess I found those gori-ies in our Judith (all laugh). (G1-P3)9 107

J avaria F arooqui

She brought together her family’s reporting of the actual colonial era, her own indirect experience of that era through the physical presence of Queen Victoria’s statue, and her pleasure of locating that colonial past in the fictional presentation of the Regency era by a popular American author. Her statement resonated with other group participants, who laughed and nodded in agreement, readily attributing their reading choices to “colonization” (G1-P5) or a “colonial effect” (G1-P2). Use of the possessive pronoun – “our Judith” – is the key to understanding the cultural appropriation of popular romances in Pakistan. All readers laughed at this comment because they were aware of appropriating a literary tradition that many would assume excludes them. Englishness illuminates how the readers use popular romances to engage with colonial rule of the Indian subcontinent and their Austen-based knowledge of Regency as a fluid past that is felt to be closer to their present. They are not naïve, and they recognize that neither Austen nor Austen-inspired popular romances are written for them. Still, groups of highly engaged readers dress up in Regency-era costumes and discuss the similarities between nineteenth-century England and twenty-first century Pakistan. And this is how they appropriate Anglophone popular fiction and gain cultural capital.

Postcolonial habitus: medium, literature, and appropriation I return to Bourdieu’s theory, which was developed in the French setting, but facilitates our understanding of cultural capital in Pakistan in its embodied, objectified, and institutionalized states. As defined by Bourdieu (1977), it is knowledge – and, thus, power – which a person acquires through his upbringing and his institutionalized education, and which distinguishes one person from others. A person’s disposition allows deeper consideration of their habitus, which is formed through early social experiences that internalize the external structures of society. Thus, habitus generates perceptions that correspond to external, institutional structures, shape individual action, and fashion cultural taste. Cultural capital is inextricably linked to the economic apparatus, and “cultural competence in its various forms cannot be constituted as cultural capital until it is inserted into the objective relations between the system of economic production and the system producing the producers (which is itself constituted by the relation between the school system and the family)” (1977, 186). However, it is different from economic capital because it is symbolic and internalized, and is not directly related to the possession of property or money. This capital is inherited from family traditions, structuring “ ‘Bourgeois’ taste, a modal taste or taste à la mode,” which, according to Bourdieu, asserts itself when one chooses a painting by Van Gogh, buys furniture from antique shops, has well-bred friends, and a

108

R omance , A usten , E nglish - medium in P akistan

penchant for tradition (1984, 267). In a study conducted in 1973, Bourdieu more clearly described the connections between taste and class by using data from French grande écoles, literally translated as “grand schools.” He maintains that cultural capital is received and internalized through a family’s socioeconomic lifestyle, habits, and manners. It is not provided in educational institutions, but it is required to achieve academic success as it reflects an individual’s “linguistic and cultural competence” (1973, 72). In grande écoles, there exists a pronounced correlation between “academic success and the family’s cultural capital measured by the academic level of the forbears over two generations on both sides of the family” (76). Bourdieu uses cultural capital as an abstract theoretical framework to trace the hierarchies or stratification within the European educational system, but I use it in a more literal sense to study the language-based social division in Pakistani society, which manifests itself in the cultural appropriation of Austen’s fiction and Austen-inspired fiction. Most of the participants met each other in the group discussion for the first time, but they soon discovered that many of them have been educated in the same schools and frequent the same bookshops. The knowledge of sharing similar recreational and residential spaces provided a more powerful bonding than being part of the same schools. It translated as belonging to a specific class and sharing values and cultural assumptions that elicited the usage of collective personal pronouns, “we” and “us,” among the participants: P3: I think Austen is more relatable to us because we are used to decking up for parties. It is not relatable for a below average economy person. P4: We love reading about the parties. P2: We still have time for tea parties, kitty parties, and club parties like the Regency-era people. It resonates with us. (G2)10 These readers’ choice of Austen to define and refine the concept of social class is significant, and not surprising. Commenting on the reception history of Austen’s fiction in the West, Lynch writes that the author’s adherents exhibit a certain behavior and “distance themselves from those other people” who enjoy her novels in “the wrong way and for the wrong reasons” (emphasis original 2005, 113). She writes that many academics deride the “amateur cultures of Austenian appreciation” that are compelled by a powerful drive to identify and merge themselves with Austen’s world (118). The cult following of Austen is apparently guided by “an unattractive logic of exclusivity that runs like this: since she is my Jane Austen, she cannot be yours too” (118). In the current Pakistani context, this logic of exclusion works in varied and complex ways, all of which are linked with the question of language. The readers relate to Austen as she is their “Jane” because her fiction speaks

109

J avaria F arooqui

to them across spatio-temporal and cultural boundaries. They cannot relate to adaptations of her work written by Indigenous authors because that is a “wrong way” to appreciate, or appropriate, the canonical texts.

Conclusion In broad terms, the genre of popular romance, acknowledged as “the most popular, least respected literary genre” (Regis 2007, xi) in the Anglosphere, has gained a quasi-literary status in Pakistan because of its inextricable connection with the Austen-based elitist paradigm of good taste and good breeding. Through their English-medium schooling, the readers learn how to culturally appropriate the patriarchal social structure in Austen’s fiction and employ this perspective to recreate social distinction. I  refer to three readers’ conversation to conclude my argument: P1: Language plays a part. Reading English romances is more acceptable than reading Urdu ones in our society. P2: I would say that calling it “romance” in English is better than calling it mohabbat or pyaar in Urdu. Mohabbat is so cheesy, right? Cheap type. P5: Admit it babes. Regency looks hot on the shelves. It’s an added plus. You get to read fun stuff and the collection will still impress your cousins. Like you are reading proper literature stuff. (G3) When the books published for the Western popular mass-market reach a former British colony in South Asia, they lose much of their original coding, and their reception transverses between the literary and the middlebrow. The practice of reading Anglophone fiction is more significant than the acquisition of cultural capital through the language of one’s colonizers suggests. Rather, in Pakistan, Anglophone fiction’s salience and centrality mark the habitus of people like my research participants whose specific concerns and pursuits must be considered carefully. Their own reading and appreciation of Austen signal their ability to feel at home with “English” language and culture in a way that distinguishes them, not only from their “Urdu-medium” peers but also from the nouveau riche section, who share an English-medium schooling background.

Notes 1 Ethics approval for the study (Project ID: H0017275) was granted by the ­University of Tasmania, Australia. 2 The questionnaire collected information about the age of participants, city of residence, highest qualification, favorite popular romance author, and obtained

110

R omance , A usten , E nglish - medium in P akistan

their consent for participation in group discussions. Out of a total number of 113 responses, seventy-eight were submitted electronically, and thirty-five in hard copy. The data collection phase of the project took almost seventeen months (15 July, 2018 to11 December, 2019). 3 The following questions served as prompts during the discussions: i. Why do you read Regency historical romances? Have you considered reading vernacular romances? ii. How do you access the texts? Do you buy them or borrow them? iii. Can you comment on the vocabulary used in period romances? iv. What are the most memorable features of the Regency settings? v. What is your opinion about second-language acquisition in Pakistan and its possible connection with romance reading? vi. Can you relate the romances to female social identity in a patriarchal society? These questions were based on personal observations and the scholarship available on popular romance reading habits in postcolonial societies. 4 The adjective form of elite family. 5 Larka kiya karta hey translation: “What does the boy do?” However, this question refers to the economic status of the prospective groom.   Larki shakal ki kaisi hey: “What does she look like?” 6 Charlotte Brontë, author of Jane Eyre. 7 Matlab kiya na translation: I  mean, what? This expression is used to convey irritation/exasperation, etc.   Sach mein translation: That is so true. 8 Fletcher et al. situate their research in popular romance scholarship, and readers of popular romance are globally construed to be women. 9 Partition: Reference to the geopolitical partition of the Indian subcontinent into Pakistan and India, and, later, Bangladesh.   Gori [noun/adjective] is an Urdu word for a white skinned female. As an adjective, this word is used to describe the fair complexion of local girls. However, as a noun, it refers to a Western woman.   Judith McNaught, author. Her novels set in Regency-era England are very popular in urban centres of Pakistan. 10 A kitty party is a social gathering of elite, upper-middle class, married women that takes place once a month. Men are not allowed to attend these urban and classed events. Participants in a kitty group are either relatives or know each other through their husbands who work together. Each month, a pre-decided amount of money is given to the host by all members of a group. Names of recipients of this money collection are usually decided through a poll or mutual consensus. The woman who receives the collected money hosts the party for that month. So, when a member hosts a party, she gets a lump sum of the money that she has been giving or will give to other members over the years. The amount of money or the period of collection does not count. Such parties are extravagant, often arranged in exotic locations overseas or on lavish country estates. The quality of food, house décor, and dressing (themed costumes on many occasions) in these parties showcases one’s socio-economic status and gives ample opportunity for tête-à-tête.

References Afsar, Shahana. 2020. “Essay: Pakistan’s English Writing: Who Is It For?” DAWN. COM. Accessed July 12, 2020. www.dawn.com/news/1568502.

111

J avaria F arooqui

Ahmar, Mahboob. 2002. “ ‘No English, No Future!’ Language Policy in Pakistan.” In Political Independence with Linguistic Servitude: The Politics about Languages in the Developing World, edited by Samuel Gyasi Obeng and Beverly Hartford, 15–40. New York: Nova Publishers. Ali, Komal Waqar. 2020. “The English in Our Classrooms.” Medium, June  9. Accessed July 19, 2020. https://medium.com/@komalwaqarali/the-english-in-ourclassrooms-eb784874e0c8. Ali Shah, Dr Safdar. 2015. Colonialism, English and Punjabi. 2015th ed. Islamabad, Pakistan: NUST Publishing. Barbour, Rosaline S. 2014. “Analysing Focus Groups.” In The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Data Analysis, edited by Uwe Flick, 313–26. London: Sage Publications. Bhabha, Homi K. 1994. The Location of Culture. New York: Routledge. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1973. “Cultural Reproduction and Social Reproduction.” In Knowledge, Education, and Cultural Change: Papers in the Sociology of Education, 71–84. London: Tavistock. ——— 1977 [1972]. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Translated by Richard Nice. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. ——— 1984. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Translated by Richard Nice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Caton, Alissa. 2018. “Indian in Colour, British in Taste: William Bentinck, Thomas Macaulay, and the Indian Education Debate, 1834–1835.” Voces Novae 3 (16): 38–60. Chatterjee, Anamika. 2017. “Keeping Jane Austen Alive in Pakistan.” Khaleej Times. Accessed May  4, 2018. www.khaleejtimes.com/keeping-jane-austenalive-in-pakistan. Cutts, Elmer H. 1953. “The Background of Macaulay’s Minute.” The American Historical Review 58 (4): 824–53. De Groot, Jerome. 2009. The Historical Novel. Florence, UK: Routledge. Evans, Eric. 2002. “Englishness and Britishness: National Identities, c. 1790  – c. 1870.” In Uniting the Kingdom? The Making of British History, edited by Alexander Grant and Keith John Stringer, 223–43. New York: Routledge. Evans, Stephen. 2002. “Macaulay’s Minute Revisited: Colonial Language Policy in Nineteenth-Century India.” Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 23 (4): 260–81. Fern, Edward F. 2001. Advanced Focus Group Research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Fletcher, Lisa, Beth Driscoll, and Kim Wilkins. 2018. “Genre Worlds and Popular Fiction: The Case of Twenty-First-Century Australian Romance.” The Journal of Popular Culture 51 (4): 997–1015. Frykenberg, Robert E. 1988. “The Myth of English as a ‘Colonialist’ Imposition upon India: A Reappraisal with Special Reference to South India.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain & Ireland 120 (02): 305–15. Gunning, Dave. 2013. Postcolonial Literature. 2013th ed. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Hollander, Jocelyn A. 2004. “The Social Contexts of Focus Groups.” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 33 (5): 602–37.

112

R omance , A usten , E nglish - medium in P akistan

Hopkins, Lisa, ed. 2018. After Austen: Reinventions, Rewritings, Revisitings. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan. Hughes, Helen. 1993. The Historical Romance. New York: Routledge. Kamal, Soniah. 2019a. Unmarriageable. New York: Ballantine Books. ———2019b. “When Tourists Come Home.” In Women Writers, Women’s Books. Accessed March 27, 2019. http://booksbywomen.org/when-tourists-come-home/. Kloester, Jennifer. 2005. Georgette Heyer’s Regency World. 2nd ed. Naperville, IL: Source Books. Langford, Paul. 2000. Englishness Identified: Manners and Character 1650–1850. 2003rd ed. New York: Oxford University Press. Langlands, Rebecca. 1999. “Britishness or Englishness? The Historical Problem of National Identity in Britain.” Nations and Nationalism 5 (1): 53–69. Loomba, Ania. 2005. Colonialism/Postcolonialism. 2nd ed The New Critical Idiom. London: Routledge. Lynch, Deidre Shauna. 2005. “Cult of Jane Austen.” In Jane Austen in Context, edited by Janet M. Todd. The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Jane Austen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Macaulay, Thomas Babington. 1935. Speeches by Lord Macaulay: With His Minute on Indian Education, edited by Geoffrey Cumberlege. 1952nd ed. London: Oxford University Press. McLeod, John. 2010. Beginning Postcolonialism. 2011th ed. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Mohsin, Moni. 2017. “Austenistan.” The Economist. Accessed March  4, 2018. www.economist.com/1843/2017/10/09/austenistan. Murphy, Richard McGill. 2000. “The Hairbrush and the Dagger.” In Mass Mediations: New Approaches to Popular Culture in the Middle East and Beyond, edited by Walter Armbrust, 203–23. Berkeley: University of California Press. Naqvi, Maniza. 2018. “Pakistani English Fiction’s Search for Approval and Recognition.” Herald Magazine. Accessed March 5, 2018. https://herald.dawn.com/ news/1154041. OED Online. n.d. Cultural, Adj. and n. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Accessed July 31, 2020. www.oed.com/view/Entry/45742. Rahman, Tariq. 2001. “English-Teaching Institutions in Pakistan.” Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 22 (3): 242–61. ——— 2002a. Language, Ideology and Power: Language-Learning among the Muslims of Pakistan and North India. Karachi, Pakistan: Oxford University Press. ——— 2002b. “Language, Power and Ideology.” Economic and Political Weekly 37 (44/45): 4556–60. ——— 2005a. “Passports to Privilege: The English-Medium Schools in Pakistan.” Peace and Democracy in South Asia 1 (1): 24–44. ——— 2005b. “The Muslim Response to English in South Asia: With Special Reference to Inequality, Intolerance, and Militancy in Pakistan.” Journal of Language, Identity & Education 4 (2): 119–35. ——— 2008. “Language Policy, Multilingualism, and Language Vitality in Pakistan.” In Lesser-Known Languages of South Asia: Status and Policies, Case Studies and Applications of Information Technology, edited by Anju Saxena and Lars Borin. New York: Walter de Gruyter.

113

J avaria F arooqui

Ramsdell, Kristin. 2012. Romance Fiction: A Guide to the Genre. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, LLC. Regis, Pamela. 2007. A Natural History of the Romance Novel. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Rossi, Catherine A., and Gloria E. Bader. 1998. Focus Groups: A  Step-By-Step Guide. San Diego, CA: Bader Group. Sandhu, Priti. 2014. “ ‘Who Does She Think She Is?’ – Vernacular Medium and Failed Romance.” Journal of Language, Identity & Education 13 (1): 16–33. Schwarz, Henry, and Sangeeta Ray, eds. 2000. A Companion to Postcolonial Studies. Blackwell Companions in Cultural Studies 2. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Shamim, Fauzia. 2008. “Trends, Issues and Challenges in English Language Education in Pakistan.” Asia Pacific Journal of Education 28 (3): 235–49. Sukhera, Laaleen, ed. 2017. Austenistan. New Delhi: Bloomsbury. ——— 2018. “Jane Austen in Pakistan – Literature Interview by Eleanor Turney.” British Council Library Pakistan Blog. Accessed June 4, 2017. https://literature. britishcouncil.org/blog/2018/jane-austen-in-pakistan/. ——— 2019. “The Jane Austen Society of Pakistan: On Synergy and Sisterhood.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 61 (4): 486–90. Suleri, Sara. 1992. The Rhetoric of English India. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Tamim, Tayyaba. 2013. “Higher Education, Languages, and the Persistence of Inequitable Structures for Working-Class Women in Pakistan.” Gender and Education 25 (2): 155–69. Viswanathan, Gauri. 1987. “The Beginnings of English Literary Study in British India.” Oxford Literary Review 9 (1): 2–26. ——— 1989. Masks of Conquest: Literary Study and British Rule in India. Social Foundations of Aesthetic Forms Series. New York: Columbia University Press. Wallace, Diana. 2004. The Woman’s Historical Novel: British Women Writers, 1900–2000. London: Palgrave Macmillan. ——— 2012. “Difficulties, Discontinuities and Differences: Reading Women’s Historical Fiction.” In The Female Figure in Contemporary Historical Fiction, edited by Katherine Cooper and Emma Short, 206–21. London: Palgrave Macmillan. “We Don’t Really See Mr Darcy.” n.d. BBC News. Accessed July 26, 2020. www. bbc.com/news/av/world-asia-42417897/meet-the-jane-austen-society-of-pakistan. Young, James O. 2010. Cultural Appropriation and the Arts. Malden, MA: John Wiley & Sons. Young, Robert. 2005. Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race. London: Routledge. Ziff, Bruce H., and Pratima V. Rao. 1997. “Introduction to Cultural Appropriation: A Framework for Analysis.” In Borrowed Power: Essays on Cultural Appropriation, edited by Bruce Ziff and Pratima V. Rao, 1–30. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Zubair, Shirin. 2003. “Women’s Critical Literacies in a Pakistani Classroom.” Changing English 10 (2): 163–73.

114

6 MUSLIMS IN SRI LANKAN LANGUAGE POLITICS Tamil- and English-medium education Christina P. Davis

Sri Lanka is a postcolonial nation, which, from 1983 to 2009 was r­ avaged by a civil war between the Sinhala-majority government and a northern Tamil insurgency group, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Largely excluded from mainstream representations of the ethnic conflict, Muslims or Moors constitute the country’s second largest minority group.1 In contrast to Sinhalas and Tamils, they define their ethnic identities in terms of religion rather than language. The politics of Sri Lankan Muslim identity has significance for studies of language and education in South Asia and beyond. This chapter incorporates research conducted at a trilingual government school called Girls’ College in Kandy, Sri Lanka during the last phase of the war. I investigate how Muslim teachers and students made sense of Tamil- and English-medium education in relation to their separate ethno-religious identity and class differences. Analyzing Sri Lankan Muslims’ sociolinguistic practices and ideas about language, we can understand how postcolonial groups relate their identities to medium of instruction or medium, as well as how global English informs local ethnopolitics. Sinhalas (Buddhist or Christian) make up the majority of Sri Lanka’s population (74.9 per cent). They speak Sinhala, an Indo-Aryan language related to the languages of North India. There are several Tamil-speaking minority groups. North and East Tamils (11.2 per cent), alternately referred to as Sri Lankan Tamils, have lived on the island for centuries, primarily in the north and east, but also in urban areas in the Sinhala-majority south like Kandy and Colombo. Up-country Tamils (4.2 per cent), referred to as malaiyaha “hill region/area” or malainaaTTu “hill country” Tamils, are descendants of migrants who arrived from South India during the British period (1815– 1948) to work as plantation laborers in the central highlands (Daniel 1996). Members of both Tamil groups are predominantly Hindu, with a significant Christian minority. Muslims make up 9.2 per cent of the population. They 115

C hristina P . D avis

can be traced back to pre-Islamic seafaring trade between South and Southeast Asia and the Middle East (both Arab and Persian), as well as Arab Muslim mercantile trade in the first part of the seventh century (McGilvray and Raheem 2007). The majority of Sri Lankan Muslims speak Tamil as a first language, but the government classifies them as an ethnic minority group on the basis of their religion (Imtiyaz and Hoole 2011; McGilvray and Raheem 2007; Thiranagama 2011). This contrasts with Muslims in Tamil Nadu, India, who accept both linguistic (Tamil) and religious (Muslim) identities (see McGilvray 2008; Ramaswamy 1997). Categories of identity related to religion, caste, region, and language were fluid in precolonial Sri Lanka (Rogers 1994; Wickramasinghe 2006). In the mid-twentieth century language-based ethnicity emerged as a primary mode of sociocultural and political identification for Sinhalas and Tamils (Daniel 1996; Spencer 1990). In the late nineteenth century, Muslim leaders situated themselves as a separate racial group from Tamils in order to obtain separate political representation in the colonial government. Southern urbanbased Muslim leaders gradually constructed a pan-Islamic identity in the mid-twentieth century, which allowed them to distance themselves from the Sinhala – Tamil conflict (McGilvray and Raheem 2007). In Sri Lanka, post-independence policy makers switched the medium in government schools from English to Sinhala and Tamil. Medium divisions are not just a matter of state policy. They constitute an important ideological framework for the production and reproduction of social differences (LaDousa 2014). And, as Chaise LaDousa (2014) has argued, discourses of medium often do not fully reflect how individuals conceive of language in relation to their social lives. Sri Lankan schools are organized according to their medium and religious affiliation (Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, and Muslim). In policy and practice, medium divisions are intertwined with the concept of “mother tongue.” The English term mother tongue is used in Sri Lanka to describe a person’s first or predominant language.2 As consistent with the Herderian notion of one language/one people, it also takes on a moral significance “as the one first and therefore real language of a speaker, transparent to the true self” (Woolard 1998, 18). I do not treat mother tongue as an objective feature of the world, but as an ideologically mediated concept, which, as such, is politically and morally driven (LaDousa 2010; also see Hastings 2008; Mitchell 2009). In the 1940s and 1950s public education was treated as a “right of an individual within a community or ethnic group rather than an individual right” (de Silva 1998, 59). Sinhalas and Tamils were required to study in their respective mother tongues.3 Muslims, who had conflicted views about what constituted their mother tongue, were given special provisions as a predominantly Tamil-speaking group with a distinct ethnic identity from Tamils. They were allowed to study in the Tamil or Sinhala medium. Recent 116

M uslims in S ri L ankan language politics

changes to language policies in government schools gave Sri Lankan students additional options. Acknowledging the importance of English in the global economy, the Ministry of Education introduced English bilingual programs in some large government schools in 2001. This has allowed some students to take courses in English at the secondary level (Davis 2015, 2020a). Kandy is a large city located in a mountainous region of the Central Province, which is one of nine provinces in Sri Lanka. A  symbolic center for Buddhism and the Buddhist state, it is also a multilingual and multiethnic urban center (Tambiah 1986). Girls’ College is a former Christian missionary school founded in the late nineteenth century. Currently a Sinhala Buddhist national school managed by the Ministry of Education, it is one of the leading girls’ educational institutions on the island. Its students come from lower-middle to middle-class backgrounds.4 It is one of the few schools in Kandy to offer subjects in both the Sinhala and Tamil mediums, as well as an English bilingual program. Some Muslims study in the Sinhala or bilingual mediums; most study in Tamil. I examine how Tamil-medium Muslim teachers, in their interactions with non-Muslim teachers and with me, asserted how their heterogeneous linguistic practices were inextricably linked to their distinct ethno-religious identities. Then, I look at how Muslim students’ lack of fit with the ethnolinguistic models presupposed by the school helped them embrace Englishmedium education. However, drawing on LaDousa’s (2014) discussion of the limits of medium divisions as orienting frameworks, I  show how the introduction of a bilingual program at Girls’ College complicated Muslim teachers’ and their students’ discourses of language and identity by underscoring the relevance of English to class divisions and access to global networks. Sri Lankans have long been motivated to learn English because of its association with elite social status. Globalization has even increased youths’ desire to be proficient in the language (Canagarajah 2005). Rather than addressing the role of English in assumed cultural homogenization, recent ethnographic studies have examined how people around the world position it in relation to other languages (Annamalai 2004; Canagarajah 2013; Higgins 2009; Pennycook 2007; Ramanathan 2005). Alastair Pennycook (2013), for one, calls for an investigation into how English is used and appropriated by users and how global cultural flows are taken up in local ways. Drawing on this literature, this chapter demonstrates how orientations to global English mediate ethnopolitical identities and everyday social relations.

Methods I conducted research at Girls’ College from February to August 2008. My time there coincided with a tense period in the Sri Lankan civil war, which 117

C hristina P . D avis

abruptly ended in May 2009. Between 2007 and 2009, the Sri Lankan military made a massive push to gain control of the last LTTE-held territories in the northern Vanni region; military and civilian casualities numbered in the tens of thousands (Thiranagama 2011). Though Sri Lankans living in Kandy and elsewhere in the south were at a safe distance from the battle zones in the north and east, they lived in fear of civilian-targeted violence. Tamil-speaking minorities (Muslims and Tamils) experienced discrimination from the Sinhala Buddhist majority (Davis 2014). My investigation was part of a broader study of multilingual practices and ideologies of linguistic and social difference among Kandy Muslim and Tamil youth inside and outside schools. The research for this chapter consisted of observing and recording interactions among Tamil-medium teachers and students in staff rooms, classrooms, and other spaces around the school. I also attended English- and Sinhala-medium classes and taught English to students in the grades 8 and 9 English bilingual program. I supplemented my research by visiting teachers and students in their homes. My experience was mediated by my identity as a white American female and my language proficiency. The high level of proficiency in Tamil I acquired from over a decade of Tamil language study in India and the United States enabled me to interact easily with the Girls’ College Tamil-medium teachers and students. Before turning to Girls’ College, in the following sections I discuss the structure of the national education system and southern Muslims’ ethnopolitical relationship with the Tamil language.

Regimenting medium and ethnicity During the British period, a bifurcated system of education developed in Sri Lanka: local elites were educated in fee-levying English-medium schools, while the masses were educated in free Sinhala- and Tamil-medium schools (Little 2003). In the postcolonial period, policy makers advocated moving away from English to address the gap between the Anglophone elites and the majority of the population, who controlled the vote (Canagarajah 2005). From the mid-1940s to the 1950s, as part of the swabasha “own language” movement popular among both Sinhalas and Tamils, the government replaced English with Sinhala and Tamil instruction in government schools (see Chapter  9). In the mid-1950s, Sinhala Buddhist nationalists who were angered over the overrepresentation of English-educated Jaffna (northern) Tamils in the civil service, transformed the swabasha movement into a “Sinhala only” movement (Devotta 2004; Tambiah 1986). In 1956, the newly elected Sinhala nationalist government passed the Sinhala-Only Act. This policy was modified in 1987 when Tamil was ­ declared a co-official language, and English a link language (this phrase was ill defined). The Sinhala-Only Act was particularly significant in that it made Sinhala fluency a requirement for all government jobs. Though it 118

M uslims in S ri L ankan language politics

negatively affected all Tamil-speaking groups, including Muslims, it was particularly detrimental to English-educated Jaffna Tamils, who had relied on government and professional employment in the south (Tambiah 1986). In the early 1970s, the government passed a new policy regulating university admissions on the basis of language. It benefited the other Tamil-speaking groups, but this policy hurt Jaffna Tamils as it meant that they had to acquire higher marks on the qualifying exams than their Sinhala counterparts did. A year later, a district quota system was adopted to compensate for children in rural areas who did not have access to high quality schools (Sørensen 2008). While the causes of the ethnic conflict are highly complex (see Spencer 1990; Tambiah 1986), post-independence language and education policies are widely thought to have increased ethnic tensions (Davis 2020a, 2020b; Thiranagama 2011). The gradual takeover of schools by the state and the change in medium combined to create a centralized system in which all school-aged children were guaranteed a free education in their first language (Little 2003). Though it increased access to education, the new system did not alter the social landscape as much as was anticipated. Sinhala became the language of the central administration, but English remained the unofficial code of “higher education, commerce, communication, technology and travel” (Canagarajah 2005, 423). Some Sri Lankans educated in Sinhala and Tamil obtained mid-level government jobs, but the English-educated middle classes retained preferential access to professional employment at home and abroad (2005). Sri Lankan social groups who have been traditionally deprived of English often feel alienated from it, seeing it as a symbol of discrimination. Speaking to its divisive role in Sri Lankan society, English is widely referred to as kaduva “sword” in spoken Sinhala (Gunesekera 2005; Kandiah 2010). Post-independence education policies also had unexpected consequences for interethnic relations. The organization of schools on the basis of medium systematized and exacerbated the geographic segregation of Sinhalas and Tamils (Perera, Wijetunga, and Balasooriya 2004; Wijesekera, Alford, and Mu 2019; see Chapter 9). In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the National Education Commission introduced education reforms designed to promote interethnic integration. It required students to study their additional coofficial language and emphasized English (National Education Commission 2003). While the reforms may have positive consequences, they do not represent a substantial change in the overall structure of education (Davis 2020a). Though decentralized in 1987, the Sri Lankan education system remains somewhat centralized by virtue of the standardized Sinhala- and Tamilmedium curriculum. The education system is organized into five levels: primary (grades 1–5), junior secondary (grades 6–9), senior secondary (grades 10–11), collegiate (grades 12–13), and tertiary (university). Students take three national exams: the grade 5 scholarship exam, the General Certificate 119

C hristina P . D avis

Table 6.1  Ethnicity, Mother Tongue, and Medium in Sri Lankan Schools Ethnicity

Mother tongue

Medium

Religion

Sinhala

Sinhala

Tamil (Up-country and North and East) Muslim (southern)

Tamil

Sinhala or English bilingual Tamil or English bilingual Tamil, Sinhala, or English bilingual

Buddhism or Christianity Hinduism or Christianity Islam

?

of Education (G. C. E.) Ordinary-level (O Level) exam, which determines their entrance to the collegiate level, and the G. C. E. Advanced-level (A Level) exam, which is a university entrance exam. While schools are officially organized on the basis of medium and religion, teachers and students widely refer to them by their ethnic affiliations. The education system thus naturalizes the ideological conflation of language (mother tongue), medium, and ethnicity. However, the presence of Muslims, a social group that defines itself on the basis of religion, seemingly interrupts this conflation (see Table 6.1).

Southern Muslims, mother tongue, and medium Southern Muslim leaders first promoted their separate racial identity as “Ceylon Moors” in the late nineteenth century to establish a claim to separate political representation (McGilvray and Raheem 2007). The Legislative Council was a governing body comprised of non-official members who represented distinct racial groups. Ponnambalam Ramanathan (1851–1930), a Tamil Hindu politician, was the “Tamil” representative (he was also thought to represent Tamil-speaking Moors) (Thiranagama 2011). In 1885, he made a speech to the other members that used physical, social, and cultural evidence to argue that the Moors of Ceylon were ethnologically Tamils. His speech angered southern Muslim leaders because it denied their right to separate political representation. I. L. M. Abdul Azeez (1867–1950), a prominent Colombo-based lawyer and Muslim leader, explained in response that Sri Lankan Muslims only spoke Tamil as a first language because their Arab ancestors had adopted the local language for convenience. He denied the physical resemblance of Muslims to Tamils, but accepted the mixture of Muslim and Tamil blood, explaining that some Arab traders had intermarried with local Tamil women (Nuhman 2007; Samaraweera 1997). I. L. M. Abdul Azeez’s arguments reconciled Muslims’ widespread use of Tamil with their non-Tamil identity. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, some Muslim leaders emphasized Sri Lankan Muslims’ lack of attachment to any particular language. Others, influenced by language-based 120

M uslims in S ri L ankan language politics

models of ethnicity, debated whether Arabic, Tamil, or Sinhala should be their mother tongue (McGilvray and Raheem 2007). In 1884, M. C. Siddi Lebbe (1838–1898), a prominent Colombo-based Muslim leader, cited historical reasons to make the case that Arabic is the mother tongue of Muslims. Two years later, he suggested that Muslims study Arabic, Tamil, English, and Sinhala. He added that Arabic was of particular importance because it is the language of the religion of Muslims. In the mid-twentieth century, Deshamanya Badiuddin Mahmud (1904–1997), a Colombo-based politician, argued that Muslims should adopt Sinhala as their mother tongue. A. M. A. Azeez (1911–1973), an intellectual who grew up in Jaffna, stated that Tamil is the mother tongue of Muslims because it is their home language (Imtiyaz and Hoole 2011; McGilvray and Raheem 2007; Nuhman 2007). Sri Lankan Muslims’ differing views regarding the issue of mother tongue reflect their diversity as a community. Historically, linguistically, socioculturally, economically, and politically distinct from their counterparts in the war-ravaged north and east, southern Muslims live in scattered pockets among Sinhalas and/or Tamils (O’Sullivan 1999).5 Their vulnerability visà-vis Sinhalas and Tamils shaped their participation in Sri Lankan politics in the twentieth century. The Sinhala-Muslim riots of 1915, which started in Kandy and spread to Colombo, caused Muslims to seek the protection of the British government. Political issues related to the riots turned Muslims against Tamil leaders and the possibility of “Tamil-speaking” ethnic solidarity (Thiranagama 2011). After Muslim candidates were defeated in the independent nation’s first elections in 1948, they switched to a policy of accommodation with the Sinhala-majority government, a strategy that brought them valuable concessions. For example, during his tenure as Minister of Education in the early 1970s, Deshamanya Badiuddin Mahmud convinced the government to open Muslim training colleges, a new category of Muslim government schools, and fund the development of a curriculum for teaching Islam in schools (McGilvray and Raheem 2007). Eastern Muslims’ ethnic and political interests merged with the formation of the Sri Lankan Muslim Congress in 1981, but southern Muslims have continued to support mainstream political parties (McGilvray 2008). Changes in economic policies in the 1970s, combined with their growing interest in pursuing formal education, contributed to the growth of a sizable southern Muslim middle class. Labor migration to the Gulf States and the influence of transnational Islamic organizations strengthened their panIslamic identity (McGilvray and Raheem 2007; O’Sullivan 1999). Many urban southern Muslims identify themselves as bilinguals in Tamil and Sinhala. Some middle-class southern Muslims primarily speak English or Sinhala, though they use Tamil for in-group communication. Many Muslims in Kandy and elsewhere in the south speak a distinct variety of colloquial Tamil, widely referred to as Muslim Tamil. This variety, which varies regionally, is distinguished by its large number of Perso-Arabic loan 121

C hristina P . D avis

words and unique grammatical patterns (Hussein 2007; Nuhman 2007; Suseendirarajah 1999). The term Arabic Tamil is sometimes used to refer to Sri Lankan Muslim Tamil, but it more accurately describes a genre of Tamil literature written in Arabic script by Muslims in South India and Sri Lanka that dates back to the eighth century (Nuhman 2007). Southern Muslims still debate over the issue of mother tongue. Some Kandy Muslims told me that they did not have a mother tongue at all; others stated that Arabic was their mother tongue. A small number of Sri Lankan Muslims learn Arabic in the Gulf States or study it at madrasahs (schools for Islamic learning), but most do not have Arabic proficiency beyond reciting the Quran. As I discuss subsequently, when Kandy Muslim teachers and parents asserted that their mother tongue was Arabic, they did not mean it was their predominant language. Rather, they meant to stress its importance to their religion and their ethno-religious identity (Nuhman 2007). Kandy Muslims may select Sinhala or Tamil mediums for varied reasons. Some Muslim students told me that they chose Sinhala to better their chance of obtaining a government job. Others mentioned that they would have less competition for admissions to public universities if they chose Tamil. In Kandy, the majority of Muslims study in Tamil in government schools and compete with Tamils for entrance to Tamil-medium streams at public universities and Tamil-medium government jobs.6 Although Muslims are among Kandy’s poor and uneducated populations, there is also a significant Kandy Muslim middle-class employed in business, government, and professions such as law and medicine. This population has also financially benefited from remittances from the Gulf States. Kandy Tamil educators often described Muslims as a politically well-connected and wealthy group that they fear will encroach upon their Tamil-medium state educational resources (Davis 2020a). Although this topic is outside the scope of this chapter, Muslims have faced severe challenges in the postwar period. They have been targeted by right-wing Sinhala Buddhist nationalists, resulting in mob attacks on Muslim businesses, vehicles, and mosques (see Aliff 2015). In addition, anti-Muslim sentiments increased following the April  2019 Easter bombings (see Amarasingam 2019). I spoke with Tamil educators who had trouble reconciling Muslims’ social detachment from Tamil with their educational achievement in the language. Dr. Srivasan, an Up-country Tamil Hindu lecturer at the University of Colombo argued that the Muslims’ disavowal of Tamil as a mother tongue was misleading because it suggested that they were studying it as their second language. He added that his Muslim students actually write better Tamil than his Tamil students, and that the winners of the national Tamil literary awards are usually Muslims from the east, where Tamil is the main language. A  Muslim Professor at the University of Peradeniya, Dr. Amen, also distinguished Muslims’ ideological views about language from their sociolinguistic practices. He said that despite Muslims’ conflicted 122

M uslims in S ri L ankan language politics

views on the matter, “I accept that our language is basically Tamil.” In the following section, I investigate how Girls’ College Tamil-medium Muslim teachers made sense of ideologies of linguistic, ethnic, and religious difference in practice. I focus on how they responded to Tamils’ critiques of their speech by relating their sociolinguistic practices to their separate ethno-­ religious identities.

The Girls’ College Tamil-medium stream Sociolinguistic hierarchies At Girls’ College in 2008, there were 2,990 (67 per cent) students in the Sinhala-medium stream and 971 (33 per cent) students in the Tamil-medium stream. Though Tamils could study in the Sinhala medium at some of Kandy’s private and semi-private schools, they were not permitted at Girls’ College. Some Muslims were admitted into the Sinhala medium, though the majority studied in Tamil. Muslim parents told me that only families with wealth or political connections could get their children admitted to the Sinhala medium. The Sinhala-medium stream was about 90 per cent Sinhala and 10 per cent Muslim, and the Tamil-medium stream was about 50 per cent Tamil and 50 per cent Muslim. Sinhala- and Tamil-medium students could qualify to enter the English bilingual stream in grade 5. At Girls’ College, the Tamil-medium students were separated from the Sinhala-medium students in academic and extracurricular contexts. Most Tamil-medium classrooms were located in a separate building, which also housed the Tamil-medium staff room. The Tamil-medium teachers differed from one another in relation to ethnicity, religion, caste (for Hindus), class, region of origin, and level of English proficiency. Yet they frequently grouped themselves into the following categories: Jaffna Tamils (Tamils from the Jaffna peninsula); Batticaloa Tamils (Tamils from Sri Lanka’s eastern coastal region) (McGilvray 2008); Up-country Tamils (Tamil descendants of plantation laborers) (Bass 2013); and Muslims who came from all over Sri Lanka. Tamil (like Sinhala) has been widely described as a diglossic language because of the differences between literary and colloquial forms of the language (Schiffman 1999). Diglossia refers to opposed yet related varieties that may be ranked as high or low, formal or informal, or literary or vernacular (Ferguson 1991; Fishman 1965). However, as Woolard and Schieffelin (1994) observe, diglossia is not so much a description of sociolinguistic situations than an ideological rationalization of those situations. Girls’ College Tamil-medium teachers often said that classroom interactions were supposed to be in literary Tamil; in practice teachers and students mixed both literary and colloquial varieties (see Davis 2012, 2020a). Teachers described literary Tamil as being fairly uniform, but they socially differentiated the spoken language into Jaffna Tamil, Batticaloa Tamil, Up-country Tamil, and 123

C hristina P . D avis

Muslim Tamil. These varieties differ from one another in terms of lexicon and grammar (Suseendirarajah 1999). In the colonial period, Jaffna Tamils – and Batticaloa Tamils, to a lesser extent – had privileged access to English-medium missionary education. As they were rendered stateless following the 1948 Ceylon Citizenship Act, Up-country Tamils had little choice but to attend poor-quality plantation schools (Little 2003). Although there was a small urban-based Anglophone Muslim elite in the colonial period, Muslims were generally late to come to Western education because of the association of missionary schools with Christian proselytization (Nuhman 2007). While the majority of schoolteachers used to be Jaffna and Batticaloa Tamils, significant demographic and institutional shifts in education occurred after the outbreak of the civil war in 1983. Large numbers of Jaffna and Batticaloa Tamils fled Sri Lanka, seeking asylum abroad (Daniel 1996). During this period, Up-country Tamils and Muslims made significant strides in education. Upcountry Tamils’ educational progress was related to the nationalization of state schools, and the fact that most gained citizenship by 1988 (Bass 2013; Little 2003). Muslims first enrolled in free state schools in the 1940s and 1950s but made further progress in the 1970s and 1980s (Nuhman 2013; O’Sullivan 1999). At Girls’ College, there was an equal proportion of North and East Tamil, Up-country Tamil, and Muslim teachers. Though North and East Tamils frequently claimed that their Tamil was the “best,” most teachers and students produced what I refer to as “normalized” Up-country Tamil. While it is influenced by Jaffna Tamil, it is closer to South India Tamil varieties (Davis 2020a). Inspired by my research project on Tamil language practices, teachers would highlight differences in the Tamil spoken in the Tamil-medium staff room. Once, for example, they named the words for beautiful in different varieties of spoken Tamil: vaDivu in Jaffna Tamil, pasundu in Muslim Tamil, and azhahu in “normalized” Up-country Tamil. While these encounters felt like a celebration of Tamil linguistic difference, non-Muslim teachers often described Muslim teachers’ speech as peculiar. They singled out the speech of Muslim teachers who were from the lower income areas outside Kandy. Rasha was a Muslim home science teacher in her 50s from Balangoda, an ethnically mixed city in the Sabaragamuwa Province, south of Kandy. She wore a sari with a hijab: a style of dress preferred by most Muslim teachers. The Up-country Tamil history and Tamil literature teacher, Geetha, would frequently point out Rasha’s speech to me. In some regions, it is common for Muslims to pronounce ச ([s]) as [ ʃ ]. In one instance, Geetha, in the presence of Rasha, sung the lyrics from a Tamil film song, chinna aasai “little desire,” pronouncing aasai “desire” as aashai. Geetha and other teachers cited Rasha’s speech as an example of Muslim Tamil, but Rasha was quick to stress that it was not “Muslim” but “Balangoda” Tamil. That is, she

124

M uslims in S ri L ankan language politics

emphasized her speech as a regional variety (of Muslim Tamil) rather than a uniform ethno-religious variety. When Muslim teachers were absent from the staff room, non-Muslim teachers sometimes severely criticized their Tamil. Once, I asked the female Jaffna Tamil music teacher, Jayanthi, and the male Batticaloa Tamil math teacher, Ravi, to fill out a survey written in Tamil that I was distributing to teachers. It was designed to elicit their language ideologies. Jayanthi read question 21 aloud in Tamil: “Do you think the Tamil language is important for Islam?” Ravi immediately replied “eppaDidaan sonnaalum, avangaLukku teevayille tamizh teevayille” (However you may say it, for them Tamil is no use, no use). He then used an offensive metaphor to characterize Muslims’ Tamil speech:7 Ravi: anda paNDiya koNDuvandu viiTTila nippaaTTi, nallaa kulippaTTi, soop pooTTu, sunsilk pooTTu, kazhuvi tuDacci viiTTa suhaadaaramaa, nalla niiT aakki koNDu vandu vakkiRataam. avittu viTToom enna naDandadaam? oree oTTamaa oDi anda uuttakkuLLa pooy kiDakkumaam. ada pooy saappiDumaam. aadavee niingaL evvaLudaa(n) solli kuDuttaalum, iikkidu enDudaan sollum.

If you take that pig to your home, it seems, bathe it well, put soap on it, put Sunsilk (a shampoo brand) on it, wash and dry it hygienically, make it “neat.” We untied it and what happened, it seems? It will run in the same dirt, it seems. It will go and eat [the dirt], it seems. Like that, no matter how much you teach [them], it seems, [they] will always say “iikkidu” (the verb “to be”).

Likely intentionally trying to be shocking, Ravi likened Muslims to pigs, a reviled animal in Islam. He cited the shortening of the Tamil verb “to be” irukkudu to “iikkidu” – common in southern Muslim varieties – as an emblematic representation of Muslim Tamil speech. He argued that no matter how much you teach Muslims to speak “normalized” Tamil, they will immediately return to their own language, which he likened to the filth in which a pig rolls. Ravi thus treated Muslim Tamil as an inalienable part of the Muslim self. Muslims’ sociolinguistic orientations Girls’ College Muslim teachers responded to critiques of their speech by explaining how their sociolinguistic tendencies differed from that of Tamils. They sometimes invoked diglossic models to describe their speech. Nabiha was a Tamil-medium Muslim geography teacher who lived in Kandy and held a bachelor of arts degree from the University of Peradeniya. She had middle-class status as a result of her husband’s job in Saudi Arabia. Her

125

C hristina P . D avis

signature look was to wear a sari with one of the Calvin Klein hijabs her husband had given her. One day I went to the school canteen with Nabiha, Geetha, and Ravi. When Ravi started making fun of a new Muslim teacher’s speech, Nabiha and Geetha responded that not all Muslims speak like that. Later, Nabiha observed that Muslims use different language at home and at school. She then added: Nabiha: uNmaiyaana tamizh kadachchaa engaDa aakkal sirippaanga. veDDing hovus-ukku ella(m) pooy appaDi peesunaa sirippaanga. avanga ninaikkiRadu naanga veeNunu peesuRoonu(m).

If we speak real Tamil our people will laugh. If [you] go to a wedding house (a place where a wedding is held) and all and speak like that they will laugh. They will think that we are speaking that way purposefully like that.

In essence, Nabiha diglossically argued that uNmaiyaana “real” Tamil is appropriate in school, while Muslim Tamil varieties are suitable only at home. Implicit in this is the observation that Muslims have the ability to code-switch. Nabiha’s comments also spoke to the solidarity value of Muslim Tamil in the home, as a counter legitimate language (Woolard 1985). A few days later, Nabiha invited me to join her for tea at her younger sister’s home, where her mother also lived. When I brought up the previous interaction (the other family members were in back), she used the concept of mother tongue to describe her speech. Her Tamil is “broken,” she admitted in a mix of Tamil and English, but that did not matter much to her since Arabic is her mother tongue. She added that she tried to speak “real” Tamil at school so the students would not laugh at her. By using the term “broken,” she was likely referring to the lexical and grammatical features characteristic of Muslim Tamil. While Nabiha had made it clear on many occasions that Tamil was her home language, in this interaction she emphasized Arabic as her mother tongue as a way to justify her use of a Tamil that is not deemed correct or appropriate in Tamil-medium educational settings (Davis 2012, 2020a). Tamil-medium Muslim teachers at Girls’ College described their sociolinguistic tendencies in different ways. In the late 1990s, the government started a new initiative that required all school students to study their “additional” official language in grade 6–10 (Tamil for Sinhala-medium students and Sinhala for Tamil-medium students). Throughout the south, it was common for Muslims to teach Tamil-as-a-second language (TSL) classes to Sinhalamedium students in government schools because they were widely identified as bilingual in Sinhala. Many Kandy Tamils also spoke Sinhala, but some Girls’ College Tamil teachers noted that Muslims often spoke Sinhala more fluently than Tamils. Fatima, a recent hire, was a young and enthusiastic 126

M uslims in S ri L ankan language politics

woman from a Muslim-majority town outside Kandy. Though she had studied in the Tamil medium, some non-Muslim teachers questioned her ability to teach TSL. I  accompanied Fatima to her grade 8 TSL class. She went over Tamil words for flora and fauna from the government TSL textbook. I  spoke to her for a few minutes while the students completed an assignment. Seemingly referring to non-Muslim teachers’ critiques of her speech, she explained that she actually did not know some of the sutta “pure” Tamil words for flora and fauna in the textbook. She explained that she spoke Tamil at home, but used Sinhala words for foods and spices, and Arabic words for prayer times. Her emphasis on sociolinguistic heterogeneity, especially her mixing of Sinhala and Perso-Arabic words, sharply contrasted with Tamils’ claims of speaking a pure language (Davis 2020a). Nabiha and Fatima responded to negative evaluations of Muslims’ Tamil speech by pointing to the diversity and heterogeneity of their sociolinguistic practices. In addition to addressing critique of their speech, these teachers’ defense of their spoken language also underscored their separate ethno-­religious identity. While the presence of Muslims at Girls’ College interrupted the ideological conflation of language (mother tongue), medium, and ethnicity, Muslim teachers used their sociolinguistic proclivities to distinguish themselves from Tamils. Though there was some divisiveness between the Tamils and Muslims, Tamil-medium teachers also spoke of themselves as a unified group, particularly when comparing their students’ academic performances to those in the Sinhala-medium stream, or when discussing the lack of resources for Tamil-medium education in Kandy. Teachers’ relative class status, level of education, and proficiencies in Sinhala and English also inflected social relations. For example, though the teachers mainly spoke to one another in Tamil, they demonstrated an acute awareness of their relative skills in Sinhala and English. In the following section, I discuss how the introduction of the bilingual stream complicated Muslims’ narratives of their sociolinguistic proclivities in relation to their ethno-religious identities. While I do not attempt to fully represent Sri Lankans’ complex views toward English, I highlight the role of English in the negotiation of postcolonial identities in relation to local and global reference points.

The English bilingual stream Studying in the English bilingual stream In 2018, 7.3 per cent of government schools – most of them in urban areas – provided English bilingual programs (Department of Census and Statistics 2018). As a result of the dearth of qualified teachers (a consequence of the swabasha language policies), these programs only offered selected subjects in English. Bilingual programs are also available at many private and 127

C hristina P . D avis

semi-private schools.8 By contrast, students with significant financial means can obtain a full English-medium education at a special category of private school called international schools. Originally started in 1977 to educate the children of expatriates, these schools, which have grown in popularity since the 1990s, prepare students for international exams that are equivalent to the UK General Certificate of Secondary Education (de Silva 1999). The best of these offer a higher standard of English education than is available elsewhere (Gunesekera 2005). In 2008, the Girl’s College English bilingual stream (grades 6–11) offered math, science, and English literature in English (most A Level subjects were available in English). Students were admitted to the bilingual program on the basis of their results on the English portion of the national grade 5 scholarship exam, their identified home language(s), and other factors. Girls who came to the program from the Sinhala-medium stream (Sinhalas and Muslims) studied in separate bilingual classrooms where they took their English- and Sinhala-medium subjects. Students who transferred from the Tamil-medium stream (Tamils and Muslims) came to the bilingual classrooms for their English-medium subjects but returned to their Tamil-medium home classrooms for their Tamil-medium subjects and for English-as-a-subject. At Girls’ College, there was a noticeably higher number of Muslim students than Tamils in the bilingual program.9 In the grade 10 bilingual program, for example, there were eight Muslims and only one Tamil. Enrollment statistics are not available in bilingual programs with regard to ethnicity. But during my initial survey of Kandy and Colombo schools, I noticed a high proportion of Muslims in bilingual programs at government, private, and semi-private schools. International schools are also popular among Muslims; they have been mushrooming in areas with large Muslim populations (Nuhman 2013). I asked a grade 10 Up-country Tamil Hindu girl who was very strong in spoken English why she had decided not to enter the bilingual stream. Echoing a statement made by both Tamil-medium Tamil and Muslim girls, she said the bilingual program was not very reliable because it was new. She also noted that her mother, who had studied in Tamil medium, would not be able to help her with her English-medium subjects. Some students who had entered the bilingual program from the Tamil-medium stream told me that they found their English subjects difficult. As I directly observed, some of the Sinhala teachers who taught in the English medium used Sinhala in their lessons to provide additional explanations. Though most Tamil-medium girls could speak Sinhala, they were unfamiliar with the Sinhala academic register. The Girls’ College English-as-a-subject head, Mrs. Deen, explained why more Muslims join the bilingual program than Tamils. A Muslim woman of Malay heritage in her 50s, Mrs. Deen was one of the most senior teachers at the school. She stood out from other teachers because she studied in the English medium at a Kandy Catholic missionary school. She spoke Tamil 128

M uslims in S ri L ankan language politics

at home with her mother and was highly fluent in English and Sinhala. She wore an Indian-style sari without a hijab; a style of dress that she noted made her ethnic and religious identity ambiguous. However, she often referred to a callus on her forehead, the result of praying, as her Islamic bindi (a mark worn on the center of the forehead by Hindu and some Catholic women) (Davis 2020a). Mrs. Deen said that Tamils were skeptical about the bilingual stream because of their strong attachment to the Tamil language. In another conversation, she discussed the linguistic flexibility of Sri Lankan Muslims. She stated that “our mother tongue is Arabic, but when we are in areas with a lot of Tamil people we speak Tamil, and areas with a lot of Sinhala people we speak Sinhala, so our language is very mixed.” Mrs. Deen implied that Muslims’ lack of attachment to Tamil and Sinhala makes them open to studying in English. Her characterization of Arabic as the mother tongue of Muslims sociolinguistically distances them from both Tamils and Sinhalas. Thus, like Nabiha, Fatima, and other Girls’ College Muslim teachers, Mrs. Deen used language to assert Muslims’ separate ethno-religious identity. It is logical that postcolonial groups that do not ground their identities in national languages would embrace English given its association with upward mobility. Nuhman (2013) gives different reasons as for why Muslims pursue English-medium education. Citing the particularly high number of Muslims enrolling in international schools, he argues that Muslim parents’ have a strong desire for their children to speak English, because they equate the language with “knowledge, prestige, and pride” (2013, 10). He further posits that the neglect of Muslims by the state education system in the south (on the part of the state and Muslims themselves) may lead parents to favor international schools (2013). In our frequent conversations, Mrs. Deen advocated that all Sri Lankans learn English because it is an international language. She did not discuss English-medium education in relation to class inequalities. In Sri Lanka, there are clear socioeconomic disparities between families that send their children to the leading private and international schools and those that must settle for government schools (de Silva 1999). Though at Girls’ College the division between Sinhala-, Tamil-, and English-medium education did not neatly map onto socioeconomic level, many of the students in the bilingual program were characterized by their teachers and classmates as wealthy. In the following section, I discuss Sinhala, Tamil, and Muslim students’ complex orientations to English-medium education. Orientations to English Most of the girls in my grades 8 and 9 English classes (comprised of Sinhalas and Muslims) spoke English at home in addition to Sinhala and/or Tamil. While the Tamil-medium students went to Internet cafes, many of 129

C hristina P . D avis

the girls in my English class had home computers that they used to search Google or browse Facebook. Some of the Muslim girls referred to an English Islam program that they watched through satellite television. Though all students had to wear the government uniform, some of the Tamilmedium teachers said that you could tell the wealth of the girls in the bilingual program from their accessories, such as pink sapphire earrings or fancy pencil boxes. An Up-country Tamil student in the Tamil-medium stream noted that she had Sinhala-medium friends but found girls in the bilingual program too “posh,” a characterization that crosscut ethnic and religious divisions. I had a chance to elicit some students’ views on medium when a group of Sinhala girls in my grade 8 class did a debate on the merits of English- vs. Sinhala-medium education. Those arguing for English commented that it was far less complex than Sinhala and therefore easier to learn. One girl said that a knowledge of it was necessary in order to communicate with the world. Those arguing for the Sinhala side stated that it was their mother tongue, which they treated as a true or authentic language. They mentioned that Sinhala was important to the preservation of Sinhala culture. They also associated Sinhala with purity. This debate emphasized the contrast between English’s global utility, and the ostensible moral worth of Sinhala. While the Tamil-medium students also discussed the value of their mother tongue, they tended to underscore the more practical benefits of studying in the Tamil medium. In the following, I discuss the students’ motivations for studying in the bilingual stream by briefly discussing my interactions with three Tamil-medium girls (a Tamil and two Muslims) who had joined the bilingual stream. Maalini was an Up-country Tamil Hindu girl in grade 7. Unlike most Tamil-medium students, who spoke to me in a mix of Tamil and English, she only spoke to me in English. While many of her classmates exhibited Tamil or Sinhala phonological influence, her pronunciation was similar to elite varieties of English spoken in Sri Lanka. She chose to wear her hair short rather than in long braids in a style that her classmates referred to as modern. I  visited Maalini’s modest but well-kept home in a middle-class neighborhood southwest of Girls’ College in 2008. Her father was involved in business and her mother stayed at home. Given Maalini’s impressive spoken English skills, I was surprised to discover that Maalini and her family mainly spoke Tamil at home. During my visits, she spoke to her mother, father, and grandmother in Tamil mixed with English words and phrases, and to her older sister and me in English. Her sister told me that they had entered the United States Green Card lottery several times, but if they went abroad for higher education, it would likely just be to India because of financial constraints.10 When I asked Maalini’s English teacher why her English was so strong, she said that she had shown a keen interest in speaking English from a very early age. 130

M uslims in S ri L ankan language politics

Shameera was a grade 6 Muslim girl. She also only spoke to me in English. She lived in a large multi-generational family home southwest of Girls’ College, which happened to be right next to the annex where I stayed. I would often chat with her through the chain link fence that divided the two properties. I sometimes heard Tamil spoken by adults sitting outside Shameera’s house, but when I  tried to address her in Tamil she always responded in English. I initially assumed she refused to speak Tamil with me because she considered it a Muslim in-group language. However, her classmate told me that she did not speak to me in Tamil because her parents would scold her if she did. I asked one of Shameera’s teachers if this was true. She said that some middle-class Muslims do not allow their children to speak Tamil at home because they want English to become their primary language. Unlike Maalini and Shameera, many students struggled with the bilingual program. Muna was one such Muslim student in grade 7. She was from a lower-middle-class background; her father was a driver and her mother did tailoring at home. They lived in a small rented apartment on a bustling commercial street not far from Shameera and me. Her parents were Tamil and Sinhala bilinguals with limited English. Her mother invited me home daily for tea. She encouraged me to speak in English, but Muna was much more comfortable speaking in a mix of Tamil and English. A Tamil-medium teacher said that she had repeatedly encouraged Muna to return to the Tamil-medium stream because she was failing her English-medium classes. But Muna had adamantly refused. I  felt that Muna’s decision was likely shaped by the pressure her parents felt to fit in with middle-class Muslims at Girl’s College and in their neighborhood. There were ethnic, religious, class, and sociolinguistic differences between Maalini, Shameera, and Muna. But they were all determined to learn English out of a desire – either their parents’ or their own – for upward social mobility. Though there is widespread interest in English-medium education, many Sinhalas and Tamils viewed English as being in conflict with their mother tongues because of the importance of these languages to their cultural and ethnic identities. The fact that large numbers of Muslims are choosing to study in the English medium is consistent with the narrative that their religion-based ethnic identity affords them flexibility with regard to language. However, drawing on LaDousa (2014), I  suggest that while this discourse serves to differentiate Muslims from other Sri Lankan ethnic groups, it does not adequately account for Muslims’ complex relationships with the English language, particularly in relation to class inequalities and global networks. Though English-as-a-subject classes have long been offered at Girls’ College, the new bilingual program further emphasizes class inequalities that traverse ethnic and religious divisions. Maalini, Shameera, and Muna had different levels of access to English at home, as well as differing financial support for their English study. Maalini and Shameera’s parents could 131

C hristina P . D avis

afford to send them to after-school English tutoring classes; Muna’s parents could not. Given that she has little exposure to English at home, it is likely that she will complete her secondary education without full competency in spoken and written English, which could limit her employment potential. Likewise, although Maalini and Shameera were strong in English, they will have to compete for access to higher education and jobs with students who attended top private and international schools. As we have seen, southern Muslims emphasized their sociolinguistic diversity/heterogeneity to distinguish themselves from Tamils. However, in the global world Muslims’ status as English-, Sinhala-, or Tamil-medium students is relevant beyond local ethnopolitics. At Girls’ College, students differentiated one another in relation to their relative English proficiency. All of the Girls’ College students strived to improve their English skills, but girls like Maalini who excelled in English were considered to be “posh.” In fact, is it common throughout South Asia for youth who speak English “too well” to be considered snobbish or arrogant (Nakassis 2016). Some girls will go abroad for education or jobs, but most will stay in Sri Lanka. In 2016, I learned that Maalini had completed her A Levels at Girls’ College and was preparing to go to India for her higher education, just as her sister had predicted. I was unable to reach Shameera, but I had a chance to see Muna when I returned to Kandy in 2011. I also chatted with her on Facebook Messenger in 2016. While completing her A Levels at Girls’ College she started an English-medium degree-equivalent IT course through a UK-based institute. She hopes to get an IT-related job in Kandy after graduation. I did not chat with her long enough to fully evaluate her language skills, but it was clear that her English had significantly improved. During a brief visit to Girls’ College in 2011, I noticed progress in the spoken English abilities of many Girls’ College students despite the fact that no additional English-medium subjects had been introduced. This preliminary finding speaks to the high motivation to study English among Kandy youth.

Conclusion In the postcolonial period Sri Lankan Muslims have carved out their identities in a manner that distinguishes them from other ethnic groups (McGilvray and Raheem 2007; Thiranagama 2011). Muslims do not define their ethnic identities on the basis of language. Yet, they are part of a national education system that conflates language (mother tongue), medium, and ethnicity. In practice, Girls’ College Tamil-medium Muslim teachers asserted their sociolinguistic proclivities to substantiate their separate ethno-religious identity. Muslim students’ lack of fit with the ethnolinguistic models presupposed by the school and its medium choices allowed them to be open to Englishmedium education. 132

M uslims in S ri L ankan language politics

Sri Lankan Muslims’ varying access to English as related to social class does not necessarily contradict their attempts to ground their ethno-religious identities in their sociolinguistic proclivities. Rather, it reveals that the relationships between language and social life are more intricate than can be encompassed by available narratives. Today, Sri Lankan Muslims increasingly situate themselves in relation to the panIslamic world (McGilvray and Raheem 2007; Nuhman 2007), as well as elite and professional networks where English proficiency is paramount. While English has long been offered as a subject, the recent introduction of English bilingual streams underscores how the English language continues to be an important mode of social distinction for Muslims as well as for all Sri Lankans. Arabic, like English, is also locally and globally relevant for the Girls’ College Muslim youth, but the students did not ­differentiate themselves in relation to their relative knowledge of liturgical Arabic. In postcolonial nation-states, English holds power in part because of its role as an international language. However, as Higgins (2009) also observes in reference to East Africa, in Sri Lanka it would be inaccurate to conceive of Sinhala and Tamil as local and English as global. Though some Girls’ College students’ English proficiencies are rooted in their access to global networks (e.g., for Muslim girls whose fathers are international gem traders), their English skills were locally highly relevant in their association with middle-class status and prestige. Unless there is a radical change in the structure of the national education system, the majority of Sri Lankan students will continue to study in Sinhala or Tamil mediums as was prescribed in the mid-twentieth century. However, with the spread of globalization, relative English proficiencies are quickly becoming more crucial to the way individuals differentiate themselves in local and global spheres of practice. As more government schools offer bilingual streams and international schools increase in number, teachers and students will develop new and innovative ways to define themselves in relation to Sinhala, Tamil, and English. Relative English proficiency will continue to be an important aspect of social distinction both within and between ethnic groups. The case of Sri Lankan Muslims demonstrates the extreme complexity of carving out postcolonial identities in relation to multiple languages when the global is embedded in and informs the local.

Acknowledgments I would like to thank Chaise LaDousa, Sonia N. Das, Dennis McGilvray, and Daniel Bass for their invaluable feedback on this material. I  am also grateful to M. S. M. Anes, Sasikumar Balasundaram, Mumthaj Mubarak, Namil Nizan, and L. Ramamoorthy for their help and insight. 133

C hristina P . D avis

Notes 1 The term “Moor” was used by the Portuguese to describe Muslims throughout their colonial territories in Africa and Asia. Currently, Muslim and Moor are both used to describe Sri Lankan Sunni Muslims of the Shafiʽi legal school (McGilvray and Raheem 2007). 2 There are Tamil (taay mozhi) and Sinhala (mawu bhashawa) correlates for the English term “mother tongue.” 3 It is very rare for Sinhalas to study in the Tamil medium. However, Tamils may study in the Sinhala medium if they speak Sinhala at home or if there are no Tamil schools where they live. 4 National schools contrast with smaller provincial schools, which are managed by the provincial councils. 5 Northern and eastern Muslims have suffered greatly in the Sri Lankan civil war. Eastern Muslims have been victims of brutal violence on the part of the LTTE and the Sri Lankan government. In 1990, the LTTE, desiring a racially pure Tamil state (Eelam), expelled tens of thousands of Muslims from Jaffna (see McGilvray and Raheem 2007; Thiranagama 2011). 6 District statistics from 2006 show that only 15 per cent of Kandy Muslims studied in the Sinhala medium (Nuhman 2007). 7 The Madras University Tamil Lexicon has been widely used for representing literary Tamil in Roman script. Influenced by Annamalai (1980), I use a modified version of this lexicon. Retroflex consonants are represented with capital letters, and ழ் ([ɻ]) as zh. 8 Semi-private or government-assisted schools are free. They receive some government funding and follow the national curriculum (de Silva 1999). 9 The proportion of Muslims in relation to Sinhalas in the bilingual program was comparable. 10 The Diversity Visa Lottery, commonly known as the Green Card Lottery, provides an opportunity for individuals from certain countries to get a United States green card.

References Aliff, S. M. 2015. “Post-War Conflict in Sri Lanka: Violence against Sri Lankan Muslims and Buddhist Hegemony.” International Letters of Social and Humanistic Sciences 59: 109–25. Amarasingam, Amarnath. 2019. “Terrorism on the Teardrop Island: Understanding the Easter 2019 Attacks in Sri Lanka.” CTC Sentinel 12 (5): 1–10. Annamalai, E. 1980. The “Jim” and “Raja” Conversations. Evanston, IL: Tamil Language Study Association. ——— 2004. “Medium of Power: The Question of English in Education in India.” In Medium of Instruction Policies: Which Agenda? Whose Agenda? edited by James W. Tollefson and Amy B. M. Tsui, 177–94. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Bass, Daniel. 2013. Everyday Ethnicity in Sri Lanka: Up-country Tamil Identity Politics. New York: Routledge. Canagarajah, Suresh A. 2005. “Dilemmas in Planning English/Vernacular Relations in Post-Colonial Communities.” Journal of Sociolinguistics 9 (3): 418–47.

134

M uslims in S ri L ankan language politics

——— 2013. Translingual Practice: Global Englishes and Cosmopolitan Relations. New York: Routledge. Daniel, E. Valentine. 1996. Charred Lullabies: An Anthropography of Violence. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Davis, Christina P.  2012. “‘Is Jaffna Tamil the Best?’ Producing ‘Legitimate’ Language in a Multilingual Sri Lankan School.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 22 (2): 197–218. ——— 2014. “Voicing Conflict: Moral Evaluation and Responsibility in a Sri Lankan Muslim Family’s Conversations.” Language & Communication 39: 1–13. ——— 2015. “Speaking Conflict: Ideological Barriers to Bilingual Policy Implementation in Civil War Sri Lanka.” Anthropology  & Education Quarterly 46 (2): 95–112. ——— 2020a. The Struggle for a Multilingual Future: Youth and Education in Sri Lanka. New York: Oxford University Press. ——— 2020b. “Trilingual Blunders: Signboards, Social Media, and Transnational Sri Lankan Tamil Publics.” Special Issue, Signs and Society 8 (1): 93–124. Department of Census and Statistics. 2018. “Preliminary Report of School Census.” Accessed December 1, 2020. www.statistics.gov.lk/Education/StaticalInformation/ SchoolCensus/2018 de Silva, Chandra R. 1999. “The Role of Education in Ameliorating Political Violence.” In Creating Peace in Sri Lanka: Civil War and Reconciliation, edited by Robert I. Rotberg, 109–30. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press. de Silva, K. M. 1998. Reaping the Whirlwind: Ethnic Conflict, Ethnic Politics in Sri Lanka. New York: Penguin. Devotta, Neil. 2004. Blowback: Linguistic Nationalism, Institutional Decay, and the Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Ferguson, Charles. 1991. “Diglossia Revisited.” Southwest Journal of Linguistics 10 (1): 214–34. Fishman, Joshua. 1965. “Who Speaks What Language to Whom and When?” La Linguistique 2: 67–88. Gunesekera, Manique. 2005. The Postcolonial Identity of Sri Lankan English. Colombo: Katha Publishers. Hastings, Adi. 2008. “Licked by the Mother Tongue: Imagining Everyday Sanskrit at Home and in the World.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 18 (1): 24–45. Higgins, Christina. 2009. English as a Local Language: Post-Colonial Identities and Multilingual Practices. Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters. Hussein, Asiff. 2007. Sarandib: An Ethnological Study of the Muslims of Sri Lanka. Dehiwala, SL: J. Prints (Pvt) Ltd. Imtiyaz, A. R. M., and S. R. H. Hoole. 2011. “Some Critical Notes on the NonTamil Identity of the Muslims of Sri Lanka, and on Tamil – Muslim Relations.” South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 32 (2): 208–31. Kandiah, T. 2010. “‘Kaduva’: Power and the English Language Weapon in Sri Lanka.” In English in Sri Lanka: Ceylon English, Lankan English, Sri Lankan English, edited by Siromi Fernando, Manique Gunesekera and Arjuna Parakrama, 36–65. Colombo: Sri Lanka English Language Teachers’ Association. LaDousa, Chaise. 2010. “On Mother and Other Tongues: Sociolinguistics, Schools, and Language Ideology in Northern India.” Language Sciences 32: 602–14.

135

C hristina P . D avis

——— 2014. Hindi Is Our ground, English Is Our Sky: Education, Language, and Social Class in Contemporary India. New York: Berghahn Books. Little, Angela. 2003. Labouring to Learn: Towards the Political Economy of Plantations, People, and Education in Sri Lanka. Colombo: Social Scientists’ Association. McGilvray, Dennis B. 2008. Crucible of Conflict: Tamil and Muslim Society on the East Coast of Sri Lanka. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. McGilvray, Dennis B., and Mirak Raheem. 2007. Muslim Perspectives on the Sri Lankan Conflict. Washington, DC: East-West Center. Mitchell, Lisa. 2009. Language, Emotion, and Politics in South India: The Making of a Mother Tongue. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Nakassis, Constantine V. 2016. Doing Style: Youth and Mass Mediation in South Asia. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. National Education Commission. 2003. “Policy Proposals: Summary of Recommendations.” Accessed June  16, 2014. www.nec.gov.lk/web/images/pdf/policies/ National_Policy_2003.pdf Nuhman, M. A. 2007. Sri Lankan Muslims: Ethnic Identity within Cultural Diversity. Colombo: International Center for Ethnic Studies. ——— 2013. “Language and Education of Sri Lanka Muslims: Problems and Prospects.” Fortieth Marhoom Dr. A. M. A. Azeez Oration. Accessed July 7, 2016. http://sailanmuslim.com/news/2013/11/07/language-and-education-of-sri-lankanmuslims-problems-and-prospects-by-dr-m-a-nuhman/ O’Sullivan, Meghan. 1999. “Conflict as a Catalyst: The Changing Politics of the Sri Lankan Muslims.” In Conflict and Community in Contemporary Sri Lanka: “Pearl of the East” or the “Island of Tears”? edited by Siri Gamage and I. B. Watson, 254–78. New Delhi: Sage Publications. Pennycook, Alastair. 2007. Global Englishes and Transcultural Flows. New York: Routledge. ——— 2013. “Language Policies, Language Ideologies and Local Language Practices.” In The Politics of English: South Asia, Southeast Asia and the Asia Pacific, edited by Lionel Wee, Robbie B. H. Goh, and Lisa Lim, 1–18. Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing. Perera, Lal, Swarna Wijetunga, and A. S. Balasooriya. 2004. “Education Reform and Political Violence in Sri Lanka.” In Education, Conflict, and Social Cohesion, edited by Sobhi Tawil and Alexandra Harley, 375–414. Paris: UNESCO, International Bureau of Education. Ramanathan, Vaidehi. 2005. The English-Vernacular Divide: Postcolonial Language Politics and Practice. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters. Ramaswamy, Sumathi. 1997. Passions of the Tongue: Language Devotion in Tamil India, 1891–1970. Berkeley: University of California Press. Rogers, John D. 1994. “Post-Orientalism and the Interpretation of Pre-Modern and Modern Political Identities: The Case of Sri Lanka.” Journal of Asian Studies 53: 10–23. Samaraweera, Vijaya. 1997. “The Muslim Revivalist Movement, 1880–1915.” In Sri Lanka: Collective Identities Revisited, edited by Michael Roberts, vol. 1, 293– 322. Colombo: Marga Institute. Schiffman, Harold F. 1999. A Reference Grammar of Spoken Tamil. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

136

M uslims in S ri L ankan language politics

Sørensen, Birgitte Refslund. 2008. “The Politics of Citizenship and Difference in Sri Lankan Schools.” Anthropology & Education Quarterly 39 (4): 423–43. Spencer, Jonathan. 1990. “Introduction.” In Sri Lanka: History and Roots of Conflict, edited by Jonathan Spencer, 1–18. New York: Routledge. Suseendirarajah, S. 1999. “Tamil Language in Sri Lanka.” In Studies in Sri Lankan Tamil Linguistics and Culture: Select Papers of S. Suseendirarajah, edited by K. Balasubramanian, K. Ratnamalar, and R. Subadhini, 1–2. Jaffna: University of Jaffna. Tambiah, Stanley Jeyaraja. 1986. Sri Lanka: Ethnic Fratricide and the Dismantling of Democracy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Thiranagama, Sharika. 2011. In My Mother’s House: Civil War in Sri Lanka. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Wickramasinghe, Nira. 2006. Sri Lanka in the Modern Age: A History of Contested Identities. London: Foundation Books. Wijesekera, Harsha, Jennifer Alford, and Michael Guanglun Mu. 2019. “Forging Inclusive Practice in Ethnically-Segregated School Systems: Lessons from One Multiethnic, Bilingual Education Classroom in Sri Lanka.” International Journal of Inclusive Education 23 (1): 23–41. Woolard, Kathryn A. 1985. “Language Variation and Cultural Hegemony: Toward an Integration of Sociolinguistic and Social Theory.” American Ethnologist 12 (4): 738–48. ——— 1998. “Introduction: Language Ideology as a Field of Inquiry.” In Language Ideologies: Practice and Theory, edited by Bambi B. Schieffelin, Kathryn A. Woolard, and Paul V. Kroskrity, 3–47. New York: Oxford University Press. Woolard, Kathryn A., and Bambi B. Schieffelin. 1994. “Language ideology.” Annual Review of Anthropology 23 (1): 55–82.

137

7 LABOR MIGRATION AND ENGLISH-MEDIUM SCHOOLING IN NEPAL Miranda Weinberg

Nonutilitarian snob values associated with an English-speaking, metropolitan-oriented elite  – English for “social climbing” – are on the rise. These developments in a South Asian nation where English only recently has become an important factor deserve scrutiny, lest the linguistic gap – mediated by English – between the broad masses and the small elite, a gap so familiar elsewhere on the subcontinent, take root in Nepal. (Dahal and Subba 1986, 240–1) At a community meeting, an old man asked me: “Do you have to study in your country? (tapāĩko deshmā paḍhnu parcha?)” I  replied, somewhat taken aback, “We have to (parcha).” He explained, “I  thought since everyone can speak English, maybe you don’t have to study (sabāilai English bolna āuncha, paḍhnu pardaina holā bhaneko).”

Many dynamics of English-medium instruction in Nepal are familiar across South Asia. The long-standing desire for English-medium instruction and near equation of schooling, especially quality schooling, with English proficiency are demonstrated in the two epigraphs to this chapter, spaced approximately thirty years apart. The report that presented the initial plan for widespread schooling in Nepal, published over fifty years ago, noted a “mania for English education in some parts of the country” (NEPC 1956, 51). Characteristics shared with other South Asian contexts include a long history of elite English-medium education; rapid expansion since the 1990s in access to English-medium schooling, especially in private schools; persistent class divisions produced and reproduced through the stratifying school system; and the erasure of Indigenous languages despite, in many cases, growing policy support for so-called mother tongue-medium instruction (Phyak 2016; Sah 2020; Sah and Karki 2020). 138

L abor migration and E nglish - medium schooling

I argue that labor migration is essential to understanding medium of schooling in Nepal. International labor creates the demand for, and supports the possibility of, widespread English-medium education in the country. Labor migrants see first-hand the value of proficiency in English, which allows them to take more lucrative, but also safer, jobs in countries perceived as desirable. At the same time, remittances from abroad fund expensive English-medium school tuitions, and it is those fees that push parents to work abroad. More than 1,750 Nepalis leave the country every day for foreign employment (Kathmandu Post 2017); as of 2011, 8.3 per cent of the country’s population lived abroad (ILO 2017). Nepalis are currently cleaning American bases in Afghanistan and Iraq, building World Cup stadiums in Qatar, and caring for the elderly in Israel. This chapter seeks to understand how members of one community in Nepal make sense of the relationship between the medium of schooling and labor migration. I examine how schools, countries, and people were evaluated on a scale of “big” to “small” based on prestige and quality. I  also consider the counter-discourses that challenged the perceived need to study at a big school and work in a big country in order to become a big person. Scholars increasingly recognize the role of language ideologies in the creation and appropriation of language policies. Language ideologies are “conceptualizations about languages, speakers, and discursive practices” that are “pervaded with political and moral interests and are shaped in a cultural setting” (Irvine 2011, 1; see also Gal 1998; Kroskrity 2000). Nevertheless, snippets of discourse from policy makers, teachers, and students recorded in interviews or field notes are often taken as transparent representations of relatively stable ideologies. Reports about language policy discuss the eagerness for English, which parents and students alike see as essential to their children’s success, especially given the astronomical rise in international labor migration (Phyak 2016; Sah 2020; Seel, Yadava, and Kadel 2015). But it is also the case that many of those students may not need English for employment, or at least not the kind of English they learn in school, and English may not even be the most useful language in some international contexts. These realities make it possible to claim that desires for English, “guided by neoliberal logics, have put the minoritized students under delusion because the insufficiency of English proficiency among both teachers and students and the lack of rudiments to effectively implement Englishmedium instruction have created a ‘comprehension crisis’ and ‘epistemic inequalities’ for minoritized students” (Sah and Karki 2020, 1). In this chapter, I draw on ethnographic research among four schools and their surrounding communities in southeastern Nepal. I employ the tools of semiotic and linguistic anthropology to bring a fuller understanding of the demand for English-medium schooling in the context of migration. I aim to trace “processes of discursive imaginings,” a strategy that Proctor argues, “is key to understanding how language is intertwined in socioeconomic power 139

M iranda W einberg

structures in contemporary, globalizing India [and Nepal] and to understanding the effect that ideologies of globalization and language ability have on vulnerable groups within these structures” (2014, 294). In particular, I show that English-medium instruction is part of a discursive imagination created by international labor migration, which produces aspirations for future migration. In Nepal, as elsewhere in South Asia, medium refers not just to language use in classrooms but also to kinds of people and behaviors (Davis 2020; LaDousa 2014; LaDousa and Davis 2018). The very labeling of a school in terms of medium provides reflexive commentary on the organization of communicative events that will take place at the school. Thus, medium designations are a form of metapragmatic commentary, or a description of the activity that language accomplishes (Mortimer 2013; Pérez-Milans 2018). English-medium instruction in Nepal is part of a larger metapragmatics of mobility, or the “circulation of discursive forms, facilitated by media technologies and complex patterns of transnational interaction, which ascribe identities to people on the move and root such identities within hierarchical structures of the market on local, national, and transnational scales” (Lo and Park 2017, 1). Medium is linked to figures of personhood, or societally recognizable personae enacted in semiotic behaviors (Agha 2007). The designation of medium does not merely specify the code or language in which events will take place, but also describes the kinds of people who will participate in these events and the sorts of events that will take place in the context carved out by this label. While many of the people involved in English-medium instruction are not themselves migrants, they are all connected to migration in some way, if only by hearing about migration and mobility in mass-mediated contexts like news reports, textbooks, and TV shows. Viewing medium as a metapragmatic label is helpful in distinguishing between actual linguistic behavior and the reflexive models of language use through which participants characterize behaviors. English-medium instruction is not an empirical description of what takes place in classrooms, as English-medium schools do not teach solely in English, but rather in a mix of the languages available to teachers and students (Davis 2020; Khati 2016; Phyak 2016; Sah and Karki 2020). Instead, medium denotes a model of expected behaviors, characterized not just by language but also by routines such as how one gets to school (via branded school bus or on foot), whether and how much one pays, and how free teachers are with corporal punishment.1 A goal of this chapter is to move toward a fuller picture of the relationship between migration, English-medium instruction, and communicative events by understanding the “prehistory” of the claims that parents, teachers, and children make about English-medium schooling. One such claim

140

L abor migration and E nglish - medium schooling

was made by a wealthy member of the school management committee of a government school: Why do we need to learn English language? . . . In our country and abroad, with foreigners we can create a comfortable environment. Whoever does this can go around and exchange their thoughts. Therefore, when saying why we have had to give English language primacy, it’s also so we Nepalis can become acquainted with the world community. English language is the kind of language that in the world all Chinese also speak English, Russians speak English. Yes, they may have their own language but still English has become the most advanced language, the language for everyone’s conversation and the general language for all. These statements are interesting in and of themselves. They are, though, only small segments of much larger discursive pathways (Wortham and Reyes 2015), as “data of social life plucked from their isolable moments invariably point to lived moments that lie beyond them” (Agha 2005, 1). Rather than taking stretches of speech from observations or interviews to be transparent reflections of individual’s opinions and ideological stances – from which we could conclude along with many other observers that there is immense demand for English-medium education in Nepal – we can ask questions about what discursive encounters preceded this one. What elements of a biographically specific discursive history made these statements intelligible? How might such a history have effects on future interactions and encounters? Nepali-medium schooling, founded as part of a specific development narrative, draws on a set of images of progress and goals of working for the betterment of the nation. English-medium instruction, by contrast, is funded by migration, and in demand because of it. English-medium schools, unlike Nepali-medium schools, are part of a privatized aspirational infrastructure. They thus figure in metapragmatic commentary on desirable forms of migration, which involve prestigious, comfortable, and profitable English-speaking jobs. Through a semiotic process by which oppositions are projected from one level to another (Irvine and Gal 2000; see English-Medium Instruction as Aspirational Infrastructure), ideas about successful migration are reflected at the scale of individual schools, in which big schools should enable employment in a big job in a big country, allowing the migrant to be a big person. The medium of instruction in Nepal, especially demand for English-medium instruction, must be understood in a transnational context in which migration is an expected – and even desirable – path to a better future. In the following section, I describe the research methods and setting for this study. In ensuing sections, I  discuss the ways talk about Nepali- and

141

M iranda W einberg

English-medium schools draws on divergent images of progress and the future. Specifically, Nepali-medium schooling continues to participate in its founding narrative of national development and individual contributions to a collective, national goal. English-medium schooling, on the other hand, draws on a promise of a better future outside of the nation, both funded and driven by migration.

Research methods and setting This chapter incorporates thirteen months of ethnographic research conducted from 2015 to 2016 in Nepal’s southeastern districts of Jhapa and Morang, and in the capital, Kathmandu. The four focal schools in this study were within a half-hour walk of each other on one road: one public and one private school north of the national East-West Highway, and one public and one private school south of the highway. The two private schools, both established in the 1990s, were English-medium schools from their establishment. Both were named for Hindu goddesses, but the schools included English in their names to emphasize the promise of English-medium instruction (on school names, see Weinberg 2017). The government schools had been in the area much longer and had taught in Nepali medium for most of their history, though both had also experimented with switching to Englishmedium instruction. One of the government schools was also the first school to offer the Indigenous Dhimal language as a subject, following laws supporting schooling in the many languages of Nepal (Weinberg 2020). Despite the multilingual population and the constitutional provision of the right to education in students’ mother tongues, there were no local schools teaching in a medium other than Nepali or English. These schools were connected closely. Students shifted between schools based on changes in family income or perceptions of the relative quality of the schools. In some cases, there were financial connections among government schoolteachers and the owners of private schools. The establishment of the two local English-medium private schools in the 1990s began drawing students away from the government schools. The head teacher of the government school closest to the highway described his school as surrounded by private schools. In the face of a demand for English and with a rapidly dropping student population cutting into funding and teacher lines, many government schools switched to English-medium instruction. This meant that many subjects used English language textbooks, and teachers were expected to begin teaching in English without additional professional development or new teaching staff. A  report published in 2015 found that among a sample of five districts (out of seventyfive), all had some government schools running in English medium in grades 1–5 (Seel, Yadava, and Kadel 2015), and in some areas, including my study

142

L abor migration and E nglish - medium schooling

area, entire clusters of government schools had switched to English medium at the same time. The community surrounding these schools was diverse, including a mix of Dhimals, the Indigenous inhabitants of the region, and more recent inmigrants drawn by the offer of fertile agricultural land following a USAIDfunded malaria eradication project in the 1950s (Rai 2014). People who had some land farmed, largely rice paddy but also some vegetables. In a survey of the Dhimal community surrounding these two schools, over half of the households had at least one member working abroad, mostly in Qatar, Dubai, Saudi Arabia, or Malaysia, or had someone who had worked abroad and returned; more than 10 per cent of Dhimal households had more than one family member working abroad (see Table 7.1). Due to the focus of the larger project this chapter draws from, I  only surveyed Dhimal residents, but, from field notes and interviews, I know that members of other castes and ethnicities were also likely to be abroad, many in the Gulf countries but also in a wider range of countries, including Japan, the United States, and Australia. Many of these people were young men who worked abroad for a period of several years before returning to Nepal. They would often come home for a few months after a contract of several years, staying at home for the time it took to get married, beginning construction on a cement house or the next floor of a house started on a previous visit, or remaining just long enough to get bored with life at home, before repeating the process, maybe aiming the next time for a more desirable country or better-paying job. As one government schoolteacher joked, rather than learning job skills while abroad, the skills migrants brought back included sending their children to private school and building a small house. International migration and remittances were important for many families’ financial well-being, preventing families from having to sell land or take on significant debts, especially when it came time for expensive rituals like weddings and funerals. On most days, I  attended one of the focal schools, dividing my time between classrooms, the playground, and the teachers’ break room. I spoke with teachers, students, activists, and community members outside of school,

Table 7.1 Percentage of Responses to the Question “Is a Family Member Abroad?” Among Households in Two Dhimal Villages More than one member now One member now Previously Never

143

12% 37 9 46

M iranda W einberg

and attended events ranging from community meetings to weddings. I conducted interviews and focus groups with teachers, members of the school management committee, activists, and education officials. I  collected relevant documents including textbooks, newspaper articles, and publications by language activists. A  household survey of the communities surrounding the schools provided details about self-reported linguistic repertoires, employment and labor migration, and educational histories. A core tenet of ethnographic research is that the researcher is the primary instrument of the research methodology. My observations and interpretations were shaped by my prior experiences and how I was viewed by people around me. For example, a Nepali researcher who has worked in the same community was surprised by the level of access I immediately received to meetings of the Dhimal Ethnic Development Center. He had been met with suspicion there rather than with a warm welcome. At the same time, he participated in informal conversations over alcoholic drinks with male community leaders that I, as a woman, was not welcome to attend. The acknowledgment of positionality does not make ethnographic research less empirically valid or rigorous than any other method, but, rather, provides transparency about the ways that research is shaped by the person who conducts it.

Nepali-medium schools: schooling for development The notion of development is crucial for thinking about metapragmatics and medium of instruction, especially in the case of Nepali-medium instruction. The establishment of widespread schooling in Nepal was part of the emergence of an overwhelming state emphasis on “development” (bikās). Development became not only the dominant concern of government but also an inescapable component of the discourse of progress. Development has “a profoundly social meaning, a meaning that weaves bikās into the fabric of local life and patterns Nepalese national society” (Pigg 1992, 496). Nepal “ ‘officially’ entered the community of nations . . . during a time in which the global divide between the ‘developed’ and ‘undeveloped’ became legitimated by the emerging discourse of development” (Tamang 2002, 315). Specifically, Nepal “entered at one of the lowest tiers of the development hierarchy” and “began accepting huge amounts of international development aid” (315). For agents of development, Nepal was a special challenge due to its seemingly primitive and underdeveloped status, though this supposed underdevelopment also allowed development actors to create new systems without needing to reckon with existing infrastructure (Fujikura 2002; NEPC 1956). Schooling was among the domains viewed as a “blank slate” (Skerry, Moran, and Calavan 1992, 36) or “textbook opportunity” (Wood 1987, 344) for development work: only 0.1 per cent of primary school-aged 144

L abor migration and E nglish - medium schooling

children were enrolled school in 1951 (Wood 1962). In addition, schooling would prove crucial for producing democratically-minded subjects who could carry on the development agenda (Fujikura 2002). Thus, “education, more than any other sector, was central to the creation of a new, modern Nepal” (Rappleye 2019, 105). The rapid expansion of schooling spread new modes of behavior, communication, and figures of personhood. While students did not uncritically absorb and reproduce the development objectives of government schools, the figure of the “educated person” became an important symbol of progress: “students lauded the ‘educated person’ (parhelekheko, parhne manche), and turned away from those left in the ‘dark’ ” (Skinner and Holland 1996, 274). For schoolchildren in 1996, “education was a major goal in life, and the necessary means to achieve their other goals: making their futures bright, developing the country, serving the people and king, ‘earning a big name’ (i.e., becoming famous), and becoming a good citizen (asal nagarik)” (281). Schoolchildren emphasized their differences from the old-fashioned beliefs of their family members, who were uneducated, traditional, superstitious, and conservative. The educated person had new models for behavior, including rejection of traditional caste and gender hierarchies (see Ahearn 2001). Central to the figure of the educated person was their status as more “developed” than the uneducated. Carrying loads was one key icon of being undeveloped: “people in rural areas speak of places of ‘much bikãs’ as places where ‘people don’t have to carry loads’ (bãri boknu pardãina). By implication, the condition of village life is the condition of carrying loads” (Pigg 1992, 507). Pigg demonstrates that development was a chronotopic figuration, a discursive alignment of time and space that enables the existence of specific kinds of people: development was located outside of the village, in a hierarchy in which Kathmandu, the capital city, was ascendant. There was also a hierarchy in time: now was the beginning of the bright future, as compared to the dark past. Developed Nepal would be populated by educated people who did not have to carry loads, and who recognized a social hierarchy predicated on levels of education rather than on caste or gender, as opposed to people with “traditional” or “backward views” (Skinner and Holland 1996). Nepali was the medium of instruction that would lead from the dark past to the brightly developed future, but it was not a foregone conclusion that Nepali would be the medium of the national school system. The results of a survey distributed nationally demonstrated that there were a range of opinions about whether “local language,” Nepali, or English should be the medium of instruction in elementary, middle, and high school (NEPC 1956, 53). In general, the survey results showed support for primary schooling in a local language, and middle and high school in Nepali, with increasing support for English and declining support for local languages in the higher grades. The report noted the high demand for English in eastern Nepal, 145

M iranda W einberg

attributed to “the influence of the missionary English schools in the Darjeeling area,” and the high demand for “local language” in the southern plains, which, the report notes, “means Hindi in most areas” (53). The Nepal National Education Planning Commission (NEPC) report’s recommendations, which set the tone of the education sector for years to come, declared that Nepali would be the medium of instruction for schooling, and argued against the introduction of additional languages – specifically Hindi and English – before the sixth grade. This decision was justified on several grounds, but especially the goal of achieving “greater national strength and unity” by teaching Nepali so that “other languages will gradually disappear” (NEPC 1956, 97). Authors of the report wished “to resolve the country’s language problem quickly before it grows worse or is aggravated by the spread of multilingualism in the primary school” (97). The explicit distrust of multilingualism in a highly multilingual country was at least partly introduced by Hugh Wood, the American advisor to the commission (Awasthi 2008). Archival evidence demonstrates that Wood wrote out the opinions of the Nepali members of the commission in several parts of the report (Rappleye 2019). Wood proudly told a Nepali newspaper that the problem of multilingualism “had stared them in the face in the United States of America, which, at that time had a multiplicity of spoken languages; but that after the War of Independence, English was given due prominence as the medium of instruction, and that today there was no problem of language there” (Gorkhapatra March 26, 1954, cited in Wood 1987, 26). The institution of Nepali-only instruction in government schools was itself an example of a mobile metapragmatic regime, an importation of the aspiration toward a “monoglot standard” (Silverstein 1996). Awasthi (2004, 23) describes the “linguistic restrictionism” of the NEPC report as “an alien concept for the people and polity, and was an importation from the west.” In his study of Hugh Wood’s influence on the NEPC report, Rappleye (2019, 138) comes to a similar conclusion, arguing that “Wood’s primary project was cultural transmission of the modern Western faith in progress, delivered and spread through modern education.” The promotion of Nepali schooling for national unity emerged at this historical moment in large part through the influence of language ideologies brought by development actors from the United States and other countries. In this section, I have demonstrated that the origins of widespread Nepalimedium schooling were part of a narrative of progress through development. This bikas chronotope, or discursive alignment of space and time, presupposed a spatial hierarchy with villages at the bottom and Kathmandu at the top. An important characteristic of the bikas chronotope was the favoring of the present over the past and of the future over the present. The figures of personhood created in this chronotopic configuration included the educated person, a literate, nationalistic individual using their modern knowledge to work toward development of the nation, and their foil, the 146

L abor migration and E nglish - medium schooling

uneducated person. While I have located the origins of the bikas chronotope in the 1950s, it has remained an available, and, at times, a dominant chronotopic configuration, especially among teachers at government school. In the following section, I turn to English-medium instruction, and its relationship with migration.

English-medium schooling and the metapragmatics of mobility English-medium schooling involves a somewhat different set of spatial, temporal, and characterological figures, a configuration that must be understood in the context of widespread migration. In this section, I  identify some of the ways that talk about English-medium schooling functions as metapragmatic commentary on migration. I begin by illustrating the importance of international labor migration for Nepalis, whether they themselves are migrants or the people who stay behind. According to the 2011 national census, one out of three households in Nepal had at least one member living abroad (CBSN 2011). In 2018, remittances accounted for 28 per cent of Nepal’s GDP, making Nepal one of the top five recipients of remittances as a share of GDP (World Bank 2019). This was a slight decline from previous years, when Nepal was the largest recipient of remittances relative to the size of the economy, with remittances accounting for 32.2 per cent of the GDP. Remittances have been important for bringing Nepalis out of extreme poverty: nearly 20 per cent of the decline in poverty in Nepal between 1995 and 2004 has been attributed to the influx of remittances (Lokshin, Bontch-Osmolovski, and Glinskaya 2010, 323). These figures give a sense of the enormous scale of international labor migration from Nepal, but they almost certainly underestimate: many migrants do not send their earnings through formal banking channels, in part because they may not have the proper documentation to reside or work in their host countries (Seddon, Adhikari, and Gurung 2002; Sharma et al. 2014). In addition, figures do not capture the ways that remittances function as a “substance of relatedness” that maintains family ties despite distance (Zharkevich 2019). Nevertheless, they provide a sense of the scale of international migration and the role it plays in the lives of Nepalis.

English in migration stories Migration involves not only the movement of people but also the movement of texts, discourse, and ideologies (Appadurai 1996). Nepali migrants maintain contact with family and friends through messaging, video, and social media apps, and bring back new ideas upon their return. Living in the Gulf countries or Malaysia exposed many young parents, many of them young 147

M iranda W einberg

fathers, to the global power of English. At foreign employment recruitment agencies, aspiring migrants answered interview questions designed more to gauge English language proficiency than to ascertain whether applicants had relevant employment backgrounds (Shrestha 2018). Migrants also viewed English as a key to reaching higher positions, which not only included better compensation but also safer working conditions; many Nepalis have died working in unsafe labor jobs during the period of my research and since (Burrow 2017; Gibson and Pattison 2014). Horror stories of workers being mistreated, maimed, or worse while working abroad were part of everyday conversations. Speaking “good” English was seen, therefore, as a ticket for a safer and better-paying job, ideally in an air-conditioned office rather than outdoors in construction or manual labor. In addition to fueling the demand for English-medium education, migrants’ remittances are essential for paying fees for English-medium schooling. This is true whether in private schools or government schools that charge fees to pay for additional English teachers and more expensive English textbooks – despite the legal requirement that they provide free education (Joshi 2013). Households receiving remittances spend more on schooling than households without remittance income (Bansak, Chezum, and Giri 2015; Karki Nepal 2016; Thapa and Acharya 2017), though this finding may be complicated by the negative effect of parental absence on children’s persistence in school (Raut and Tanaka 2018). In one village in the southeastern plains of Nepal, not far from my research site, over 70 per cent of migrant households with school-age children sent at least one child to private school (Sunam 2017); in another plains district, 69 per cent of migrant households used remittances to pay for education (Bhandari and Chaudhary 2017). My survey of Dhimal residents of a village I call Remka Dera had similar results; the proportion of families sending children to private school without a family member who was or had been abroad was low and the proportion of those with access to foreign remittances sending their children to private schools was high (see Table 7.2). Migration and mobility are mediated through the stories that people tell about migration. Even though the sheer numbers of migrants from Nepal are stunning, most Nepalis affected by migration did not themselves spend time in other countries. Their knowledge of what happened abroad was Table 7.2 Relationships Among Number of Families Receiving International Remittances and Children’s School Type in Remka Dera

Receiving Not receiving

Government school

Private school

11 22

31 9

148

L abor migration and E nglish - medium schooling

mediated, whether through one-to-many mass-mediated channels such as news, TV shows, and music videos, or through communication with smaller groups, such as family members or friends abroad or those returned from abroad. Agha (2007) shows how increasing numbers of people come to attach particular meanings to signs through the act of deploying those meanings in interactions. Individual interactions form speech chains, or connected series of speech events, in which the receiver of a message in one speech event takes the message in some manner to another event. For example, a migrant’s wife who hears about her husband’s experiences in Qatar in a video chat becomes the teller in the next speech event, as she relays his story to the rest of her family, neighbors, and visiting anthropologists. One such story was told by a mother of two children enrolled in a private, English-medium school. Her husband had made enough money working in the Gulf countries to buy a car and earn decent money in Nepal as a driver. She explained, “If you don’t speak English, you’ll be dumb (lāṭo) when you go abroad” (for discussion of lāṭo, see Green 2014, 40). Another mother of a private English-medium school student, who was the wife of a returned migrant and government school teacher, said, “these days wherever you go, English is necessary, isn’t it, without English it will be hard” (aba jahi jāndā pani English cāhincha, hoina, aba english begar gāhrai huncha). These stories and many others reinforced the common-sense necessity of English for access in international contexts. A common statement was that we live in an “age of English” (angrezi yug). This statement, and similar ones about the status of English, took on a seemingly naturalized, law-like meaning by making a general statement without reference to a specific context, or “indexical ground” (Hanks 1992). That is, while the statement about the age of English did index or point to a time (now, as opposed to before), it did not have a clear referent or situating conversation (see Goebel 2017). Many statements about the necessity for English were similarly sweeping. For example, at a meeting of a government school’s school management committee, the chair and another parent emphasized the importance of English through seeming statements of fact: Chair: The main subject now is English. . . . Now only the one is ahead. ahile ko mul bishaya bhaneko angreji . . . aba euṭā mātrai agāḍi bhaera bhae. Parent: Now our number one need is English. . . . English is the world’s language, isn’t it? English is necessarily required. aba hāmro pahilo numbermā aba ta tapāĩko tyo english chahyo  .  .  . sansārko bhāshā english ho, hoina. English cahi ābashyaktā chahieko cha. These statements did identify now as the moment when English was ­ ecessary, but they did not specify any other information – when this had n 149

M iranda W einberg

become the case, when it might end, and who needed English and in what contexts. Instead, they were general statements about the state of the world that made English necessary. While these statements about the need for English were part of everyday conversation, they were verified by more specific stories of successful migrants with “good” English. For example, a government schoolteacher, whose daughter attended a private English-medium school, described her husband as sitting in an American office in Saudi Arabia, earning money by speaking English all day. Office work fell at the high end of the hierarchy of jobs available in other countries, along with other kinds of indoor work. Working as a driver was an intermediate stage, which required some command of English and knowledge of how to drive a car but was not as high paying or prestigious as office or retail work. The lowest tier of jobs, outdoor manual labor, was considered dangerous, and required the least degree of English proficiency. Other stories demonstrated that English could be helpful in less conventional ways. One woman described her nephew who had worked as a cook in Afghanistan: she attributed his success in earning money – even in a dangerous country – to his clear spoken English, even though he was uneducated and could not read or write (na paḍhe pani, English sabai āuncha. Lekhna paḍhna āundaina tara prashṭa bolna āuncha). In another example, a young man from the town was able to migrate permanently to a wealthy country thanks to his English language proficiency: he had been working in either Qatar or Saudi Arabia (the narrator of the story couldn’t remember), when he got in a fight. He landed in jail, but his employers were so impressed when they heard his “pure English-to-English talking” as compared to the broken (ṭuṭephuṭeko) English of the other boy in the conflict that they gave him a promotion. The higher position allowed him to earn enough to move to Australia on a student visa and bring his wife along with him. There were counter-stories to the importance of English for successful migration. Some aspiring migrants studied languages such as Korean or Japanese in order to get visas for those specific countries. Language institutes largely focused on teaching English but also offered courses in Japanese, Korean, and Hebrew, among other languages. One man who returned from working in both Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabia said that while he used English during his time in Abu Dhabi, people in Saudi Arabia were generally uneducated (ashikshit) and only spoke Arabic. He, like many migrants, had picked up some of the local language informally. For him, the dominance of Arabic in Saudi Arabia was evidence, along with negative experiences he had during his time there, that Saudis were generally uneducated people who didn’t care about others. He continued to think that English was the most important language for migrants to learn, no matter what the language of their host country might be. In the daily after-school political conversation that happened among teachers at one government school, a teacher 150

L abor migration and E nglish - medium schooling

argued that the idea that English is needed to become a developed country is false, using Japan and China as examples of highly developed countries that do not use English. Despite evidence that other languages were useful for obtaining visas and working in other countries, English remained the language discursively positioned as the most important for international communication. For my Nepali interlocutors, English indexed global development. This was more of a reflection of the situation within Nepal (and perhaps South Asia more broadly) than of global realities of development or economics.

English-medium instruction as aspirational infrastructure Demand for English could not fully explain the dominance of Englishmedium private schooling: facing competition from private schools, increasing numbers of government schools, including the ones in this study, declared that they, too, would teach in English medium. This change was unsuccessful in drawing students back from private schools, and the schools in this study again followed national trends by reverting to Nepali-medium instruction (Seel, Yadava, and Kadel 2015). Demand for private schools remained, largely because of their promise as a springboard to leave Nepal. When asked about the difference between private and government schools, one member of a government school’s school management committee commented, “private school students only look outside, not at their own country.” Similarly, a telling set of jokes compared private English-medium schools to the workforce agencies, or foreign employment recruitment agencies, that broker connections between employers and aspiring migrants (Shrestha 2018). The comparison is helpful because it illuminates the ways that private schools are part of an “aspirational infrastructure” (Shrestha 2018) that also includes foreign employment recruitment agencies (FERAs). Like the FERAs in Shrestha’s study, English-medium private schools focused on the positive potential of foreign employment. One private school head teacher told me that his students could not expect to get employment in Nepal, and would, therefore, go abroad. He encouraged them to think of going abroad to study so that they could “improve themselves” before returning to Nepal. The students themselves, however, told me that they expected to go abroad to work for several years before coming back to Nepal. The aspirational nature of private schooling was well illustrated by the characterological figure of the destitute private school parent. A  government school teacher claimed that “even those who carry firewood send their children to private school” (dāurā boknele pani boarding paṭhāunchan), a statement that resonates with Pigg’s (1992) description of development as not having to carry loads. During a panel at the Nepal English Language Teachers’ Association annual meeting in 2015, a Ministry of Education 151

M iranda W einberg

official claimed that “even the stone presser lady on the street is compelled to send her son or daughter to a private school as a craze for English language.” While the same speakers would also note in other conversations that government schools served the poorer members of their communities, this figure of the manual laborer spending their money on a private Englishmedium school demonstrated that English-medium schooling was part of an aspirational infrastructure. Like the foreign employment research agencies in Shrestha’s (2018) study, private schools are an example of the privatization of what were once public services. So far, I  have mentioned several hierarchical orders important to the metapragmatics of medium of education: of countries, jobs, languages, and people. Each can be brought to bear on the others through an important semiotic process for the production and circulation of language ideologies, fractal recursivity (see Chapter 2). Irvine and Gal characterize the process as “the projection of an opposition, salient at some level of relationship, onto another level” (2000, 38; see also Gal and Irvine 2019). A common story of successful labor migration is illustrative. Someone worked for some time in a “small country” (sāno desh), like Saudi Arabia or Malaysia, in order to gain the funds to be able to get a visa to a “big country” (ṭhulo desh) like Australia or Japan. Such a person could hope to become a “big person” (ṭhulo mānche), or a prestigious member of their community. Being a big country or person was not a question of size but rather of esteem; a good example of this came from a young man boasting that he would only go abroad if he had an offer to go to a big country, while family and friends teased him that maybe he should go to India. The joke is that India, while large in area and population, is only a small country in terms of its prestige as a work destination. The opposition of ṭhulo “big” and sāno “small” could be replicated on scales from the personal to the national; this created analogies among kinds of countries, kinds of people, behaviors, and, importantly for this discussion, schools. The head teacher of a government school displayed the importance of fractal recursivity in his discussion of the scaled utility of different languages: My own country’s mother tongue, or my country’s medium language is Nepali. . . . In all of Nepal’s territory, you need a common language after all. When I go from here in Mechi [eastern Nepal] to Mahākāli [western Nepal] and I need to speak, if I speak Nepali I make my own heart/mind’s feelings clear (see Ahearn [2001] on translating Nepali “man”). People from there can do the same when they come here. But just from one’s own mother tongue, that conversation cannot happen. So, coming and going at the international level, they say you need to know English. If you know English, everywhere you need

152

L abor migration and E nglish - medium schooling

to know the international language, and there can be a back and forth of information. The language is understood. Aba āphnai deshko mātribhāshā, aṭawa āphno deshko bhāshāko mādyam cahi nepali cha.  .  .  . aba nepalbari, euṭā sājhā bhāshā chahyo ni anta. ma eta mechiko mahākāli gaera bolnu paryo bhane, aba Nepali jāneko cha bhane ta Nepali bolera āphno manko bhāvanā prastāb garna sakchu. utako mānche pani eta āera garna sakcha. tara aba āphno mātribhāshā bāṭa mātrai tyo sambodhan huna sakdaina. tyasaile, antarāshṭriya starmā jānda āunda, aba English jānu parne bhancha. English jāneko cha bhane sabai tira antarāshṭriya bhāshā ta jānu paryo ni, anta yo ādān-pradān huncha, sanchārko. bhāshā bujincha. The head teacher’s statement displays the fractal recursivity of linguistic hierarchies: just as there are many languages spoken in Nepal, Nepali serves as the lingua franca of the country used for business, communication among groups, and government. And English plays the role of Nepali when the international level is considered. Schools could also be classified according to bigness or smallness in terms of prestige rather than size or student body. As with countries to work in, there was a sense that a child might start in a less prestigious school, and, perhaps, as the student’s father worked his way up to bigger jobs in bigger countries, the family would be able to send the child to a bigger school. One parent, who knew that I  spent time in various schools, asked whether I had been to any of the big schools in the nearby bazaar; she hoped that when her husband successfully found foreign employment, which he was in the process of searching for, they would be able to move her son to a bigger school than the local private school he attended at the time. In over a year of fieldwork, though, big schools only referred to private, English-medium schools, while only government schools were referred to as small. In general, people in the area assumed that public schools were English-medium, and bad; when I accompanied teachers from an English-medium public school on a recruitment drive in their catchment area, local residents assumed that it must be a new private school when they heard that it was an English-medium school. This example of “erasure” – the semiotic process in which persons, activities, or sociolinguistic phenomena are rendered invisible (Irvine and Gal 2000; Gal and Irvine 2019) – is similar to the way that Hindi-medium private schools, or English-medium government schools, can be discursively erased (LaDousa 2014). Similarly, the possibility of becoming a respected big person by attending government schools and advancing within Nepal

153

M iranda W einberg

was erased in dominant stories about the need to study at an Englishmedium school and go abroad in order to advance.

Conclusion Rather than declaring that adherents to the cult of English-medium instruction are victims of an English-crazed false consciousness, this chapter contextualizes English-medium instruction as part of the metapragmatics of mobility. I have shown that the ideological and material position of ­English-medium instruction in Nepal is inextricable from labor and educational migration. Nepali-medium schooling, founded as part of a specific development narrative, draws on a set of images of progress and goals of working for the betterment of the nation. English-medium instruction, by contrast, is both funded by and in demand because of migration. These schools deploy entirely different semiotic arrays of meaning and value as part of a privatized aspirational infrastructure. A transnational lens is necessary to make sense of English-medium instruction. From the earliest introduction of English-medium instruction in Nepal, inspired by a ruler’s European travels, to the imposition of a monoglot language ideology at the outset of widespread public schooling in the 1950s, to the present-day demand for English in the context of international labor migration, medium of instruction cannot be solely viewed within national boundaries. In Nepal, English-medium schooling is imbued with hopes for physical and social mobility. In this chapter, I have shown the need for further attention to the communicative event chains in studies of language ideology that precede and provide part of the context of statements recorded in field notes or interviews. After all, language ideologies depend on circulation through the sociality of events chained together by interested participants. By attending to communicative event chains, scholars can appreciate the social life of language ideologies with semiotic nuance and historical depth. In Nepal, demands for English may, on their face, seem to be extreme to the point of being nonsensical. Attending to the circulation of narratives and characterological types that surround individual stretches of discourse reveals that the imagination of elsewhere through migration patterns is necessary for making sense of the desire for English-medium education.

Acknowledgments I am grateful to the research participants who made this work possible. My research was supported by a Wenner-Gren Foundation Dissertation Fieldwork grant and a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad grant. Thank you to an anonymous reviewer for improving this chapter,

154

L abor migration and E nglish - medium schooling

and to Chaise LaDousa and Christina P. Davis for their careful editorial guidance.

Note 1 In this study, private school teachers were much more likely to mete out physical punishments, while government schoolteachers threatened, but generally did not actually carry out, corporal punishment.

References Agha, Asif. 2005. “Voice, Footing, Enregisterment.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 15 (1): 38–59. ——— 2007. Language and Social Relations. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Ahearn, Laura. 2001. Invitations to Love: Love Letters, Literacy, and Social Change in Nepal. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Appadurai, Arjun. 1996. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Awasthi, Lava Deo. 2004. “Exploring Monolingual School Practices in Multilingual Nepal.” PhD diss., Danish University of Education. ——— 2008. “Importation of Ideologies: From Macaulay Minutes to Wood Commission.” Journal of Education and Research 1 (1): 21–30. Bansak, Cynthia, Brian Chezum, and Animesh Giri. 2015. “Remittances, School Quality, and Household Education Expenditures in Nepal.” IZA Journal of Migration 4 (1): 1–16. Bhandari, Prem, and Indra Chaudhary. 2017. “A  Calendar Method of Collecting Remittance Use Data in a Remittance Dependent Setting of Nepal.” Migration and Development 6 (2): 177–97. Burrow, Sharan. 2017. “We Must All Stand Up to the World’s Richest Nation and Oppose Its Use of Modern Slavery.” The Guardian, March 18. Accessed March 20, 2017. www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/mar/19/qatar-world-cup-slaverymigrant-workers Central Bureau of Statistics of Nepal (CBSN). 2011. National Population and Housing Census 2011 (National Report). Government of Nepal: Kathmandu, Nepal. Dahal, B. M., and S. Subba. 1986. “Language Policies and Indigenous Languages of Nepal.” In Language Planning: Proceedings of an Institute, vol. 8, 238. Mysore: Central Institute of Indian Languages. Davis, Christina P. 2020. The Struggle for a Multilingual Future: Youth and Education in Sri Lanka. New York: Oxford University Press. Fujikura, Tatsuro. 2002. Discourses of Awareness: Development, Social Movements and the Practices of Freedom in Nepal. Kathmandu: Martin Chautari. Gal, Susan. 1998. “Multiplicity and Contention among Language Ideologies: A Commentary.” In Language Ideologies: Practice and Theory, edited by Bambi B. Schieffelin, Kathryn A. Woolard, and Paul V. Kroskrity, 317–32. New York: Oxford University Press.

155

M iranda W einberg

Gal, Susan, and Judith T. Irvine. 2019. Signs of Difference: Language and Ideology in Social Life. New York: Cambridge University Press. Gibson, Owen, and Peter Pattison. 2014. “Death Toll Among Qatar’s 2022 World Cup Workers Revealed.” The Guardian, December 23. Accessed January 25, 2015. www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/23/qatar-nepal-workers-world-cup2022-death-toll-doha Goebel, Zane. 2017. “Imitation, Interdiscursive Hubs, and Chronotopic Configuration.” Language & Communication 53: 1–10. Green, E. Mara. 2014. “The Nature of Signs: Nepal’s Deaf Society, Local Sign, and the Production of Communicative Sociality.” PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley. Hanks, William. 1992. “The Indexical Ground of Deictic Reference.” In Rethinking Context: Language as an Interactive Phenomenon, edited by Alessaandro Duranti and Charles Goodwin, 43–76. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. International Labour Organization (ILO). 2017. “Nepal Labour Market Update.” Kathmandu, Nepal. Irvine, Judith T. 2011. “Language Ideology.” In Oxford Bibliographies: Anthropology, edited by John L. Jackson. New York: Oxford University Press. www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199766567/obo9780199766567-0012.xml Irvine, Judith T., and Susan Gal. 2000. “Language Ideology and Linguistic Differentiation.” In Regimes of Language: Ideologies, Politics, and Identities, edited by Paul V. Krosrkity, 35–83. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press. Joshi, Priya. 2013. “The Public Sector’s Experience and Response to Private Competition: The Case of Nepal.” PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania. Karki Nepal, Apsara. 2016. “The Impact of International Remittances on Child Outcomes and Household Expenditures in Nepal.” The Journal of Development Studies 52 (6): 838–53. Kathmandu Post. 2017. “More Nepalis Going Abroad for Employment.” Accessed December  16, 2020. https://kathmandupost.com/miscellaneous/2017/09/18/ more-nepalis-going-abroad-for-employment Khati, Ashok Raj. 2016. “English as a Medium of Instruction: My Experience from a Nepali Hinterland.” Journal of NELTA 21: 23–30. Kroskrity, Paul V. 2000. “Regimenting Languages: Language Ideological Perspectives.” In Regimes of Language: Ideologies, Polities, and Identities, edited by Paul V. Kroskrity, 1–34. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press. LaDousa, Chaise. 2014. Hindi Is Our Ground, English Is Our Sky: Education, Language, and Social Class in Contemporary India. New York: Berghahn Books. LaDousa, Chaise, and Christina P. Davis. 2018. “Introduction: Language and Schooling in India and Sri Lanka: Language Medium Matters.” International Journal of the Sociology of Language 253: 1–26. Lo, Adrienne, and Joseph Park. 2017. “Metapragmatics of Mobility.” Language in Society 46 (1): 1–4. Lokshin, Michael, Mikhail Bontch‐Osmolovski, and Elena Glinskaya. 2010. “Work‐ Related Migration and Poverty Reduction in Nepal.” Review of Development Economics 14 (2): 323–32.

156

L abor migration and E nglish - medium schooling

Mortimer, Katherine S. 2013. “Communicative Event Chains in an Ethnography of Paraguayan Language Policy.” International Journal of the Sociology of Language 219: 67–99. Nepal National Education Planning Commission (NEPC), Kaisher Bahadur K. C., Hugh Bernard Wood, and Rudra Raj Pandey. 1956. Education in Nepal: Report of the Nepal Education Planning Commission. Kathmandu: Bureau of Publications, College of Education. Pérez-Milans, Miguel. 2018. “Metapragmatics in the Ethnography of Language Policy.” In The Oxford Handbook of Language Policy and Planning, edited by James W. Tollefson and Miguel Pérez-Milans, 113–39. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Phyak, Prem. 2016. “Local-Global Tension in the Ideological Construction of English Language Education Policy in Nepal.” In English Language Education Policy in Asia, edited by R. Kirkpatrick, 199–218. Cham: Springer. Pigg, Stacy Leigh. 1992. “Inventing Social Categories through Place: Social Representations and Development in Nepal.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 34 (3): 491–513. Proctor, Lavanya M. 2014. “English and Globalization in India: The Fractal Nature of Discourse.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 24 (3): 294–314. Rai, Janak. 2014. “Malaria, Tarai Adivasi and the Landlord State in the 19th century Nepal: A Historical-Ethnographic Analysis.” Dhaulagiri Journal of Sociology and Anthropology 7: 87–112. Rappleye, Jeremy. 2019. “Origins of the Faith: The Untold Story of Hugh Wood, American Development Assistance in the 1950s, and Nepal’s Modern Education System.” Studies in Nepali History and Society 24 (1): 105–41. Raut, Nirmal Kumar, and Ryuichi Tanaka. 2018. “Parental Absence, Remittances and Educational Investment in Children Left Behind: Evidence from Nepal.” Review of Development Economics 22 (4): 1642–66. Sah, Pramod K. 2020. “English Medium Instruction in South Asian’s Multilingual Schools: Unpacking the Dynamics of Ideological Orientations, Policy/Practices, and Democratic Questions.” International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/citedby/10.1080/13670050.2020. 1718591?scroll=top&needAccess=true Sah, Pramod K., and Jeevan Karki. 2020. “Elite Appropriation of English as a Medium of Instruction Policy and Epistemic Inequalities in Himalayan Schools.” Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development. https://www.tandfonline. com/doi/abs/10.1080/01434632.2020.1789154 Seddon, David, Jagannath Adhikari, and Ganesh Gurung. 2002. “Foreign Labor Migration and the Remittance Economy of Nepal.” Critical Asian Studies 34 (1): 19–40. Seel, Amanda, Yogendra Yadava, and Sadananda Kadel. 2015. Medium of Instruction and Languages for Education (MILE): Ways Forward for Education Policy, Planning and Practice in Nepal. Kathmandu: Transcend Vision Nepal. Sharma, Sanjay, Shibani Pandey, Dinesh Pathak, and Bimbika Sijapati-Basnett. 2014. State of Migration in Nepal. Kathmandu: Centre for the Study of Labour and Mobility. Shrestha, Tina. 2018. “Aspirational Infrastructure: Everyday Brokerage and the ForeignEmployment Recruitment Agencies in Nepal.” Pacific Affairs 91 (4): 673–93.

157

M iranda W einberg

Silverstein, Michael. 1996 [1987]. “Monoglot ‘Standard’ in America: Standardization and Metaphors of Linguistic Hegemony.” In The Matrix of Language: Contemporary Linguistic Anthropology, edited by Donald Brenneis and Ronald H. S. Macaualay, 284–306. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Skerry, C. A., K. Moran, and K. M. Calavan. 1992. Four Decades of Development. The History of U.S. Assistance to Nepal 1951–1991. Kathmandu: USAID. Skinner, Debra, and Dorothy Holland. 1996. “Schools and the Cultural Production of the Educated Person in a Nepalese Hill Community.” In The Cultural Production of the Educated Person, edited by Bradley A. Levinson, Douglas E. Foley, and Dorothy C. Holland, 273–300. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Sunam, Ramesh. 2017. “In Search of Pathways Out of Poverty: Mapping the Role of International Labour Migration, Agriculture and Rural Labour.” Journal of Agrarian Change 17 (1): 67–80. Tamang, Seira. 2002. “Dis-Embedding the Sexual/Social Contract: Citizenship and Gender in Nepal.” Citizenship Studies 6 (3): 309–24. Thapa, Sridhar, and Sanjaya Acharya. 2017. “Remittances and Household Expenditure in Nepal: Evidence from Cross-Section Data.” Economies 5 (2): 16. Weinberg, Miranda. 2017. “Taking Down Barcelona in Kathmandu: Linguistic Futures in a Student Movement.” Signs and Society 5 (1): 69–95. ——— 2020. “Scale-Making, Power and Agency in Arbitrating School-Level Language Planning Decisions.” Current Issues in Language Planning 22 (1–2): 59–78. Wood, Hugh. B. 1962. Educational Statistics for Nepal. Eugene, OR: The American Nepal Education Foundation. ——— 1987. Nepal Diary, 1953–1962. Tillamook, OR: American Nepal Education Foundation. World Bank. 2019. Migration and Remittances: Recent Developments and Outlook. Washington, DC: World Bank Group. Wortham, Stanton, and Angela Reyes. 2015. Discourse Analysis Beyond the Speech Event. New York, NY: Routledge. Zharkevich, Ina. 2019. “Money and Blood: Remittances as a Substance of Relatedness in Transnational Families in Nepal.” American Anthropologist 121 (4): 884–96.

158

8 ENGLISH-MEDIUM EDUCATION AND PATRIARCHY Narratives of Indian women Priti Sandhu

In this chapter, I  analyze how five Hindi-medium-educated North Indian women interrogate the hegemonic position occupied by English-medium education, within both their immediate private and larger community networks. The women narrate autobiographical stories in which they tell of the negative positioning imposed upon them because of their Hindi-medium backgrounds by people within their personal, marital, and social networks and by persons they encountered during arranged marriage negotiations, which continues to be the dominant procedure through which most Indians get married. Adopting an intersectional, narrative analytic perspective, I examine the multiple dimensions of their subordination and the resistant stances they enact against the socioeconomic advantages widely perceived to be accrued from English-medium education. The narratives are firmly situated within the current socioeconomic context of rapidly changing urban sites, which, since the neoliberal economic reforms of the early 1990s, have resulted in swift though inequitable socioeconomic growth. This has led to the emergence of an overtly consumeroriented, “new” middle class, a class that continues to grow rapidly every year. Urban members of this new middle class are actively contributing to the commodification of English in India, as English-medium education has come to be associated with social status as well as with educational and professional success. Despite an increasing desire for the kind of English imparted in English-medium schools, only 8 per cent of primary schools are English medium and only 6 per cent of the total Indian population has access to English-medium education (Annamalai 2004). Such unequal access to English has contributed to the further fragmentation of Indian society (Ramanathan 2005, 2013), and has also led to English-medium education becoming an important identity category for (re)constructing social hierarchies (LaDousa 2014). 159

P riti S andhu

This skewed linguistic situation is even more complicated for women because of the well-documented patriarchal nature of Indian society that has historically marginalized women and that continues to be deeply misogynistic (see Kachru 2006; Sandhu 2016a; Subramaniam 2006). This complex patriarchal, linguistic, and socioeconomically fragmented landscape, coupled with an increasingly aspirational, fiscally oriented, and materialistic society, form the backdrop against which the participants in this study narrate the negative and intersecting effects of Hindi-medium education, gender, and different social positionings on their lives. They interrogate these socioeconomic, linguistic, and gender-based hegemonies through their counter narratives with a certain, though limited, degree of agency.

Positioning English in India English, from the time of its introduction to India by the British colonialists, was a language for urban, traditionally elite Indians who were required by the Britishers to govern the country for them. This is effectively pointed out in Macaulay’s infamous Minute on Education of 1835, which critiqued and dismissed Indian thought and culture and pragmatically argued for English to be taught to a select few Indians (see Chapter 5). It urged the colonial power to “do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions we govern  – a class of persons Indian in blood and color, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect” (cited in Pennycook 1998, 80; see Sandhu 2016a for a discussion of the history of English in India). This class of predominantly urban Indians, who received English education in newly formed, urban universities, went on to secure administrative positions within the colonial government, augmenting their socioeconomic status and contributing to additional structuration of Indian society. Since Indian Independence in 1947, English has continued to occupy its position as an elite language. In 1967, it was recognized as the associate official language of the Indian Republic. The elevated position ascribed to English is exemplified through an examination of medium of instruction (medium) in Indian schools, which according to Dua (1994, 65), “indicate the social and economic stratification in Indian society.” Broadly speaking, the privileged social classes educate their children in the expensive ­English-medium private schools, the less privileged educate them in the more affordable, private English-medium schools, and the financially disadvantaged educate them in the regional- or vernacular-medium state schools, including Hindi-medium schools (A. K. Mohanty 2006). The majority of Indian children study in state schools, which use a local Indian language (a vernacular) as the medium. Since most elite tertiary-level education in India is in English, Hindi-medium students, if they secure admission to these English-medium institutes, encounter considerable academic challenges due 160

E nglish - medium education and patriarchy

to the transition between mediums. Ramanathan (2005) investigated the English–vernacular divide in the western state of Gujarat in India, revealing the challenges encountered by vernacular-educated students. The perceived advantages of English have contributed to negative societal perceptions about Hindi-medium education. For example, I have analyzed how Hindi-medium education figures in narratives (by both Hindi-medium- and English-medium-educated women) as negatively impacting professional, educational, social, and personal lives of North Indian women (Sandhu 2010, 2014a, 2014b, 2015a, 2015b, 2016a, 2016b). This positioning of English, and, by association, of Hindi-medium education and English-medium education, is tied to the economic restructuration of India. The neoliberal capitalism adopted by successive Indian governments in the last three decades has resulted in considerable socioeconomic upheavals. It is widely accepted that globalization with all its inherent complexities creates “conflicts, disjunctures, and new forms of stratification” (Giddens 1994, 5). These effects of globalization are disparately mediated through social categories such as class and gender (Derné 2008; Massey 1994). So, while new avenues of socioeconomic growth and empowerment are available to some people, for many others, there is an exacerbation and deepening of pre-existing divides and injustices. Rapley, in his cogent discussions of neoliberalism, describes the “profound changes” wrought in Indian society due to the economic structural adjustments begun in the early 1990s (2004, 134). Among the most significant of the changes was the resurgence in economic growth with the alarming consequence of significantly widening the wealth gap among Indians. These structural changes contributed to the rise of an increasingly self-reliant middle class who challenged established, traditional authority structures and believed that they themselves could bring about change. This transition came to be reflected in the political landscape of the country. Rapley positions the occupant of this new class position specifically as the “new middle-class citizen in the Third World” (2004, 136). This denizen of the new middle class is located between the rural poor and the urban elite (those who have traditionally had access to socioeconomic privilege, including English-medium education). While being rich, members of this new middle class are not as worldly as what Rapley describes as the “new global middle-class” (2004). The Third World “new” middle-class member is therefore neither tightly bound to tradition nor is a blind follower of Westernization. Such a person is neither a “patron” nor a “client” of the state but “seeks autonomy and a space in which to accomplish his or her own resource accumulation” (Rapley 2004, 136). Increasingly, among the urban members of this rising new middle class, English, learned in private English-medium schools, is viewed as a necessary route to upward economic mobility, especially if their goal is to attain such socioeconomic elevation through high-paid employment in the private 161

P riti S andhu

or public sectors. Additionally, in the case of most urban people who might have accumulated their wealth through various business ventures, ­English-medium education for the next generation is viewed as a fundamental requirement for symbolizing and reinforcing their elite status (see Chapter  3). Rubdy correctly surmises that English continues “to rule supreme as the language of power and privilege associated with the newly emergent and increasingly influential middle-class engendering connotations of cultural superiority and imperialism” (2008, 125). However, due to the limited access to the best exclusive, private English-medium schools, “English capital remains unevenly distributed across different social groups,” and while it advantages the emerging middle class, it serves to marginalize “the vast majority who have limited access to English” (Rubdy 2008, 125; see also LaDousa 2014; Ramanathan 2013; Sandhu 2016a). The newly resurgent commodification of English has had an impact on the professional opportunities available to urban denizens, with graduates of English-medium schools enjoying a clear advantage. This is significant since the post-1990s economic development of India has been skewed because economic growth has been capital- rather than labor-intensive (see Sandhu 2016a for an extended discussion). The result, in broad strokes, has been that Indians employed in information technology and a handful of service industries are earning salaries several times greater than those of Indians employed in more traditional employment. Professionally indemand degrees like engineering and MBAs, together with fluency in English acquired in elite English-medium schools, are implicated in this distorted economic fragmentation (Sandhu 2010, 2015a, 2016a). Lyotard argues that “knowledge has become a principal force of production” and the clear effect of this phenomenon has impacted the workforces of the Western developed societies (1984, 5). He also argues that this knowledge deficit constitutes a “major bottleneck” for developing countries, which has contributed to the gap between them and the developed world. In India, this knowledge deficit includes the linguistic capital of English-medium education. People from Hindi-medium backgrounds without the desired attainment of higher education face considerable challenges in accessing the socioeconomic advantages that are readily available to those with an English-medium background and a university education that is valued in the labor market. Such a troubled positioning of English is not isolated to India. Medium policies and unequal access to English with its accompanying perceived and/or factual disadvantages have been examined in other contexts as well. Rassool (2007) discusses the uneven access to English education through the lens of historically unresolved linguistic issues in postcolonial contexts with case studies from Mali (Canvin 2007), South Africa (Heugh 2007), and Pakistan (Rassool and Mansoor 2007). Similarly, Tollefson and Tsui’s (2004) edited volume draws on case studies from Asia, Africa, and Europe to investigate the educational and socioeconomic ramifications of medium 162

E nglish - medium education and patriarchy

policies. The studies analyze complex linguistic and sociopolitical issues related to globalization, migration, labor policy, and the distribution of economic resources and political power. Other case studies have investigated the uneven distribution of English in Tanzania (Neke 2005; Vavrus 2002). Shamim (2008) discusses policy decisions of the government of Pakistan, which has mandated the use of English for science and math instruction from grade 6 onwards in light of global changes, and argues that the successful implementation of such a policy needs to attend to local exigencies. Lauder (2008) presents the complex, ambivalent positioning of English in Indonesia and examines the historical, political, sociocultural, and linguistic elements that have impacted the status and functions of English in Indonesian society. New research on these interrelated themes continues to emerge in the current moment of late modernity characterized by the overturning of established structures and institutions that are being experienced differently across the globe.

Methodology Gender in this study is not treated as a binary difference measured along physiological lines but is instead understood, in largely post-structural terms, as being organized according to a variety of gendered and sexual identities, practices, and orientations (Benor et  al. 2002; Bucholtz 1999; Bucholtz, Liang, and Sutton 1999). As such, the “performativity” (Austin 1962) of gender identities and practices is recognized as being an evolving rather than a fixed-by-birth process (Butler 1990; Cameron 2005). It has come to be understood that there are a multitude of diverse gendered identities, orientations, and behaviors located within specific local contexts. Communities of practice are made up of individuals interacting in close symbiotic relationships of identification and/or liminal resistance (Cameron 2005). Therefore, rather than prescribing pre-determined gender identities and orientations along “fixed” and “natural” binaries to the participants in this study – in what would be an authoritarian and etic move – I describe the participants in the heteronormative terms with which they themselves overtly identified in their conversations with me. I  am further mindful of the fact that the heteronormative gendered identities indexed by these participants must be viewed not as reflecting a homogenized, undifferentiated, and over-essentialized experience of “traditional” Indian womanhood in the North Indian location of this study. Rather, the women are recognized as each having her unique, individual life events and local, gendered socializations resulting in differentiations among their gendered experiences and positionalities. In theorizing gender, feminist scholars have emphasized the intersectionality of gender with class, race, sexuality, age, nationality, and caste. Viewed through this lens, gender is understood as not only crosscutting with 163

P riti S andhu

these axes of identity but also as being mutually constituted by them (see Mohanty, Russo, and Torres 1991; Sandoval 2000). In one of the earliest feminist theorizations of intersectionality, Crenshaw (1989, 1991, 1997) argues for the importance of attending to the multiple local intersecting patterns of race and gender that shape the numerous interconnected facets of the experiences of Black women (as also of all Indigenous people and people of color [BIPOC]) rather than assuming that racism and sexism operate as individual, mutually exclusive categories. She argues against a “single-axis analysis” which, as she rightly posits, misrepresents the experiences of Black women (and those of Indigenous and POC women) as it assumes that subordination occurs “along a single categorical axis” (Crenshaw 1989, 139– 40). Crenshaw (1989) further argues that an intersectional theoretical lens allows for a nuanced examination of the multiple, complex subordinations experienced by women of color, especially those which cannot be understood as the result of separate sources of discrimination, and, thereby, provides an analytical tool capable of attending to the unique, local patterns of marginalization experienced by BIPOC women. Along similar lines, recent Third World Feminist scholarship, arguing for a “disassociation of gender from its one-dimensional modern European association with binary sexual difference,” has stressed the necessity of concrete analysis to examine how women and men are “historically and discursively constructed not necessarily only in relation to one another, but also in relation to a variety of other categories, including dominant formulations of political and social spheres, which are themselves subject to change” (Sinha 2012, 258–60). My endeavor in this chapter is to demonstrate how the women experience the intersectionality of their gender identities with medium, patriarchy, and social class across different spheres of their lives. I examine how these women narrate their varied experiences through these multifaceted lenses. I show how their Hindi-medium backgrounds are depicted with respect to their professional marginalization, which, in turn, is represented as exacerbating the misogynistic behavior the women are subjected to within their immediate familial and social networks. Of special analytic interest is the resistance to such negative positionings they enact in their narratives. Interview data and the narratives constructed within them form the primary data source for this study. Interviews are conceptualized as speech events rather than as direct routes to inner cognitive states of participants (Roulston 2010; Talmy 2011). They are acknowledged as being coconstructed, as sites where situated meanings are jointly assembled by the interviewee and interviewer (Holstein and Gubrium 1995; Mishler 1986). Narratives are theorized as being impacted by the social, cultural, and historical conventions within which they are produced (Garrett and Baquedano-López 2002; Ochs 1997; Pavlenko 2007). They are also discursively fashioned and situated within local societal contexts (Bamberg 2005). While narratives are viewed as being impacted by the macro-structural 164

E nglish - medium education and patriarchy

contexts within which they are embedded and recounted, they are simultaneously understood to be devices through which these worlds and specific worldviews are constructed (Sandhu 2016a). In other words, narratives are believed to both constitute and be constituted by the world. They can be perceived as sites where narrators engage structure and agency and where several types of agentive constructions, albeit often structurally constrained, take place: of selves, of others, of ideologies, and, in general, of all aspects of the social worlds inhabited by the narrators.

The study The five participants were from the North Indian cities and towns of New Delhi, Dehradun, Mussoorie, Haridwar, and Rishikesh and were interviewed in 2013. All were from Hindi-medium backgrounds and had earned their B.A. degrees from local government colleges. The interviews were part of a project conducted between 2008 and 2013 in which the narratives and conversations of sixty-five North Indian women were analyzed as they spoke of the intersectionality between their mediums (Hindi, English or combined Hindi and English) and varied spheres of their lives. I have published data from this project as articles and a monograph with the foci of analysis ranging from the local occasioning of autobiographical narratives (2014a), the telling of a failed romance (2014b), the construction of resistance to professional marginalization (2015a), the use of stylization to enact specific identities (2015b), the construction of profession-related identities (2016a), and affective, negative self-categorizations (2016b). This chapter adds to this body of work. The “object of analysis” here is the examination of how married and employed women in their late twenties and early thirties construct the impact of their Hindi-medium background on various aspect of their lives (De Fina and Georgakopoulou 2012, 24). I specifically examine the manner in which these five women connect their gender-related positions to their Hindi-medium-associated marginalization and the resistance they enact to such social positionings. All five women were interviewed three times by me, and each interview was audio-recorded. The women were located either through elicitations for participation placed in local newspapers or through word-of-mouth introductions. Each woman was interviewed individually. The interviews were open-ended. Each started with an elicitation about the woman’s background information such as age, education, employment, family background, and marital status. After this information gathering, I  asked each woman if and how her life had been impacted by her medium. I was careful not to imply any positive or negative connotations of any specific medium in my questions. I  transcribed all the interviews and then categorized narratives recounted in them thematically. I assigned each woman a pseudonym used herein. I  re-examined the narratives of married women to locate specific 165

P riti S andhu

gender-related themes, unexplored in my previous publications. I applied an intersectional lens to these stories, which revealed complex, interconnected patterns of linguistic, gendered, and social categories and positionings.

The women and their interview excerpts Abhilasha: the end of romance When I  spoke with her, Abhilasha, located in Delhi, was a twenty-eightyear-old married woman with two daughters aged four and six. She ran a small tailoring business of women’s clothes from her home for clients in her neighborhood. Abhilasha performed a stinging critique of the current socioeconomic situation incorporating three main dimensions reflective of her personal realities: 1) the marginalization accorded to Hindi-mediumeducated people; 2) the primacy of monetary concerns that govern personal relationships; and 3) the patriarchal nature of her society. In the excerpt below, she first tells the story of how her boyfriend of one year broke up with her (l. 1–10, 12–15) followed by criticism of his behavior, which is linked to the patriarchal structuring of her society (l. 17–26).

Excerpt one  1 A: Jaise meine aapko bataya, usne mujhse achanak hi  2 rishta tod diya. Kaha ki “Mere ghar waale nahin  3 chaahte ki mein tumse shaadi karoun. Unhone mere  4 liye ladki pasand kari hai. Woh mere liye sahi  5 rahegi.” Meine puchcha, “Woh kyun aur mein kyun  6 nahin?” Toh ussne kaha, “Woh English school se  7 hai aur B.Ed ki hui hai. Uski naukri bhi achche  8 school mein lagi hai. Woh meri family my zyada  9 adjust kar payegi. Mere ghar waale tumhe accept 10 nahin karenge.” Like I told you, he broke off his relationship with me suddenly. He said that, “My family does not wish that I marry you. They have chosen a girl for me. She will be right for me.” I asked, “Why her and not me?” So, he said, “She is from an English school and has done B.Ed. She also has a job in a good school. She will be able to adjust better within my family. My family will not accept you.” 11 P: Oho! I’m so sorry. Aise kaise bol diya usne. Oho! I’m so sorry. How could he say something like this. 12 A: Haan seedhe-seedhe keh diya. Meri koi baat nahin 13 suni. Us din ke baad woh mujhse nahin mila. Mera 14 phone bhi nahin uthata tha. Bus sab kuch aise hi ek15 dum se khatam kar diya. 166

E nglish - medium education and patriarchy



Yes, he said this directly. He did not listen to anything I said. He did not meet me after that day. He would not pick up my phone either. He just ended everything abruptly in this manner. 16 P: I’m so sorry. 17 A: Mein aapse puchchti houn agar use pehle se hi apni 18 family ke baare mein pata tha, agar use English 19 school wali ladki hi chaahiye thi toh mujhse rishta 20 kyun banaya? Bus mere saath time paas karne ke 21 liye? Aaj-kal pyar-mohabbat ka kya mol reh gaya 22 hai? Sub paise ke peeche hi bhaagte hain. Aur 23 Hindi school waali ladki English school waali ki 24 tarahan kaise kama sakti hai? Aur phir ek ladki 25 kaise ek aadmi se kuch keh sakti hai? Agar usne 26 chod diya toh chod diya. I ask you if he already knew about his family beforehand, if he wanted an English school girl for himself, then why did he have a relationship with me? Was it only to pass time with me? What is the value given to love these days? Everyone chases only money. And how can a Hindi school background girl earn as much as an English school background one? And then, how can a girl say anything to a man? If he leaves her, then he leaves her, what can be done then? 27 P: Haan sahi kaha aapne. Yes, what you say is correct. Abhilasha’s story tells how her boyfriend unceremoniously ended their relationship because his family chose an English-medium educated bride for him. This other woman had a permanent teaching position in an achche “good” school, and, per her boyfriend, she would better “adjust” within his family, finding greater acceptance by them than would Abhilasha (l. 1–10). Abhilasha’s attempts to save her relationship are depicted as ending in failure as the man refused to meet or talk with her after this narrated conversation (l. 12–15). This narrative clearly presents Abhilasha in a less powerful position than her boyfriend who is shown as the one in charge of the course and fate of their romance. Also noteworthy is that this narrated incident shows both how patriarchy and class-considerations were in operation to marginalize Abhilasha. Responding to this understanding, in her coda to the story, which is addressed to me as her listening audience, Abhilasha conveys her resistance to such treatment (l. 17–26). Her resistance and condemnation are accomplished through a list of rhetorical questions and emphatic statements. The first question, a blend of two queries, interrogates why this man had a relationship with her if he already knew of his family’s preference and if he too wanted a woman with an English-medium background (l. 17–20). It serves to portray the control that families have over 167

P riti S andhu

the marriages of young people while conveying the widespread preference for English-medium-educated brides both for arranged and so-called “love” marriages, once again, implicating the higher position assigned to men and their families and the role class plays in cementing this societal demarcation. Abhilasha’s next question answers the first two by proffering the suggestion that for the man their relationship was only “time-pass,” a phrase that commonly denotes the lack of worthwhileness accorded to the referent and, in this instance, it depicts her interpretation of his disregard of their relationship (l. 20–21). Further building on this idea, her next question conveys the meaning that pyar-mohabbat “love” is of little significance in modern-day relationships (l. 21–22). Her ensuing emphatic declaration about everyone chasing after only money (l. 22) completes this portrayal of an increasingly mercenary society where romantic relationships are less about emotional connections and more about monetary considerations. Implied in this worldview is the suggestion that English-medium-educated women are economically a better prospect as prospective brides. This meaning is overtly voiced in her next question when Abhilasha negatively compares the earning capacity of Hindi-medium-educated women vis-à-vis English-medium-educated women (l. 22–24). The unvoiced culture-specific custom of dowry is clearly referenced in these lines. In North India, it is customary, though illegal, for brides’ families to pay dowry to grooms’ families in the form of cash, shares, bank deposits, gold ornaments, household items, vehicles, and even apartments and houses. The specific amounts depend upon the financial status of the families involved and the job and earning capacity of the grooms, and are openly negotiated between the families. Unfortunately, there is a long and tragic precedence of crimes related to dowry, the most heinous being “dowry-deaths” where young brides are murdered by grooms’ families for bringing insufficient dowries. While Abhilasha does not refer to dowries directly, her narrative and subsequent critique clearly reference the economic expectations imposed on prospective brides, even if the women are in romantic relationships ostensibly outside the control of arranged marriage negotiations. However, while she interrogates the unequal status of Hindi-medium-educated and English-medium-educated women, she makes no attempt to question the implicit economic expectations placed on a bride-to-be and, thereby, leaves this powerful, gender-biased social norm uninterrogated. Abhilasha’s final question where she asks how a girl can question a man about his actions (l. 24–25), followed by her declarative statement that if a man chooses to leave a woman then that is the end of the matter (l. 25–26), highlight her hegemonic acceptance of the rigid patriarchal nature of her social context. The hegemonic condition allows women little agency in pre-marital relationships and persistently positions them as “lower” than men. In this

168

E nglish - medium education and patriarchy

narrative, Abhilasha enacts a direct, albeit rather incomplete, critique of her socioeconomic context where linguistic hierarchies linked to medium are questioned but where firmly entrenched, unequal gender relations remain unquestioned. Malti: arranged marriage ordeals Malti, who lived in Dehradun, was a thirty-one-year-old married woman with a son aged seven and a daughter aged five. She worked in a beauty salon. Like Abhilasha, Malti also enacted a severe denunciation of her social realities. In this instance, rather than the mercenary nature of romantic relationships, the object of criticism was the importance placed on monetary considerations in arranged marriages to the detriment of Hindi-mediumeducated women. In the excerpt below, Malti narrates the unsuccessful negotiations for her arranged marriage from her single days and attributes the breakdown of several such discussions to her Hindi-medium education and earlier unemployed status.

Excerpt two  1 M: Ristha dhoondhne ke samay kaafi dikkat hui thee. There were several problems while trying to arrange the marriage.  2 P: Kis tarahan ki pareshani? What kind of problems?  3 M: Pehle hi woh puchchte the, “Ladki kitni padhi hai?  4 Kaun se school se padhi hai?” Aur phir ke, “Woh  5 naukri karti hai?” Aur, “Kitna kamaati hi?” Initially itself, they would ask, “How much is the girl educated? Which school is she from?” And then, “Does she work?” And, “How much does she earn?”  6 P: Achcha. Okay.  7 M: Haan aur jaadatar jageh baat wahin pe khatam ho  8 jaati thi jab unhe pata chalta tha ki mein Hindi  9 medium se padhi houn aur naukri nahin karti. Yes, and in most places the talks would end at the point when they found out that I was educated in Hindi medium and was not employed. 10 P: Achcha, woh kyun? Okay, why was that? 11 M: Aaj-kal sab ko kamoun bahu chaahiye. Jitna jaada 12 kamaaye utna achcha. Aur yeh toh sab jaante hain 13 ki English waali ladkiyan Hindi waalon se jaada 14 kamaati hain.

169

P riti S andhu



These days everyone wants a daughter-in-law who earns. The more she earns, the better it is. And everyone knows that English background girls earn more than Hindi background girls. 15 P: Achcha. Okay. 16 M: Haan. Issi kaaran Hindi waali ladkiyon ko achche 17 ghar milna bahut mushkil ho raha hai. Aaj-kal to 18 aapka school aur aapki naukri hi aapki dowry ho 19 gayi hai. Aisi padhaai ka kya fayada jiske karan 20 aap har jageh peeche rah jaate ho? This is the reason girls from Hindi schools find it difficult to get good homes for marriage. These days your school and your job has become your dowry. What is the use of such a schooling because of which you are always left behind? 21 P: Sahi kaha aapne. What you say is correct. In this extract, Malti, in an answer to my open-ended query about the impact of Hindi-medium education on her life, narrates the difficulties that presented themselves during several marriage negotiations. The problems are presented as a list of questions posed by various grooms’ families to her parents regarding Malti, which ranged from her schooling to her education, employment, and salary (l. 1, 3–5). Through these questions, Malti straightforwardly presents the skewed power dynamics of a patriarchal society by depicting the groom’s family as controlling the marriage negotiations, interrogating her linguistic, professional, and monetary status. It needs to be mentioned here that these considerations are also kept at the forefront by families of prospective brides during marriage arrangements. However, the age-old custom of dowry (paid by the woman’s family) and the patriarchal nature of such a society works to bestow the upper hand to the families of prospective grooms. Such an understanding is bolstered when Malti further narrates that most negotiations would end at an early stage when the bridesearching families learned of her Hindi-medium-educated, unemployed status (l. 7–9). On being asked to explain why talks would end, Malti gives three categorical reasons: 1) everyone wanted employed daughters-in-law; 2) the greater the salary brides-to-be earned the better; and 3) everyone was aware that English-medium-educated women earned more than Hindi-mediumeducated ones (l. 11–14). She then causatively links these declarations to the “fact” that Hindi-medium-educated women were currently finding it difficult to find matches in “good” families (l. 16–17). She then explicitly labels a single woman’s school and employment as her dowry in current times (l. 17–19). She poses a final rhetorical question in which she questions the usefulness of an education (implicitly a Hindi-medium one), which ensures 170

E nglish - medium education and patriarchy

all around failure (l. 19–20). Like Abhilasha, Malti’s narrative and critique present the picture of a patriarchal society where single women are multiply marginalized, as they are “evaluated” by the groom’s families along linguistic and material parameters both of which are depicted as working against them. Similar to Abhilasha, the edge that English-medium education gives to single women is interrogated, especially in the new meaning Malti ascribes to dowry. What remains uninterrogated, like in Abhilasha’s case, is the inequitable power dynamics between families of prospective brides and grooms or the pre-eminent position ascribed to financial concerns in marriage negotiations. Their unquestioning acceptance speaks to their deep rootedness within the social psyche. Indrani: spousal contempt Indrani, who lived in Mussoorie, was a twenty-seven-year-old married woman with two sons aged five and two. She worked as a shop ­assistant in an area frequented by tourists. Indrani’s narrative performs a critique of the link between a woman’s salary and Hindi-medium e­ducation and the negative effect of a married woman’s “small” salary on her married life.

Excerpt three  1 I: Kehte hue achcha toh nahin lagta lekin sach toh yeh  2 hi hai ki mere husband aur mere beech mein kaafi  3 tanaav rehta hai is baat ko lekar. It doesn’t seem nice to say this but the truth is that there is a lot of tension between my husband and me because of this matter.  4 P: Kis baat ko le kar? Because of what?  5 I: Yehi ki mein Hindi medium se padhi houn. Unhe  6 lagta hai ki agar mein kissi achche English school  7 se hoti toh aaj meri bhi ek achchi naukri hoti. Mein  8 bhi achcha kama rahi hoti. Only this that I have been educated in Hindi medium. He thinks that if I had been educated in some good English school then, today I too would have a good job. I too would have been earning a good salary.  9 P: Achcha. Okay. 10 I: Haan woh aksar mujhse kehte hain, “Yeh to meri 11 buri kismet thi ki tumse shaadi ho gayi. Agar kissi 171

P riti S andhu

12 English school waali se hoti toh aaj mere ghar 13 ki haalat kuch aur hi hoti.” Yes, he often says to me, “It is my misfortune that I got married to you. If I had been married to some English-medium-educated woman, then today the condition of my home would have been something else.” 14 P: I’m very sorry ke woh aisa kehte hain. I’m very sorry that he says such things. 15 I: Bahut bura lagta hai. Andar tak chot lagti 16 hai. Kya shaadi mein bus yehi zaroori hai ki aurat 17 kitna kamati hain? Aur kuch maiyne nahin rakhta? 18 Shaadi kam aur sauda zyada lagta hai. It feels very bad. It hurts deep inside. Is the money that a woman earns the only important thing about marriage? Is nothing else of importance? This seems less like a marriage and more like a commercial exchange. 19 P: Theek kaha aapne. What you say is correct. Acknowledging the delicate nature of her narrative, Indrani describes the tense relationship between her husband and her (l. 1–3). Answering my query, she proffers her Hindi-medium education as the reason her husband thinks she has a low-paid job (l. 5–8). Significantly, she uses the adjective achcha “good” three times, variously inflected, to report her husband’s opinions about English-medium schools, jobs, and salary, while conveying causative links between the three. Thus, the tension between the couple is shown as emerging from her husband’s beliefs that a “good” Englishmedium education would have ensured that Indrani secured a “good” job with a “good” salary. The absence of all three is narrated as the cause of trouble between them. These attitudes are interactionally accentuated by using direct reported speech (l. 10–13), which further portrays the husband in a poor light. It is significant that the husband is shown as blaming Indrani’s Hindi-medium background for his family’s haalat “condition” (l. 13), a common way of referencing strained financial circumstances. It is telling that the husband is shown talking about his rather than their home, thereby signaling her peripheral status. Then, in a metacommentary addressed to me, Indrani expresses the depth of hurt such comments produce within her (l. 15–16). This is followed by an explicit critique of their relationship, albeit couched in generalities, where she asks if the only significant thing in a marriage is the wife’s salary and whether all else is immaterial (l. 16–17). She ends with a cutting comment that describes such a marriage as a sauda “economic transaction” (l. 18). Unlike Abhilasha and Malti, who had unquestioningly reproduced the importance of monetary transactions in both “love” and arranged marriages, Indrani questions the salience that a husband accords to such 172

E nglish - medium education and patriarchy

concerns and indicts their relationship because of it. In doing so, she interrogates the long-standing social evil whereby husbands and their families feel entitled to demand dowry from a woman and her family, and where the value and respect accorded to a wife in her marital home is all too often based on her income. While Malti implicates English-medium education in the economic and conjugal marginalization of Hindi-medium-educated women, she does not interrogate the ideologies or socioeconomic structures that accord such high value to English-medium education. Gauri: mother-in-law’s derision Gauri, who resided in Haridwar, was a thirty-two-year-old married woman with a six-year-old son. She worked as a shop assistant in a furniture retail outlet. In her narrative and follow-up commentary, she critiqued the salience accorded to financial matters within relationships in general and in her relationship with her mother-in-law in particular. As with the previous three participants, Gauri also causatively correlated Hindi-medium education with lower income.

Excerpt four  1 G: Ghar par bhi is baat ka kafi bura asar hota hai. This issue has quite a bad influence at home as well.  2 P: Woh kis tarahan? How so?  3 G: Meri saas mere saath kafi buri tarhan vyavhaar  4 karti hain. Meri devrani English school se hai aur  5 ek bank mein achchi post pe hai. Saara time meri  6 saas mujhe is ko le kar taane deti rehti hain ki,  7 “Kash meine apne bade ladke ke liye bhi angrezi  8 school wali chuni hoti toh aaj woh bhi kissi achchi  9 jageh kaam kar rahi hoti. Woh bhi achchi salary 10 kama rahi hoti.” My mother-in-law behaves quite badly with me. My younger sister-in-law is from an English school and she has a good post in a bank. All the time, my mother-in-law uses this to taunt me saying, “I wish I had chosen a bride from an English school for my older son as well then she too would have been working in some good place. She too would have been earning a good salary.” 11 P: Oho! I’m sorry ke woh aapse yeh sab kehti hain. Oho! I’m sorry that she says all this to you. 12 G: Yeh toh roz ki baat ho gayi hai. Bahut bura lagta 13 hai. Man mein baar-baar yeh sawaal aata hai ki 14 aapke school ya naukri ka aapki family se kya 173

P riti S andhu

15 mutlab? Kya sab rishte bus paise mein hi tole jaate 16 hain? Kisse pata tha ki Hindi school mein padhne 17 ke kaaran yeh sab jhelna padega? This has become a daily occurrence. I feel very bad. Again and again, this question comes to my mind that what is the connection between your schooling and job and your family? Are all relationships evaluated only in monetary terms? Who knew that one would have to endure all this because of studying in a Hindi school? 18 P: I’m sorry. 19 G: Shukriya. Lekin yeh toh aam si baat hai. Aaj-kal har 20 kissi ko bus paise hi toh chaahiye. Aur bahu koh 21 tang nahin kareinge toh kisse kareinge? Thank you. But this has become a commonplace thing. Nowadays everyone wants only money. And who will they trouble but the daughter-in-law? Gauri starts her narrative by making a meta-comment about the tense atmosphere in her home (l. 1), which she attributes to her mother-in-law’s ill-treatment of her (l. 3–4). She blames this verbal abuse on the Englishmedium background of her younger sister-in-law (i.e., the wife of her husband’s younger brother) and the younger woman’s achchi “good” job in a bank (l. 4–5). The mother-in-law’s taunts are narrated in direct speech, which is portrayed as a regret for not getting her older son married to an English-medium-educated woman. If this had happened, then this daughterin-law would also have been working in a “good” job and earning a “good” salary (l. 7–10). Gauri subsequently states that such verbal abuse is a daily occurrence (l. 12). This narrative of constant denigration is followed by a coda, which serves as a critique of her mother-in-law’s behavior. She first conveys her hurt feelings at such treatment (l. 12–13) and then denounces this conduct (1.13–17). Her disapproval is couched as three questions that interrogate: 1) the logic of linking a woman’s schooling and job to her family; 2) the financially driven nature of all relationships; and 3) the previously unknown fact that Hindi-medium education would lead to such troubles. Like the previous participants, Gauri’s first two questions highlight the dowry problem prevalent in North Indian society. As mentioned earlier, there is a well-documented history of the violent mistreatment of married women at the hands of their marital families because of an inability to meet dowry demands. In this instance, the mother-in-law is portrayed as a manifestation of this nefarious pattern, the only difference being that instead of making demands for money or material items from Gauri’s family, she is shown as constantly vilifying Gauri because of her inability to earn as “good” a salary as her younger daughter-in-law. Gauri’s own response to such taunts is not part of the narrative, suggesting the relatively disempowered position of a daughter-in-law within her marital home in the face of 174

E nglish - medium education and patriarchy

the authority of the mother-in-law. This powerless position remains uninterrogated in her narrative and, thereby, reinforces the subjugation of married women by their husbands’ families. However, within the worldview narrated by Gauri, Hindi-medium education is causatively connected to “lesser” jobs and salaries in comparison to English-medium education. This link is utilized to stress the disadvantage of a Hindi-medium background within arranged marriages and to simultaneously criticize the negative professional, personal, and economic effects of Hindi-medium education. In response to my expressed regret at this situation, Gauri makes another coda-like comment that situates her narrative within the current social context that she constructs as being ruled by financially considerations where everyone is solely desirous of money and income (l. 19–20). She then indirectly connects this greed to the age-old custom of dowry where the bride and her family are viewed as a direct conduit to material gains (l. 20–21). Nitya: social ostracism Nitya, a resident of Rishikesh, was a twenty-nine-year-old married woman with two sons aged five and three. She worked as a shop assistant in an electronic shop. Her narrative is different from those of the preceding women in that her story is not connected to her marital family but to the social network within her neighborhood. Her interpretive observations about her story portray her resistance to social relationships that seek to position her subordinately because of her Hindi-medium schooling.

Excerpt five  1 N: Aas-pados ki aurtein bhi is baat ko kafi mahatva deti  2 hain. The women in my neighborhood also give quite a lot of importance to this matter.  3 P: Kis baat ko? To what?  4 N: Yahi ki aap kis school se ho. Aapki English kaisi  5 hai. This only, which school you have been educated in. What your English is like.  6 P: Achcha. Okay.  7 N: Teen-chaar jo meri umar ki hain woh English  8 schoolon se hain. Meine shuru men koshish ki thi  9 unke saath dosti karne ki lekin dheere-dheere 10 samajh gayi ki woh mujhe jaada pasand nahin karti. 11 Toh phir meine bhi koshish karni band kar di. Ab 175

P riti S andhu

12 mein pados ki ek Aunty ke saath mel-jol rakhti houn. 13 Woh bhi Hindi school se hain. Humaari aapas mein 14 achchi banti hai. Aisi dosti ka kya faayda jisme 15 aapke school ko lekar aapko humesha neeche 16 dikhaya jaye? Three-four of them who are around my age are from English schools. Initially, I had tried to become friends with them but slowly I realized that they did not like me too much. Then, I also stopped trying. Nowadays, I socialize with a neighboring Aunty. She is from a Hindi school as well. We get along well together. What is the use of such a friendship where you are constantly made to feel inferior because of your school? 17 P: Sach kaha aapne. What you say is true. 18 N: Lekin kya karein. Aaj-kal toh sab sirf aap ka status 19 aur paise dekhdte hai. Sachi dosti toh kam hi milti 20 hai. But there is nothing to be done. These days all the people consider only your status and financial standing. True friendship is rare to find. 21 P: Sahi kaha aapne. What you say is true. Nitya starts her narrative by proclaiming that one’s schooling is given considerable significance within her neighborhood (l. 1–2 and 4–5). She then proffers a short narrative without going into explicit details in which she recounts how three to four English-medium-educated women in her neighborhood have resisted her overtures of friendship, and how, over a period of time, she realized that they did not like her much (l. 7–10). Nitya then narrates that after her apprehension of this fact; she stopped her attempts to be friendly with them and instead became friends with an older woman (l. 11–12). The age of this woman is implied through the referent term “aunty.” In North India, a generational gap between a person and an older woman is often referenced by addressing the older woman as “aunty” even in the absence of any kinship ties between the two. This aunty is described as also being from a Hindi-medium background (l. 13). Also mentioned is the fact that they get along well together (l. 13–14). These comments about the aunty and their relationship are followed by the first part of an extended coda in the form of a rhetorical question that expresses Nitya’s resistance to any friendship where one’s schooling is used as a basis for constant disparagement (l. 14–16). While this last remark performs a critique of negative societal perceptions of Hindi-medium education, her narrative also serves to depict Nitya as having the agency to seek out more supportive social relationships, a choice that the previous four participants did not have within the narrower confines of their romantic relationships or arranged marriage structures and families. In her final comments about this narrative, Nitya 176

E nglish - medium education and patriarchy

makes a sweeping declaration that indicts the current times since, according to her, people consider only the socioeconomic class and status of each other, making sachi “true” friendships a rarity (l. 18–20). Nitya’s utterances in this excerpt thus construct a distinctive worldview where status, socioeconomic class, and linguistic considerations govern social configurations and relationships. The fact that the emergence of such a society is portrayed as a recent occurrence suggests that there was an earlier era where these concerns did not enjoy the same significance.

Conclusion Intersectionality (Crenshaw 1989, 1991, 1997), which was used as the guiding analytic principle to examine the narratives of the five participants, was found to be especially productive as it revealed that Hindi-medium education, patriarchy, and social class did not produce marginalizing experiences in isolation from each other. Instead, the women depicted them as being interconnected in dense patterns resulting in multiple, complex subordinations for each participant. The narratives and the metacommentary proffered by the narrators demonstrated that within their narrated worlds, Hindi-medium education was causatively linked to negative repercussions experienced by the women across several dimensions of their private lives, ranging from a romantic relationship (Abhilasha), an arranged marriage negotiation (Malti), an intimate relationship between a woman and her husband (Indrani), and the relationship of a woman with her mother-in-law (Gauri). While Hindi-medium-related subjugation was a common thread running through these four narratives, various manifestations of the inherently patriarchal nature of the women’s social environments were also implicated in their marginalization. Thus, in their narratives, Hindi-medium education is a subordinating mechanism shown to operate in diverse combinations with gender-subordinating practices governing romantic relationships and various aspects of arranged marriages. Arranged marriage is a long-standing tradition within which patriarchal exploitation finds some of its most reprehensible instantiations in North Indian society. Some of these subordinations were evident in the narratives. Abhilasha’s story was that of a love affair, which usually falls beyond the parameters of arranged marriage negotiations, although young, urban couples are increasingly selecting their marriage partners and then seeking familial blessings for the union. In Abhilasha’s case, her romantic relationship was depicted as being negatively subjected to the orthodox practice of evaluating the financial standing of the brideto-be and her family by her partner. Malti’s story elucidated her negative appraisal by several prospective grooms’ families along similar mercenary lines. Indrani’s narrative of a callous and avaricious husband, and Gauri’s story of an insensitive, taunting mother-in-law, were other manifestations 177

P riti S andhu

of the economic expectations placed on wives by their marital relatives. The financial standing of all the four women was depicted negatively, and this was connected in a cause-effect relationship with their Hindi-medium background. Consequently, their backgrounds were narrated as the reason for their “lesser” jobs and salaries. In all four instances, the existing objectionable practice of dowry-taking seemed to have evolved from a straightforward demand for money and material items to also include stipulations that the bride have an English-medium background together with a “good” job and “good” salary. The fifth story, Nitya’s, depicted the wider social dimensions of the Hindimedium vs. English-medium phenomenon. Nitya’s narrative demonstrated that the perceived negative impact of Hindi-medium education was also present in the broader social networks of women’s lives. This was true even though she was portrayed as having the option to seek out in an agentive manner more supportive relationships unlike those that normally exist within the more restricted domains of romance, marriage, and marital relationships, as was the case with the other four participants. Another salient element that connected all these five narratives was the manner in which all the women situated themselves in the current socioeconomic context of urban, North India. In the worldviews assembled by all these women, their immediate societies were portrayed as being ruled by the desire for continuous socioeconomic upward mobility, which, as pointed out earlier, is one of the driving forces symbolic of the emerging “new” middle classes in developing economies (Rapley 2004). Whether it was Abhilasha’s lover’s betrayal, Malti’s repeated rejection in the arranged marriage marketplace, Indrani’s heartache caused by a mercenary husband, Gauri’s subjection to the continuous verbal abuse of her mother-in-law, or Nitya’s neighbors’ standoffishness, all five stories presented fairly reprehensible images of a society where materialistic considerations seemingly control intimate and social relationships. In these delineations of their worlds, feelings and everyday emotions were shown to be of little value either in personal or social spheres, with the majority of narrated characters represented as explicitly oriented toward financial gain or socioeconomic status. Hindi-medium education, in various combinations with socioeconomic and gender-based subjugating categories, was portrayed throughout the narratives as further exacerbating the subordination already operational in the patriarchally constrained lives of the women.

References Annamalai, E. 2004. “Medium of Power: The Question of English in Education in India.” In Medium of Instruction Policies: Which Agenda? Whose Agenda? edited by James W. Tollefson and Amy B. M. Tsui, 177–94. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

178

E nglish - medium education and patriarchy

Austin, John Langshaw. 1962. How to do Things with Words. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Bamberg, Michael. 2005. “Narrative Discourse and Identities.” In Narratology Beyond Literary Criticism: Mediality, Disciplinarity, edited by Jan Christoph Meister, 213–37. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Benor, Sarah, Mary Rose, Devyani Sharma, Julie Sweetland, and Q. Zhang, eds. 2002. Gendered Practices in Language. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications. Bucholtz, Mary. 1999. “ ‘Why be Normal?’ Language and Identity Practices in a Community of Nerd Girls.” Language and Society 28: 203–23. Bucholtz, Mary, A. C. Liang, and Laurel A. Sutton, eds. 1999. Reinventing Identities: The Gendered Self in Discourse. New York: Routledge. Butler, Judith. 1990. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge. Cameron, Deborah. 2005. “Language, Gender, and Sexuality: Current Issues and New Directions.” Applied Linguistics 26 (4): 482–502. Canvin, Maggie. 2007. “Language and Education Issues in Policy and Practice in Mali, West Africa.” In Global Issues in Language, Education, and Development: Perspectives from Postcolonial Countries, edited by Naz Rassool, vol. 4, 157–86. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters. Crenshaw, Kimberle. 1989. “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A  Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory, and Antiracist Politics.” University of Chicago Legal Forum 1989 (1) Article 8: 139–67. ——— 1991. “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color.” Stanford Law Review 43 (6): 1241–99. ——— 1997. “Intersectionality and Identity Politics: Learning from Violence Against Women of Color.” In Reconstructing Political Theory: Feminist Perspectives, edited by Mary Lyndon Shanley and Uma Narayan, 178–93. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press. De Fina, Anna, and Alexandra Georgakopoulou. 2012. Analyzing Narratives. Discourse and Sociolinguistic Perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Derné, Steve. 2008. Globalization on the Ground: Media and the Transformation of Culture, Class, and Gender in India. New Delhi: Sage Publications. Dua, Hans Raj. 1994. Hegemony of English. Mysore: Yashoda. Garrett, Paul B., and Patricia Baquedano-López. 2002. “Language Socialization: Reproduction and Continuity, Transformation and Change.” Annual Review of Anthropology 31: 339–61. Giddens, Anthony. 1994. Beyond Left and Right: The Future of Radical Politics. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Heugh, Kathleen. 2007. “Language and Literacy Issues in South Africa.” In Global Issues in Language, Education, and Development: Perspectives from Postcolonial Countries, edited by Naz Rassool, vol. 4, 187–217. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters. Holstein, James A., and Jaber F. Gubrium. 1995. The Active Interview. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Kachru, Asha. 2006. Single Women: No Problem! Challenging Indian Realities. New Delhi: The Women’s Press.

179

P riti S andhu

LaDousa, Chaise. 2014. Hindi Is Our ground, English Is Our Sky: Education, Language, and Social Class in Contemporary India. New York: Berghahn Books. Lauder, Allan. 2008. “The Status and Function of English in Indonesia: A Review of Key Factors.” Makara Hubs – Asia (Human Behavior Studies in Asia) 8 (3): 9–20. Lyotard, Jean-François. 1984. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Translated by Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Massey, Doreen B. 1994. Space, Place, and Gender. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Mishler, Elliot G. 1986. Research Interviewing: Context and Narrative. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Mohanty, Ajit K. 2006. “Multilingualism of the Unequals and Predicaments of Education in India: Mother Tongue or Other Tongue?” In Imagining Multilingual Schools, edited by Ofelia García, Tove Skutnabb-Kangas, and Maria E. TorresGuzmán, 262–83. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters. Mohanty, Chandra Talpade, Ann Russo, and Lourdes Torres, eds. 1991. Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Neke, Stephen M. 2005. “The Medium of Instruction in Tanzania: Reflections on Language, Education and Society.” Changing English 12 (1): 73–83. Ochs, Elinor. 1997. “Narrative.” In Discourse as Structure and Process, edited by Teun A. van Dijk, 185–207. London: Sage Publications. Pavlenko, Aneta. 2007. “Autobiographic Narratives as Data in Applied Linguistics.” Applied Linguistics 28 (2): 163–88. Pennycook, Alistair. 1998. English and the Discourses of Colonialism. London: Routledge. Ramanathan, Vaidehi. 2005. The English-Vernacular Divide: Postcolonial Language Politics and Practice. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters. ——— 2013. “A Postcolonial Perspective in Applied Linguistics: Situating English and the Vernaculars.” In Framing Languages and Literacies: Socially Situated Views and Perspectives, edited by Margaret R. Hawkins, 83–104. New York: Routledge. Rapley, John. 2004. Globalization and Inequality: Neoliberalism’s Downward Spiral. Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers. Rassool, Naz, ed. 2007. Global Issues in Language, Education, and Development: Perspectives from Postcolonial Countries. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters. Rassool, Naz, and Sabiha Mansoor. 2007. “Contemporary Issues in Language, Education, and Development in Pakistan.” In Global Issues in Language, Education, and Development: Perspectives from Postcolonial Countries, edited by Naz Rassool, 218–44. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters. Roulston, Kathryn. 2010. The Reflective Researcher: Learning to Interview in the Social Sciences. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Rubdy, Rani. 2008. “English in India: The Privilege and Privileging of Social Class.” In Language as a Commodity: Global Structures, Local Marketplaces, edited by Peter K. W. Tan and Rani Rubdy, 122–45. London: Continuum. Sandhu, Priti. 2010. “Enactments of Discursive Empowerment in Narratives of Medium of Education by North Indian Women.” PhD diss., University of Hawai’i, Manoa.

180

E nglish - medium education and patriarchy

——— 2014a. “The Interactional and Narrative Construction of Normative and Resistant Discourses about Hindi and English.” Applied Linguistics 35 (1): 29–47. ——— 2014b. “ ‘Who Does She Think She Is?’: Vernacular Medium and Failed Romance.” Journal of Language, Identity, and Education 13 (1): 16–33. ——— 2015a. “Resisting Linguistic Marginalization in Professional Spaces: Constructing Multi-layered Oppositional Stances.” Applied Linguistics Review 6 (3): 369–91. ——— 2015b. “Stylizing Voices, Stances, and Identities Related to Medium of Education in India.” Multilingua: Journal of Cross-Cultural and Interlanguage Communication 34 (2): 211–35. ——— 2016a. Professional Identity Constructions of Indian Women. Studies in Narrative. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. ——— 2016b. “Negative Self-categorization, Stance, Affect, and Affiliation in Autobiographical Storytelling.” In Talking Emotion in Multilingual Settings, edited by Matthew T. Prior and Gabriele Kasper, 153–76. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Sandoval, Chela. 2000. Methodology of the Oppressed. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press. Shamim, Fauzia. 2008. “Trends, Issues, and Challenges in English Language Education in Pakistan.” Asia Pacific Journal of Education 28 (3): 235–49. Sinha, Mrinalini. 2012. “A Global Perspective on Gender: What’s South Asia Got to Do with It?” In South Asian Feminisms, edited by Ania Loomba and Ritty A. Lukose, 356–74. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Subramaniam, Mangala. 2006. The Power of Women’s Organizing: Gender, Caste, and Class in India. Lanham: Lexington Press. Talmy, Steven. 2011. “The Interview as a Collaborative Achievement: Interaction, Identity, and Ideology in a Speech Event.” Applied Linguistics 32 (1): 25–42. Tollefson, James W., and Amy B. Tsui, eds. 2004. Medium of Instruction Policies: Which Agenda? Whose Agenda? Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Vavrus, Francis. 2002. “Postcoloniality and English: Exploring Language Policy and the Politics of Development in Tanzania.” TESOL Quarterly 36 (3): 373–97.

181

9 RECOGNIZING DIVERSITY Multiethnic Sinhala- and Tamil-medium schools in Sri Lanka Harsha Dulari Wijesekera

Education, language, and social/national integration are inseparably bound in ethnolinguistically diverse societies, especially because of the role of education in language management/planning (Spolsky 2017). School systems in ethnolinguistically diverse countries are constitutionally destined to bring different groups together to ensure social cohesion and national solidarity, as is well illustrated in the Sri Lankan National Goals of Education (NIE 2017). But in Sri Lanka, the school system propagates the opposite of what it claims to do. Born out of the swabasha “own language” movement during the colonial era, the Sri Lankan government sought to protect the two national languages, Sinhala and Tamil, through a mother-tongue instruction (MTI) policy. This policy, unfortunately, polarized the public school system into Sinhala- and Tamil-medium schools, meaning that Tamil, Muslim, and Sinhala children are kept apart, depriving “growth into an inclusive transethnic national identity” (Lo Bianco 1999). In fact, 98.8 per cent of the public schools are monoethnic, attended by either predominantly Sinhalaor Tamil-speaking students. Even though there are a few bi-media schools in Sri Lanka where both Sinhala and Tamil media are available, the students of the two linguistic communities study in separate classrooms due to mother tongues being the primary language of pedagogy. The MTI policy cannot be condemned as the only factor that perpetuates ethnic disintegration, but it has played an extremely significant role in crafting suspicion and misunderstanding among diverse ethnicities (Wickrema and Colenso 2003; Wijesekera 2018). It restrains any real-life contact between Sinhala- and Tamil-medium students, resulting in the misinterpretation of “others” based on misinformation. Similar to what Plato theorized as reality, for Sri Lankan children knowing the “other” has been “shadows cast on the wall.” They have been exposed only to “bitter knowledge,” nurturing misreading of the other

182

R ecognizing diversity

(Jansen 2009). Consequently, generations have been socialized into ethnocentrism, harnessing biases and stereotypical misconceptions between “us” and “them.” Out of the very few bi-media, government-funded public schools, only a small number offer bilingual education programs or content in the English medium. A few government-assisted schools, which are partially funded by the government, also offer bilingual programs (see Chapter 6). In the bilingual education classrooms of bi-media schools, children of different ethnicities have the opportunity to study together. These social spaces have generated conditions for ethnically diverse students to know and understand each other, not as “shadows cast on the wall” but as “reality” (Jansen 2009). The interethnic contact created among the students has given them an opportunity to revisit misinformation and biases. These spaces trigger the transformation of students’ ethnocentric identities toward inclusive supraethnic identities (Wijesekera 2018; Wijesekera and Alford 2019; Wijesekera, Alford, and Mu 2019). However, this positive transformation toward inclusive identities may depend on how school authorities – a designation that includes teachers – recognize diversity, as well as their ability to create conditions for positive intergroup contacts to reduce biases and prejudice as proposed in Allport’s (1955) Intergroup Contact Theory. Also, since ethnicity is mainly categorized by the mother tongue/cultural language of students (Sinhala or Tamil), the authorities’ language practices, as well as how languages are treated in the institution, may play vital roles in facilitating positive contacts among the ethnically diverse students. In this chapter, I focus on how school authorities understand ethnolinguistic diversity in their institutions, their practices of diversity responsiveness (or unresponsiveness), and how their thinking and acting influence students’ positive intergroup contacts. In the first part of this chapter, I  introduce Sri Lanka and then discuss the ethnolinguistic conflict, the school system, and the medium policies. Next, I  delineate the topics of ethnolinguistic identity and the theoretical conditions for the transformation of ethnocentric identities or ethnic habitus, with special emphasis on how this happens in the multiethnic bilingual education classrooms in Sri Lanka (Bourdieu 1990; Bourdieu and Passeron 1977). This is followed by a discussion of Allport’s (1955) four conditions for positive intergroup contacts that trigger identity repositioning toward interethnic understanding and cohesion. I focus on two of these four conditions for positive intergroup contacts, “institutional support” and “equal status between groups” (1955). Then, after describing the methodology, I  present my data analysis and interpretation. The data were collected in three schools using focus-group discussions with students representing three ethnic groups, classroom observation, and semi-structured interviews with other stakeholders. I illustrate that while some schools recognize the

183

H arsha D ulari W ijesekera

ethnolinguistic heterogeneity of their institutions, respond to diversity, and support interethnic inclusivity, institutional support seems absent in some schools due to a resistance to the acceptance of ethnic heterogeneity. In the latter contexts, inequalities are misrecognized, leading to a perpetuation of existing distinctions (Bourdieu 1984).

Sri Lanka: the context Sri Lanka is a postcolonial (1505–1948: Portuguese, Dutch, and British), post-conflict (1983–2009) island nation that is yet to achieve ethnic reconciliation even twelve years after the government declared that the civil war with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), one of the world’s most ruthless separatist movements, was ended in 2009. Sinhalese (74.9 per cent), Tamils (Sri Lankan Tamils 11.2 per cent, Indian Tamils 4.2 per cent), and Muslims (9.2 per cent) are the three major ethnic groups in Sri Lanka. Sinhalese and Tamils are distinguished as different ethnolinguistic groups whose main categorization is based on language (Sinhala vs. Tamil). Though the majority of Sinhalese are Buddhists and the majority of Tamils are Hindus, there are Sinhalese and Tamils who belong to Christianity and other related denominations. Muslims cannot be distinguished as a different ethnolinguistic group but rather a different ethno-religious group. Though the majority of Muslims use Tamil as their home language (mother tongue/ cultural language), they are not inextricably connected to the Tamil language. In fact, some consider Arabic as their mother tongue. But although many study liturgical Arabic, few can speak it. Increasingly, some Muslims also use Sinhala, English, or both as their home languages, a practice more prevalent in urban areas (see Chapter 6). Though the Sinhalese are the majority ethnic group in Sri Lanka, they are an “uneasy majority” (Dharmadasa 1992, 246) since they are the minority compared to the global Tamil and Muslim populations. The Sinhalese have “vivid memories of their tragedies and fears” resulting from the historical invasions of Tamil kings from South India (Zimmermann 2008, 7). Sri Lanka boasts a long history of established formal education. Before the present public education system was introduced by the British, religious institutions that controlled education promoted multilingualism. For example, Buddhists learned Pali and Sanskrit, Tamil Hindus learned Sanskrit in addition to Tamil, while Muslims learned Arabic in addition to Tamil or Sinhala. Under colonial powers, fee-levying English-medium education was limited, and the English-educated secured jobs in the colonial government. Schools that offered education through Sinhala and Tamil existed along with English-medium schools. This unequal access to English-medium education stratified the rural/poor and the urban/rich, perpetuating “systems of domination and privilege” (Tollefson 2015, 134), and gatekeeping practices. After the demands by nationalist groups of all ethnicities, the medium 184

R ecognizing diversity

in government schools was switched from English to Sinhala and Tamil in the mid-1940s to the 1950s. The Sri Lankan education system underwent radical developments with the introduction of the Free Education Act in 1947 and initiation of government control in the 1960s. At present, the general school system delivers a centralized national curriculum through 10,194 public schools. In addition to government-assisted schools, there are private and international schools that mushroomed under the open market economy. My focus is mainly on public and government-assisted schools that follow the national curriculum.

Language, identity, and language in education Language is not just a medium for communication. It is inextricably attached to one’s identity and, therefore, is a marker of group membership. Every human interaction, which involves language, embodies “traces of the social structure that it both expresses and helps to reproduce” including inequalities originated from social and historical milieus (Bourdieu 1991, 2). The emotional value engraved in one’s cultural language is vital in designating intragroup memberships and intergroup outcasting. This is very obvious in Sri Lanka. Sinhalese and Tamils mainly define their ethnicity in terms of language. Languages in Sri Lanka are thus not devoid of power struggles, and “linguistic communism” is surreal or highly unusual. There are undercurrents of power within linguistic interaction that determine who can speak and who is compelled to listen. The latter group is susceptible to oppression or the symbolic violence of the former, and has no power to resist but must give in to oppression as if these inequities are “natural.” These very same acceptances produce and reproduce the existing social structures of discrimination (1991). When this occurs between minority and majority, it hurts the less powerful, creates mistrust, and disrupts the possibilities of mutual understanding and cohesion. There is no space for cure if the powerful group – the majority group – takes the situation for granted without reflexivity, and fails to recognize the diverse nature of social microcosms. I suggest that the language planning and policy changes based on linguistic nationalism in Sri Lanka have been directly influenced by 1) language policies of the colonial (British) powers; 2) power struggles between the two major ethnic groups; 3) ethnopolitics; 4) UNESCO’s (2003) declaration of MTI as a basic requirement of education; and 5) the capital value of English as a global media of communication or lingua franca. The second factor was mostly a result of the first factor. I elaborate on the first three factors because of their uniqueness in the Sri Lankan context. The first factor exemplifies the colonial “divide and rule” strategy. Concerning this, Canagarajah (2009) calls for the disinvention of language and accuses the British of the construction of “languages” as separate “boundaried objects and of monoglossic orientation to language for policy and 185

H arsha D ulari W ijesekera

practice in education .  .  .” (McKinney and Tyler 2018, 4). British monoglossic language policy divided people in linguistic terms. This contrasted with precolonial times where linguistic, ethnic/racial, and religious identities were much more fluid (Rogers 1994). Similar to other colonies, in Sri Lanka the British language policies enhanced the second and the third factors. In Sri Lanka, ethnic-based political parties capitalized on linguistic power struggles between the ethnic groups; they, in fact, fueled and manipulated linguistic struggles to gain power (DeVotta 2003). Language policy (LP) is “a policy mechanism that impacts the structure, function, use or acquisition of language” (Johnson 2013, 9), and the medium is a key strategy in acquisition planning (Cooper 1989). Language in education (medium) in multilingual nation-states is crucial for participation, equity, and inclusivity in education. This is more obvious when majorityminority ethnic group demarcations are mainly marked by language. Status planning is deciding the functions of languages/varieties in a country/community (Haugen 1983). Status planning in Sri Lanka, as I argue, has been relatively commendable, at least to a certain extent. The Official Language Act 33 (infamously known as the “Sinhala-Only Act”), passed to replace English’s official language status in 1956, was perceived by the minority Tamils as a proclamation of dominance over them. Though this blunder was corrected to a certain extent in 1958 through the Tamil Language Special Provisions Act, the wounds created and manipulated by ethnopolitics are irreparable. Importantly, despite the “Sinhala only” blunder, the media continued to be constituted by Tamil and Sinhala. As such, Sri Lanka set a precedent regarding the linguistic rights of the minority in education when compared to countries such as the United States and Australia where minority/native languages have been neglected and assimilation continues to happen. The 13th amendment to the Sri Lankan Constitution declares Sinhala and Tamil to be the national languages of Sri Lanka.1 Sri Lanka is among the few countries that policed equal rights for the majority and minority linguistic groups by allowing both the majority and the minority children to be educated in their respective mother tongues. This was true centuries before the United Nations’ Declaration of Rights of Persons, which stated, “[s]tates should take appropriate measures so that, whenever possible, persons belonging to National or Ethnic minorities may have adequate opportunities to learn their mother tongue or to have instruction in their mother tongue” (UN 1992, Article 4). Sri Lanka can also be recognized as a country that implemented MTI policy even before independence from the British. Unfortunately, aside from a few scholars (Davis 2020; Sørensen 2008), few have discussed this positive side of Sri Lankan LP. However, policies, when implemented, may not yield anticipated results at the societal or practical level. The communicative value of a language due to its number of speakers  – what Swaan (1993) calls the “Q-value” – cannot be easily 186

R ecognizing diversity

ignored. The actual use of a particular language for communication at the social level may differ from its uses set out in constitutionally defined policy (Spolsky 2017). This difference may depend on the linguistic ecology or intersectionality of how different languages work in a given multilingual context. The number of users of a language, or the numerical size of a linguistic group in a multilingual context, may determine which language has more utilitarian value. Consequently, there is always a gap between constitutional provisions and social realities where the question of linguistic inequality is foregrounded.

Medium and ethnic polarization In Sri Lanka, it is constitutionally mandated to deliver the national curriculum through the child’s mother tongue, at least in primary education: “(1) [a] person shall be entitled to be educated through the medium of either of the National Languages” (Sri Lanka Constitution 1978 Chap IV art 21, 7). Thus, Tamil children study in Tamil while Sinhalese study in Sinhala. Muslim children may choose either Sinhala or Tamil medium according to their preferences, though they mostly select Tamil medium (see Chapter 6). This creates an ethnolinguistically exclusive school system in Sri Lanka. According to statistics, the total population of schoolchildren (4,165,964) attending public schools, divided by medium, study in ethnically exclusive classrooms as depicted in Table 9.1. Table 9.2 further demonstrates the division of public schools by ethnicity.

Table 9.1  Students by Medium/s of Study Sinhala medium Tamil medium Bi-medium (Sinhala-English/TamilEnglish)

3,055,926 1,025,318 84,720

Adapted from MOE School Census 2017

Table 9.2  Schools by Medium/s of Instruction Sinhala medium only Tamil medium only Sinhala and Tamil Sinhala and English Tamil and English Sinhala, Tamil, and English Total Adapted from MOE School Census 2017

187

6,332 3,009 75 558 173 47 10,194

H arsha D ulari W ijesekera

Sri Lankan children of diverse ethnicities are thus deprived of knowing each other. The school system may be the only social space in which the country can bring them together to have shared lived experience. Schoolchildren are deprived of being socialized into inclusive national identities as they acquire ethno-based identities and engage in otherization. This threatens national identity and solidarity (Lo Bianco 1999; Davis 2020; Nadesan 1957; Wickrema and Colenso 2003; Wijesekera 2018; Wijesekera and Alford 2019; Wijesekera, Alford, and Mu 2019). Sri Lankan children are socialized into ethnocentrism during their primary socialization in monoethnic families. Unfortunately, the secondary socialization process in schools reproduces and consolidates the ethnocentrism learned in primary socialization. In other words, the ethnolinguistic division is consolidated and established “legitimately” through the school system. The authorities seem to have taken for granted or misrecognized this division and perpetuation of ethnocentrism, allowing systemic ethnolinguistic segregation that has contributed to civil conflict and continues to do so. Nevertheless, in bi-media schools where bilingual education is available (forty-seven public schools and government-assisted schools), the students come together when they learn through the English medium. In these classrooms, the legitimate or prescribed language of pedagogy is English for subjects such as science, math, and citizenship education, while other subjects are learned through MTI. However, the LP in practice will depend on several factors such as the English language proficiency level of the students and teachers, teacher ideologies, institutional language policies, and classroom teaching/learning strategies (e.g., group work). These policies or social conditions shape the ethnolinguistic identity constructions of the students (Wijesekera, Alford, and Mu 2019). I will elaborate on these aspects further in the subsequent section. The trilingual policy of the government warrants mention. With the intention to overcome interethnic communication barriers, the government introduced the teaching of the second national language in schools – learning Tamil by Sinhalese and vice versa. However, whether this program yields the expected outcomes is questionable (see Davis 2015, 2020), “hampered by a serious shortage of qualified teachers, appropriate material and dearth of bilingual Sinhalese” (Lo Bianco 1999).

Domain-level language policies: practices in schools/ classrooms I present schools as illustrative of three possibilities of how constitutionally legitimated LP emerges in school and classroom practices. The first possibility is when a school adheres to the medium policy prescribed in the Constitution and students study in their respective mother tongue – either Sinhala or Tamil. Two public schools out of the three in this study come 188

R ecognizing diversity

under this first category – South College, a less privileged school located in a remote province, and Ravindranath College, a prestigious school in the capital city of Colombo.2 There are differences between these two schools when it comes to practicalities at the institutional level. At South College, both national languages appear to be given equal status along with English. This was reflected in trilingual notices and announcements, and so forth. However, at a practical level, it appears that the national languages are more prominent at South College. In contrast, at Ravindranath College, English is given more prominence over Sinhala and Tamil as reflected in their notices, announcements, and meetings. However, due to its communicative potential at the practical level (Spolsky 2017), Sinhala is used more than the other languages in both schools. Thus, the communicative value of a language as related to its number of speakers, Swaan’s (1993) Q-value, influences communicative practices. The second possibility of institutional level LP practices is a lack of adherence to the constitutionally legitimated use of the mother tongue by individual schools, as in the third participant school – Parakum College  – a government-assisted Catholic school. At Parakum College, the compulsory MTI in primary education (grades 1–5) is not adhered to. At the practical level, English is given prominence both at the institutional and classroom level. In fact, in these schools, it was evident that students lose their ability to learn content through their mother tongue/culture language due to the lack of proficiency. Paradoxically, though they were more proficient in English and their home/first language was English, all the students declared that their mother tongue was Sinhala or Tamil, which corresponds to how ethnicity is categorized. The third possibility is the actual language policies practiced at the classroom domain level by the classroom teachers and their students. I do not elaborate on the classroomlevel LP since my focus is on institutional level language practices and ideologies concerning ethnicity.

Ethnolinguistic identity and conditions for repositioning Ethnic identity is “the application of systematic distinctions between insiders and outsiders: between Us and Them” constituted through social contact (Eriksen 2002, 19). Psychologists view an individual’s identity as one’s selfconcept/self-categorization. Self-categorization is based on membership in social groups and affects attitudes and behaviors about one’s ingroup and outgroups. In this process, individuals develop stereotypical biases and prejudices against the “other.” Ethnolinguistic identity theory  – derived from social identity theory – accounts for a social group’s identity where ethnicity and language become the two main criteria that exclude or include one in a group (Giles and Johnson 1987; Harwood and Vincze 2015; Noels, Kil, and Fang 2014). 189

H arsha D ulari W ijesekera

In Sri Lanka, ethnic group identity and membership are very influential in deciding individuals’ self-concept and categorization – “us” vs. “them” (Wijesekera 2018). It is perceptible that Sri Lankans develop a strong emotional bond to their ethnic group, and this is due to constant negative encounters, as well as the exploitation of such encounters in ethnopolitics and the media. Group stereotyping and biases against the “other,” therefore, cannot be avoided. Theoretically, ethnic identity could be defined as “habitus” – “a way of being habituated  .  .  . a predisposition, tendency, propensity or inclination” (Bourdieu and Passeron 1977, 214) toward ethnically diverse others. As explained earlier, “being habituated” takes place through socialization in institutions such as family, media, and school. Bourdieu calls this “internalizing the external,” which becomes embodied. In other words, these acquired dispositions become “trained capacities and structured propensities to think, feel and act in a determinant way, which then guide them” (Wacquant 2005, 316). The children’s habitus becomes ethnocentric because the “external” social conditions and structures of families, media, and schools they are exposed to are ethnically exclusive and perpetuate biases and prejudices toward “them” and appreciation for “us.” In brief, Bourdieu and Passeron (1977, 45) postulate: it is certain that each member of the same class [same ethnic group] is more likely than any member of another class [another ethnic group] to have been confronted with the situations most frequent for members of that class [ethnicity]. (my additions and emphasis) However, Bourdieu’s The Logic of Practice (1990, 55) also suggests that the historically acquired habitus has “an infinite capacity for generating products – thoughts, perceptions, expressions and actions” whose “limits are set by the historically and socially situated conditions of its production” (1990, 55) that can be facilitated by “new experiences, education and training.” Through Bourdieu’s theoretical lens, I theorize the social space of school as a field, which is defined as “a configuration, of objective relations between positions.” He further argues that “[t]hese positions are objectively defined,  .  .  . by their present and potential situation (situs) in the structure of the distribution of species of power (or capital) whose possession commands access to specific profits that are at stake in the field, as well as by their objective relations to other positions (domination, subordination, homology, etc.)” (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992, 97). Correspondingly, students’ ethnic habitus may be reshaped toward inclusive and less-ethnocentric ones if the positive socially situated conditions – “new experiences, education and training” – are available in schools to unlearn the previously acquired ethnocentric exclusionary dispositions (Bourdieu 2005, 45). In the next two sections, I discuss the positive 190

R ecognizing diversity

conditions through a constructivist stance of language preceded by psychologists’ view of social identity and intergroup contact theories. Lo Bianco (2010) argues that both collective and individual memories are constructed and realized through language in communication. Language, therefore, is “fundamental to collective identity [social group identity] and personal identity” (Spolsky and Hult 2010, 299, my insertion). Thus, through language, individuals construct “ethnicized construction of otherness” (Gabriel 2014, 1211), which is obvious in Sri Lanka as language is the main criterion of Sinhala vs. Tamil ethnic categorization. Identity is also theorized as a fusion of many social (social identity) and personal (individual identity) aspects. Therefore, identity repositioning may occur in relation to context and social constructs such as religion, ethnicity, and race. Hence, identity repositioning is plural, fluid, and multiple (Canagarajah 2006; Crump 2014; Rampton 2011). To promote the internal cohesion of a multilingual social space, balanced LP is indispensable (Deen and Romans 2018). This “balancing” can be created if a heteroglossic policy is maintained. In heteroglossic spaces, all languages of the linguistic repertoire of said multilingual space are considered as one single system for communication, and therefore equal status among languages can be achieved (Creese and Blackledge 2015). In such heteroglossic spaces, identities demarcated by languages may become fluid and blurred (García and Wei 2014), and power hierarchies between the groups demarcated by languages may cease to exist. In Bourdieusian perspectives, the “logic of practice,” or the social conditions in a field (social space), are structured by the “capitals” at stake in the social space. Capitals come in various forms such as economic, cultural, social, linguistic, and symbolic. The variety of the capitals and the amounts – or, “piles of tokens” – that individuals/groups possess determine the power they have and, hence, their positions/status (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992, 99). Since language is pertinent in ethnolinguistic identities, linguistic capital becomes our focus here. In terms of the constructivist view of language and identity I have discussed, if the languages are recognized equally (or at least seemingly equally), the students of diverse ethnolinguistic groups in this study may feel equal. The tendency toward domination and suppression would be reduced. Equal status among the groups may be generated as a result of the facilitation of contacts that reduce biases and prejudices toward the “other.” Equal status between the groups is a condition for creating positive intergroup contacts, as I  further discuss in the next section. Within their institutional linguistic repertoires, school authorities’ stance on different languages may determine whether equal status among different groups can be achieved, and may either hinder or promote ethnic cohabitation and cohesion. I investigate how equal status is supported by the school authorities through conscious actions, reactions, and reflections, or whether authorities take equality for granted and act pre-reflexively on diversity responsiveness. 191

H arsha D ulari W ijesekera

Positive intergroup contacts Allport (1955) suggests that “constant positive contacts” between groups in conflict could reduce biases. These “positive contacts” are characterized by four conditions: equal status between groups, intergroup cooperation, common goals, and cooperation by institutional authorities. In the main study (Wijesekera 2018), from where I draw data for this chapter, I theorized these four requirements as “positive socially situated conditions” or “logics of practice” (Bourdieu 1990) that may transform embodied negative stereotypical dispositions toward the ethnic others. That study confirmed that intergroup differences are reduced and prejudices released when the children of diverse ethnicities work together to complete cooperative group tasks to achieve common goals. In this chapter, I focus on equal status and institutional cooperation/support. In the preceding sections, I  argued that the schools could create positive intergroup contacts by granting and practicing equal status among the students of diverse ethnic groups and giving equal value to all languages, especially Sinhala and Tamil. By so doing, the influence of negative histories relating to language (and ethnicity) generated by constant ethnic (and linguistic) struggles could be obviated. Otherwise, the authorities and their institutions can misrecognize ethnolinguistic heterogeneity, let linguistic inequality flourish, and perpetuate oppression and discrimination. This chapter explores both actualities.

Methodology I focus on practices of school authorities concerning the recognition of diversity and diversity responsiveness and how they impact students. I look at how the school authorities deal with linguistic diversity in their institutions and how those practices either facilitate or debilitate mutual interconnections between the students of diverse ethnic groups. This chapter may also be defined as a meso-level analysis that may provide a sense of macroor national-level consequences through interpretation. I will seek to answer the following questions: What perceptions/practices do the school authorities have about the ethnolinguistic diversity/diversity responsiveness of their schools? And, what are students’ views and experiences of ethnolinguistic diversity/diversity responsiveness of the school authorities? The main study from which data for this chapter was drawn (Wijesekera 2019), was framed through Pierre Bourdieu’s “logic of practice” (1990) (see Chapter 5). As such, epistemologically, the study’s stance was that “reality” is the consequence of the relational interplay between objective and subjective structures that occupy the field, between the structuring structures of the field/social microcosm and those of the individuals’/groups’ inclinations, propensities, and dispositions (i.e., habitus) they acquired through historical 192

R ecognizing diversity

socialization (Grenfell and Lebaron 2014). The study took the methodological position that dialectic interplays could be empirically observed through the “practices” (actions and thinking) of the inhabitants of the field – the practices/experiences of the students and teachers in the classrooms, and what they think about their practices/experiences. This chapter investigates practices using the following tools with respect to the participants in the social microcosms of the three schools (see Wijesekera 2018): 1 bilingual education classroom observations and audio recording when the content is taught through the English medium; 2 focus-group discussions: student groups representing Sinhalese, Tamils, and Muslims who study through the English medium; 3 semi-structured interviews: teachers and school authorities at bi-media schools where the English medium is available. In all interviews and focus-group discussions, the respondents were allowed to choose the preferred language (Sinhala, Tamil, or English). However, the focus-group discussions ended up becoming translingual; the students freely utilized all languages to convey their ideas fully. The teachers in this chapter opted to use English in interviews.

Authorities’ delusions vs. students’ actual experiences In the preceding discussion, I discussed how institutional support and the granting of equal status for students are indispensable for positive intergroup contacts that would reduce prejudice and develop mutual understanding (Allport 1955). If such positive conditions are not felt and experienced by students, especially the minority groups, they might feel discriminated against, oppressed, and hurt. However, to create the positive conditions of equal status through institutional support, the school authorities must first recognize the ethnic heterogeneity in their institutions. In the next section, I bring empirical evidence from the three aforementioned bi-media schools attended by Sinhala, Tamil, and Muslim students to illustrate how some schools misrecognize diversity in a pre-reflective, taken-for-granted manner, and, thus, waste the institutional potentials of enhancing equality by being diversity irresponsive. I  also discuss how some schools recognize ethnic diversity. Their actions reduce interethnic biases and facilitate inclusivity. Assumed realities: denial of ethnic diversity The views expressed by school authorities in semi-structured interviews illustrate “ethnic diversity-blindness.” This was explicitly evident in both Ravindranath College and Parakum College as exemplified in the following extracts. In the following, I present the responses of teachers at Parakum 193

H arsha D ulari W ijesekera

College to the question of how they would consider ethnic diversity and whether they consider ethnicity in the grouping for activities (specifically, whether to have ethnically heterogeneous groups): Teacher 1: No. I am not [I do not consider that my students are ethnically heterogeneous]. They don’t feel they are from different ethnic groups when they are classmates. Actually, I also can’t feel or remember whether a student is a Sinhala fellow or Muslim or Tamil. Teacher 2:  .  .  . ethnicity has not been taken into consideration in our school. You know, we never discuss it. We don’t. When the second teacher was asked whether student choices would be the same, she responded: No, they don’t care [about] their ethnicity at all. I must say it, that is, in my [this] school. I don’t know about the other schools, but in this school ethnicity is nothing. This teacher is not hesitant to talk on behalf of the students, representing their thoughts, and was quick to respond to my question that her students of all ethnicities do not consider ethnic diversity. That teachers talked on behalf of students without reflection was observed in all three schools. What is more disturbing is that the school authorities appear to believe that their students share their views. At Ravindranath College, both teachers and the principal were similarly not at all hesitant to express views on behalf of minority students and their thoughts about ethnic diversity. In the following, I  present excerpts from interviews with a teacher and the Principal of Ravindranath College, respectively: Teacher: The situation here in this school is different [from other schools in the country]. Students are, from a very early stage, given the attitude that “you are not Tamil or Sinhala or Muslim, but you are Raveendranathian [noun used to call members of the alumni].” So, that is how children think from very early stages. I  have felt this that they have no difference among Raveendranathians. Principal: I think in our school; we always try to keep close connections with each other. We are having it religious-wise and ethnic-wise. And also they have good friendships with each other, good relationships with each other. That is, we have to balance. We can’t say any difference because all the three communities are learning together so we can’t find such gaps or differences between all these communities or between these students.

194

R ecognizing diversity

In a nutshell, what is apparent in the principal’s view is that there is “no difference” among the students of diverse ethnicities and everything seems smooth because, the principal argues, they study in the same premises. It seems that the principal ignores the fact that these students are separated by MTI (with the exception of the few students who study together in bilingual education classes). This pre-reflexive thinking may have resulted from his “majority” habitus, downplaying ethnic differences in a habituated way. Though the teachers and the principal belong to the majority group, they talk on behalf of the minority. They seem to have no awareness of the fact that their habitus is a majority habitus and that they cannot feel how minority people would perceive ethnicity or how power relations originate from such conditions and influence them. The individuals who belong to the majority group have been habituated into ways of thinking, being, and acting different from the minority habitus. What they perceive is through the acquired embodied dispositions of the way that they have been habituated to think and perceive. They cannot see the world of the minority (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992). They cannot also achieve alternative thinking unless they engage in deliberate conscious reflectivity because their thinking is made up of “unthought categories of thought which delimit the thinkable and predetermine the thought” (1992, 40). Their pre-reflexive thinking prevents them from thinking about other possibilities and creating an environment of positive interethnic relations or diversity responsiveness. The next section explores how the misrecognition by school authorities that there are no ethnolinguistic differences among the students obstructs the potential of creating conducive conditions for interethnic cohabitation with a sense of equality and justice. Students’ experiences Reality appears quite contrary to the assumption of school authorities that there are “no ethnic differences” in their institutions, and that positive contacts for students prevail. Excerpts from the focus-group discussion with Tamil students regarding the intergroup contacts between Tamil and Sinhala students are revealing. As one student noted: We were like from another planet and those people [ethnically diverse other students] were like from another planet. Though we existed we never got to interact. Although the Ravindranath teacher in the preceding excerpt boasts that the students become “Ravindranathians” [members/old pupils of this prestigious college], and that this process erases differences, another teacher,

195

H arsha D ulari W ijesekera

referring to what he had noticed at an event organized by the Old Pupils’ Association, expressed the following: Actually, if the students finish their education either in Sinhala medium or Tamil medium there is no connection between the students of these two groups of students because they don’t have opportunities to connect with each other and build a relationship even if they were in the same school. I met with the 2009 and 1996 groups (old pupils of the years); they invited teachers for a dinner party. There, Tamil and the Sinhalese old boys, they were separately together in that get-together. They were not even talking to each other. Once there is a person who is in the organizing committee, only those people talked to each other. The student voices reflect that the assumed solidarity among the students of different ethnicities is a mirage. In light of these comments, the assumption of homogeneity by the school authorities seems surreal. Another set of excerpts presents the experiences of the Tamil students at Parakum College about the nonavailability of Tamil invigilators at term tests. Their story provides a comprehensive example of the existence of inequality and the turbulent undercurrents below the surface – despite the authorities’ claims that there are no ethnolinguistic differences in their institutions. Student 2: They [teachers assigned by the authorities for examination supervision] tell it in Sinhala. They [school authorities] don’t care for us whether we understand or not. Student 1: If we have a doubt we have to go to a teacher who can really understand us [a teacher who can understand/speak Tamil]. Student 2: See this is what happens. When they [Sinhala students and/ or Muslim students who follow Sinhala-medium instruction] do Sinhala papers like Sinhala PTS or History [examples for test papers] we get the Tamil paper [paper in Tamil medium]. And if they have doubts they have teachers to ask in the exam hall. But if we have a doubt? Student 3: For example, at the examination, let’s say I do PTS in Tamil Researcher: So did your parents discuss this with school authorities? Student 3: They did. They wrote also, like 7 letters or something like that, but none of them worked. Student 2: What they say is there is 70 per cent of Sinhalese, they [school authorities] think that’s the main factor and they don’t put Tamil Supervisors [when term tests are held]. If they [school authorities] assign at least one Tamil Supervisor, we can ask. So that is one of the reasons we do the English medium.

196

R ecognizing diversity

These Tamil students complain that they are unable to clarify doubts in test papers during term tests since the school authorities have failed to provide a Tamil-speaking teacher in the examination hall. The school authorities had not taken any action to provide a teacher despite parents’ requests, but rationalized the failure by taking a discriminatory stance. Students’ views imply that school authorities explicitly discriminate against Tamil students because they are the minority. The students’ views also illustrate they are helplessly giving into authorities’ unreasonable attitudes. This again reflects the “misrecognition” of inequalities. It is as if nobody can help this state of affairs because it is a “natural” phenomenon that coincides with the structure of the social space. The number of students in the majority and minority groups is uneven. Thus, inequality and the power imbalance cannot be avoided (Bourdieu and Passeron 1977). The situation related by the students demonstrates the prevailing circumstances when the school authorities do not acknowledge ethnic diversity in their institutions. Students’ expressions reflect the feelings of oppression and frustration that they are destined to face and are compelled to succumb to as members of the minority group. When the authorities do not recognize ethnolinguistic differences, they cannot take corrective actions. The lesson that these circumstances teach us is that through pre-reflective thinking and acting, the school authorities ultimately contribute to the perpetuation of existing inequalities based on ethnic diversity in schools.

Languages at the practical level: majority vs. minority To rationalize the existing linguistic inequalities at the practical level, the inequality between ethnic groups in a multilingual institutional space, students argued that the attempts to achieve linguistic equality in the institution – “linguistic communism” (Bourdieu 1991) – cannot be realized in actual practice due to the uneven “majority vs. minority” demography of the institutions. This resonates with Swaan’s (1993) Q-value. The language policies and practices are impinged upon by the number of speakers of the respective languages in a multilingual social space. I asked the views of two senior prefects of Ravindranath College (first a Sinhala student and then a Tamil student) regarding whether there are differences between ethnic groups in school: Student 1: . . . our school is secular. We don’t give priority to any religion or ethnicity. We support all. I am worried about other schools especially schools which promote a certain race or religion. Student 2: Because Sinhalese are the majority in number Tamils and ­Muslims get [experience] a certain form of inequality but this is not active discrimination. At least they are not discriminated based on

197

H arsha D ulari W ijesekera

their ethnicity. We don’t go around and say because you are a Tamil or do something just because you are a Tamil. But since they are less in number in the school something might cause. These views illustrate a certain level of giving into existing structures. Everyone, it seems, misrecognizes inequalities as the “natural” structure/“logic of practice” of the social space. Again, this confirms the pre-reflective, takenfor-granted nature of practices of thinking and acting. All believe that none can overcome inequalities. This view reflects discriminatory assumptions against minorities, but it is not seen as “active discrimination.” The students show complacency with the existing circumstances (social structures). Domination and suppression are “natural” (Bourdieu and Passeron 1977), and therefore agreed upon by both the dominant (Sinhala student) and the dominated (Tamil student). Nevertheless, the practices at another school, South College, indicate that students there are not giving into these inequalities but are trying to go against the “natural” by accepting diversity, and consciously taking deliberate actions to become responsive. In the next section, I explore this story.

When authorities recognize diversity: “pluralism is our fundamental aim” I observed convincing practices of diversity responsiveness at South College. The linguistic landscape at the school reflects a commitment to multilingualism that is evident in trilingual (Sinhala, Tamil, and English) display boards, notices, and announcements. When one enters the school the first thing one sees is a large picture on the wall with children representing all ethnicities, religions, and languages. Quite extraordinarily, the school song is sung in all three languages. This is a very unique act that I have not noticed in other schools, and I am an “insider” who has worked for the system for more than two decades. The interviews with school authorities at South College reflect their acceptance and recognition of the ethnic, religious, linguistic, and cultural diversity of their students, which is in immediate contrast to the other two schools. The school authorities explicitly recognize and accept diversity as a matter of fact. The principal explained: The biggest advantage in our school is, both academic and non-­ academic, our staffs are also multiethnic. There are Muslim, Sinhala, and Tamil teachers here; the small model in the bilingual class is available at school too. As a staff we go to their weddings, funerals, we have to talk to each other, exchange ideas. I have to get their services to school, have to seek their help and get their contribution to work in school. That is one side. In addition to that, the

198

R ecognizing diversity

fundamental aim of our school is, even in our vision, is pluralism. What is meant by that is among us there are many differences . . . so the energies we have also different  .  .  . the other ethnic group may have good things maybe with regard to religion, we can learn or get these good things from them. We have divided duties based individuals [individual’s different duties] not based on ethnicity, but according to their strengths. What is implicated in the principal’s expression is that he explicitly recognizes the diversity in his institution, unlike in the cases of the other two schools who denied ethnolinguistic differences without giving the issue much thought. This principal recognizes diversity in ethnicity and culture as “energy” and perceives them as profit, not as a deficit that many perceive in a taken-for-granted manner. At this institution, diversity is a strength, not a weakness. The comments of the parents of minority children in the semi-structured interviews were corroborated by the principal. Father: After he [his son] came here [to South College] only I understood what the school authorities have done in terms of the school environment. Because there is no difference, Tamil-medium students. On the other hand, teachers are even much better than that. . . . So I think this school is a hundred per cent good for me. Mother 1: The idea that we are Tamils, they are Sinhalese, is minimum to a larger extent here, we can’t say hundred per cent, but it is to the minimum, let’s say 80 per cent, it is on the better side. Actually, the whole school is like that, the school also contributes to this partly. In other words, there are no favors here, they don’t say they are the majority, they don’t divide like that, if a child is good he gets the chance, they don’t consider if he is Sinhala or Tamil. That is here. Father: So this understanding depends on teachers also because children are innocent and they do know nothing. Mother 2: If a teacher takes a side and discriminates between people it will be a disaster. That is the dangerous side. Mother 1: . . . if the administration is proper everything goes smoothly otherwise everything falls apart. Evident in the excerpts of the parents’ views is that when schools become diversity responsive they can create positive intergroup contacts. These parents appreciate the principal’s thinking and action toward creating a sense of equality in his school. This school seems to be fulfilling the factors that facilitate positive intergroup contacts, and these parents of the minority students are feeling that they are recognized and treated equally.

199

H arsha D ulari W ijesekera

In brief, what we can learn from this school (South College) in comparison to the other two schools (Parakum and Ravindranath Colleges) is that the former has been able to create positive “socially situated conditions” for interethnic cohabitation. The authorities seem as if they are not acting in a pre-reflective, taken-for-granted manner. However, they consciously accept that their institution is ethnically and linguistically diverse, and that they need to act to reduce the power imbalances that come with those diversities. The South College, in fact, has been able to accomplish this target as evident in parents’ views. What can be derived from these social milieus is that if the authorities do not attempt to consciously minimize their taken-for-granted nature of thinking and acting toward diversity, then the creation of a “logic of practice” that promotes mutual understanding among the ethnolinguistically diverse student groups will fail (Bourdieu 1990). As one South College parent explained, “if the administration is proper everything goes smoothly otherwise everything falls apart.” Further research is needed on why the authorities in these schools have different perspectives toward ethnic and linguistic differences.

Conclusion In this chapter, I have addressed the perceptions and practices of the school authorities about ethnolinguistic diversity, on the one hand, and students’ views and experiences of diversity responsiveness of their school authorities, on the other hand. Based on Bourdieu’s The Logic of Practice (1990), I argued that “socially situated conditions” in a field (objective structures that structure the social space) shape the ethnolinguistic identities of students (the objective structures that determine how individuals think, feel, and act). I illustrated how Sri Lankan children are socialized into ethnocetrism in the social spaces they pass through (i.e., family and immediate society). This ethnocentricity is further established in ethnically-polarized public schools despite their legitimate and ethical responsibility to inculcate inclusive supraethnic national identities. Bilingual education classrooms available in the few bi-media schools in the country can bring the children of diverse ethnic groups together and contribute to identity repositioning – from ethnocentricity to inclusivity. However, the socially situated conditions of the schools/classrooms determine positive intergroup contacts that trigger these identity repositionings. Of four social conditions of intergroup theory that reduce intergroup biases and prejudices, this chapter focused on institutional support and equal status (Allport 1955). I  argued that equal status would be determined mainly by linguistic equality since the ethnic groups are categorized mainly by the language they speak. I illustrated that some school authorities deny ethnic diversity and perceive the existence of equality and, by doing so, smooth over interethnic relations

200

R ecognizing diversity

in their schools. It was also apparent that, contrary to school authorities’ surface-level assumptions, turbulent currents exist in some schools, as the students experienced. I also demonstrated that another school explicitly recognizes their ethnolinguistic heterogeneity and therefore acts responsively toward harnessing inclusivity. In the former types of schools (e.g., Ravindranath and Parakum Colleges), school authorities seem deluded that there are no differences based on ethnicity. Thereby, they fail to act and think in a diversity-responsive manner. Instead, they act and think in a taken-for-granted manner. Their pre-reflective acting and thinking eliminate schools’ capacity to create positive intergroup contacts through equal status between students of diverse ethnicities. There is also a tendency for both the majority and minority students to be complacent that the linguistic inequalities in their schools are “natural” due to the number of people who speak different languages. This echoes Swaan’s (1993) argument about Q-value. However, though the minority students helplessly give in to inequalities as “natural” realities, it was evident that they feel their treatment is unjust and are frustrated. This was explicit in the evidence from students’ views on school authorities’ refusal to provide Tamil-speaking teachers during the term-test. Therefore, it was perceptible that through their denial of ethnic diversity and their misrecognition that equality prevails in their multiethnic schools, the school authorities fail to become diversity responsive. They fail to create positive intergroup contacts that would facilitate ethnocentric identity transformation toward supraethnic national identity. They let ethno-based discriminations and inequalities perpetuate, though unintentionally. What is more critical here is that these multiethnic bi-media schools with bilingual education classes are the only social spaces where the students of diverse ethnicities can come together. All other schools are linguistically and, hence, ethnically polarized. As such, it is very critical that these opportunities are exploited to bring positive interethnic contacts to reduce prejudice and correct stereotypical misconceptions about the ethnic “other” that the children have acquired through primary socialization in ethnically exclusive spaces such as families and monoethnic schools. At the type of schools such as South College, school authorities explicitly recognize diversity and consider heterogeneity in the institutions as an asset. As evident in the views of minority students’ parents at South College, school authorities try their best to maintain equal status by reducing inequalities and power hierarchies based on ethnicity and language. By so doing, they create positive intergroup contacts that enhance the reshaping of ethnocentric identities that the students bring to schools toward inclusive supraethnic identities. Finally, this chapter invites policymakers and other relevant entities in Sri Lanka and elsewhere to reconsider the ethnolinguistically-based school

201

H arsha D ulari W ijesekera

systems and language policies in education that contribute to ethnolinguistic segregation, and to take bold action to address inequalities. These are dire needs in shattered post-conflict countries like Sri Lanka, where the reconciliation process is still to see conceivable progress. Yet, the educational system continues to perpetuate ethnolinguistic segregation through language policies at institutional/domain levels. Continuing professional education has a role to play in the education sector to guide school authorities to engage in an exploration of the “unthought categories of thought” in carrying out daily practical acts in schools via conscious reflexivity, rather than taking for granted premeditated dispositions, such as the denial of diversity (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992, 40).

Notes www.parliament.lk/files/pdf/constitution.pdf 1 2 These are pseudonyms.

References Allport, Gordon Willard. 1955. The Nature of Prejudice. Garden City, NY: Doubleday. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1984. Distinction: A  Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Translated by Richard Nice. London: Taylor & Francis Group. ——— 1990. The Logic of Practice. Translated by Richard Nice. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. ——— 1991. Language and Symbolic Power. Edited and Introduced by John Thompson. Translated by Gino Raymond and Matthew Adamson. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ——— 2005. “Habitus.” In Habitus: A Sense of Place, edited by Jean Hillier and Emma Rooksby, 43–49. New York: Routledge. Bourdieu, Pierre, and Jean-Claude Passeron. 1977. Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture. London: Sage Publications. Bourdieu, Pierre, and Loïc J. D. Wacquant. 1992. An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Canagarajah, Suresh. 2006. “After Disinvention: Possibilities for Dommunication, Community and Competence.” In Disinventing and Reconstituting Languages, edited by Sinfree Makoni and Alastair Pennycook, 233–39. Tonawanda, NY: Multilingual Matters. ——— 2009. “The Plurilingual Tradition and the English Language in South Asia.” AILA Review 22 (1): 5–22. Cooper, Robert L., and Robert Leon Cooper. 1989. Language Planning and Social Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Creese, A., and A. Blackledge. 2015. “Translanguaging and Identity in Educational Settings.” Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 35: 20–35.

202

R ecognizing diversity

Crump, Alison. 2014. “Introducing LangCrit: Critical Language and Race Theory.” Critical Inquiry in Language Studies 11 (3): 207–24. Davis, Christina P. 2015. “Speaking Conflict: Ideological Barriers to Bilingual Policy Implementation in Civil War Sri Lanka.” Anthropology & Education Quarterly 46 (2): 95–112. ——— 2020. The Struggle for a Multilingual Future: Youth and Education in Sri Lanka. New York: Oxford University Press. Deen, Bob, and William Romans. 2018. “Introduction: Shaping Language Policies to Promote Stability.” In Language Policy and Conflict Prevention, edited by Iryna Ulasiuk, Laurenţiu Hadîrcă, and William Romans, 1–22. Boston: Brill Nijhoff. DeVotta, Neil. 2003. “Ethnolinguistic Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka.” In Fighting Words: Language Policy and Ethnic Relations in Asia, edited by Michael Edward Brown and Sumit Ganguly, 105–39. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Dharmadasa, Karuna Nayaka Ovitigalage. 1992. Language, Religion, and Ethnic Assertiveness: The Growth of Sinhalese Nationalism in Sri Lanka. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Eriksen, Thomas Hylland. 2002. Ethnicity and Nationalism: Anthropological Perspectives. Sterling, VAVA: Pluto Press. Gabriel, Sharmani Patricia. 2014. “ ‘After the Break’: Re-conceptualizing Ethnicity, National Identity and ‘Malaysian-Chinese’ Identities.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 37 (7): 1211–24. García, Ofelia, and Li Wei. 2014. “Language, Bilingualism and Education.” In Translanguaging: Language, Bilingualism and Education, edited by Ofelia García and Li Wei, 46–62. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Giles, Howard, and Patricia Johnson. 1987. “Ethnolinguistic Identity Theory: A Social Psychological Approach to Language Maintenance.” International Journal of the Sociology of Language 68: 69–100. Grenfell, Michael, and Frédéric Lebaron. 2014. Bourdieu and Data Analysis: Methodological Principles and Practice. New York: Peter Lang. Harwood, Jake, and Laszlo Vincze. 2015. “Ethnolinguistic Identification, Vitality, and Gratifications for Television Use in a Bilingual Media Environment.” Journal of Social Issues 71 (1): 73–89. Haugen, Einar. 1983. “The Implementation of Corpus Planning: Theory and Practice.” Progress in Language Planning: International Perspectives 31: 269–90. Jansen, Jonathan D. 2009. Knowledge in the Blood: Confronting Race and the Apartheid Past. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Johnson, David Cassels. 2013. Language Policy. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Lo Bianco, Joseph. 1999. “Sri Lanka’s Trilingual Peace.” The Guardian. Accessed March 8, 2020. www.theguardian.com/education/1999/nov/17/tefl ——— 2010. “The Importance of Language Policies and Multilingualism for Cultural Diversity.” International Social Science Journal 61 (99): 37–67. McKinney, Carolyn, and Robyn Tyler. 2018. “Disinventing and Reconstituting Language for Learning in School Science.” Language and Education 33 (3): 1–19. Ministry of Education. 2017. “School Census Report 2017.” Accessed December 3, 2019. www.statistics.gov.lk/education/School%20Census%20Report_2017.pdf

203

H arsha D ulari W ijesekera

Nadesan, Somasunderam. 1957. “Regional Autonomy in a Multi National State 1957.” Ceylon Sunday Observer, July 1957. Accessed November 1, 2019. https:// sangam.org/regional-autonomy-multi-national-state/ National Institute of Education. 2017. Civic Education Teachers’ Guide: Grade 8. Maharagama, Sri Lanka: National Institute of Education. Noels, Kimberly A., Hali Kil, and Yang Fang. 2014. “Ethnolinguistic Orientation and Language Variation: Measuring and Archiving Ethnolinguistic Vitality, Attitudes, and Identity.” Language and Linguistics Compass 8 (11): 618–28. Rampton, Ben. 2011. “From ‘Multi-Ethnic Adolescent Heteroglossia’ to ‘Contemporary Urban Vernaculars.’ ” Language & Communication 31 (4): 276–94. Rogers, John D. 1994. “Post-Orientalism and the Interpretation of Pre-modern and Modern Political Identities: The Case of Sri Lanka.” Journal of Asian Studies 53: 10–23. Sørensen, Birgitte Refslund. 2008. “The Politics of Citizenship and Difference in Sri Lankan Schools.” Anthropology & Education Quarterly 39 (4): 423–43. Spolsky, Bernard. 2017. “Investigating Language Education Policy.” In Research Methods in Language and Education, edited by Kendall A. King, Yi-Ju Lai, and Stephen May, 39–52. Minneapolis: Springer. Spolsky, Bernard, and Francis M. Hult, eds. 2010. The Handbook of Educational Linguistics. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Swaan, De Abram. 1993. “The Evolving European Language System: A Theory of Communication Potential and Language Competition.” International Political Science Review 14 (3): 241–55. Tollefson, James W. 2015. “Language Education Policy in Late Modernity: Insights from Situated Approaches – Commentary.” Language Policy 14 (2): 183–89. UNESCO. 2003. “Education in a Multilingual World: UNESCO Education Position Paper.” Accessed February  5, 2018. www.unesco.org/new/en/communicationand-information/resources/publications-and-communication-materials/ publications/full-list/education-in-a-multilingual-world-unesco-education-position-paper/ UN General. 1992. “Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities.” Resolution 47 (135): 18. Wacquant, Loïc J. D. 2005. “Habitus.” In International Encyclopedia of Economic Sociology, edited by Jens Becket and Milan Zafirovski, 316. London: Routledge. Wickrema, Ariya, and Peter Colenso. 2003. “Respect for Diversity in Educational Publication: The Sri Lankan Experience.” In World Bank Symposium. Washington, DC: World Bank. Wijesekera, Harsha Dulari. 2018. “Students’ Ethnolinguistic Identities in Multiethnic, Bilingual Education Classrooms in Sri Lanka.” PhD diss., Queensland University of Technology. Accessed September  4, 2019. https://eprints.qut.edu. au/119217/ Wijesekera, Harsha Dulari, and Jennifer Alford. 2019. “Bilingual Education Classrooms in Sri Lankan Schools: A Social Space for Ethnolinguistic Reconciliation.” In Multilingual Education Yearbook 2019, edited by Indika Liyanage and Tony Walker, 81–102. Cam, Switzerland: Springer.

204

R ecognizing diversity

Wijesekera, Harsha Dulari, Jennifer Alford, and Michael Guanglun Mu. 2019. “Forging Inclusive Practice in Ethnically-Segregated School Systems: Lessons from One Multiethnic, Bilingual Education Classroom in Sri Lanka.” International Journal of Inclusive Education 23 (1): 23–41. Zimmermann, Ekkart. 2008. “Ethnic Fractionalization.” International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, edited by William A. Darrity Jr., vol. 3, 7–8. New York: Macmillan Reference USA.

205

Part III MEDIUM AND CONSIDERATIONS OF POLICY

10 THE RIGHT TO EDUCATION ACT Medium and dis-citizenship Usree Bhattacharya and Lei Jiang

There was a big sleeper hit in the summer of 2017. The Bollywood film Hindi Medium received critical acclaim for its astute examination of classbased aspirations pivoting around the medium of instruction (medium) issue in India (Chaudhary 2017). In the movie, the principal protagonists, who are parents of a young girl, receive a public comeuppance when they resort to unethical measures in order to exploit one of the provisions of The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education or Right to Education Act (2009) – hereafter, the RTE Act – which was meant to protect marginalized children. This act mandates, for the first time, free and compulsory education for all Indian children between the ages of six and fourteen (MHRD 2009). With the passage of the RTE Act, millions of new students – many among India’s poorest, and many who are linguistic minorities – are being introduced into the educational system. While the broader ambition of the RTE Act has been widely lauded, it has also been at the receiving end of popular and scholarly criticism. One of the plot points in Hindi Medium, for example, focuses on the stipulation of 25 per cent reservation for economically disadvantaged children in private schools, a highly controversial measure that has been the subject of heated debates, including at the Supreme Court. Academics have also expressed multiple reservations with this and other provisions within the RTE Act (see, e.g., Jain and Dholakia 2009; Jha et al. 2013; Mukerji and Walton 2012; Woodhead, Frost, and James 2013). Another plot point within Hindi Medium is the medium conundrum in the implementation of the RTE Act, an area that needs pressing and urgent attention from scholars. This chapter focuses on the RTE Act in relation to medium in India. The RTE Act raises the issue of language in education in two significant ways: first, it recognizes children who are defined as “disadvantaged” because of their status as linguistic minorities; second, it mandates that the “medium of instruction shall, as far as practicable, be in child’s mother 209

U sree B hattacharya and L ei J iang

tongue.” Important questions regarding the languages used to promote literacy under the aegis of the RTE Act, and how and toward what end, have yet to be comprehensively explored. This study investigates this important gap in the literature using the theoretical lens of “dis-citizenship,” which emphasizes “participation” as an index of access, equity, and inclusion. Focusing on its processual aspects, Vaidehi Ramanathan constructed citizenship as “being able to participate fully” (2013b, 162). Within this framework, dis-citizenship is conceptualized in terms of exclusions experienced by marginalized groups. We use this theoretical grounding to investigate questions about language access, equity, inclusion, and rights arising from the RTE Act, within India’s rich, complex, multilingual, and – importantly – hierarchical educational context. With a population exceeding 1.2 billion, and a couple hundred million students in school, India is considered to have “the largest school education system in the world” (Muralidharan and Sundararaman 2015, 1017). While universal education has been a policy goal since independence from British colonial rule in 1947, India continues to be plagued by poor literacy levels (Kingdon and Muzammil 2009). There are serious systemic concerns nationwide, including: teacher absenteeism (Kingdon and Muzammil 2009); inadequate government funding (Mehrotra 2012); gender disparity (Bose 2012); poverty (Reddy and Sinha 2010); inadequate infrastructure (Kumar, Kumar, and Narula 2011); high dropout rates (Sajjad et  al. 2012); child labor (UNESCO 2015); as well as corruption, graft, and spotty enactment of policy (Grant 2012; Tandon and Mohanty 2003). Ultimately, because the quality of schooling that students access is correlated with their socioeconomic status, education forms a crucial pivot in the production and reproduction of inequalities (Phillipson 2009). The complex linguistic landscape in India results in additional, pressing challenges, that compound existing disparities (Bhattacharya 2013; Dua 1985; Erling et al. 2016; Groff 2007; Jhingran 2009; Meiringer 2009; Mohanty 2010; Mohanty, Panda, and Pal 2010; Phillipson 2009; Sridhar 1996). India is home to 1,652 languages (Government of India 1961), belonging to several distinct language families (Pattanayak 1998). This is merely one of several rough estimates; as a result of the scale and nature of differences, it is unfeasible to conduct an exact count (Sarangi 2009; Sridhar 1996). Because of the highly multilingual student population in India, language educational policy has long been of concern at the local, regional, and national levels, with particular attention focused on educational challenges experienced by linguistic minorities. For example, the Constitution of India contains a Special Directive, Article 350(A), about medium aimed at assisting those at the primary level. It states that “It shall be the endeavor of every State and of every local authority within the State to provide adequate facilities for instruction in the mother-tongue at the primary stage of education to children belonging to linguistic minority groups.” Moreover, the 210

T he R ight to E ducation A ct

appointment of a special officer, “to investigate all matters relating to the safeguards provided for linguistic minorities under this Constitution” was created to give additional teeth to Article 350(A) (Republic of India 2015). Scholars have variously interpreted Article 350(A) as a “right” or a “guarantee” (see, e.g., Jayasundara 2014; Meganathan 2011) but Annamalai (1998) pointed out that the use of the word “endeavor” significantly weakened the force of the law (see also Pattanayak 2003). Others have pointed out various other issues with the Directive, including the fuzzy categorization of linguistic minorities (Pandharipande 2002; Tyagi 2003). This is because in numerical terms, all languages in India may be deemed “minority” (Bhatt and Mahboob 2008; Sridhar 1996). Despite the richness of India’s linguistic diversity, practical considerations have meant that only a fraction of the languages are employed as instructional media in classrooms. The vast majority of Indian children receive instruction in a language that is not their home language (Hornberger and Vaish 2009). According to Annamalai (1998), only thirty-three languages are in use across Indian schools, whereas Mitchell (2009) pegged it at a slightly higher number, forty-three. The highly heterogeneous nature of India’s schools, as well as the shortage of trained teachers, among other factors, has resulted in this Directive having little impact in the classroom (Mohanty 2006). Arguably, the most influential policy attempt at protecting linguistic minorities has been the three-language formula, outlined in 1956. It recommended the study of a modern Indian language (preferably South Indian) in addition to Hindi and English (for schools located in the “Hindi belt,” which refers to the Hindi-dominant region of India, primarily the north and central regions), and Hindi, English, and the regional language (for schools outside of the Hindi belt). Although a government recommendation in force for decades, the three-language formula’s implementation has been largely inconsistent (NCERT 2006). Further, as Khubchandani has noted, concerns about “language privileges, cultural prestige, and socioeconomic mobility” have strongly influenced the selection of second or third languages within the three-language formula (1978, 14). Significantly, the hegemony of Hindi and English within national language educational policy has served to intensify local tensions as a result of a complex matrix of regional language politics (Langer and Brown 2008). Most children who receive instruction in a language other than their mother tongue experience serious disadvantages at school (Daswani 2001; Jhingran 2005; Khubchandani 2003; Mohanty 2005). Multiple studies have linked low student achievement, particularly among linguistic minorities, to hegemonic medium practices (Bhattacharya 2013; Erling et al. 2016; Jhingran 2009). One of the most talked about lines from the movie Hindi Medium was one that encapsulates the profound importance of English within the complex language policy terrain: “In this country, English is not a language, it is [a] class” (Chaudhary 2017). Mohanty, in a similar vein, argued that 211

U sree B hattacharya and L ei J iang

the English/vernacular medium divides have created “a new caste system in India” (2017, 270). Marginalized communities have been making increasing demands for English because they recognize its role as a gatekeeper to higher education (which is overwhelmingly in English) and coveted higherpaying jobs (Hornberger and Vaish 2009; Kam et al. 2009). Governmentrun primary (elementary) schools, a free option for Indian children, do not provide a good foundation in English for students due to a variety of factors (Thiyagarajan 2008). Moreover, English acquisition is almost “entirely dependent on classroom experience” for poorer children, because they have little or no access to the language outside of it (Gupta 1997, 9). Poor teacher training, inadequate teacher language skills, multi-grade pedagogy, emphasis on rote-memorization, and minimal allocation of time to language teaching also contribute to form an inadequate English language learning experience for a majority of children in government schools (Bhattacharya 2013; Vaish 2005). This has pushed disillusioned parents to enroll their children in private English-medium schools, despite soaring costs (PROBE 1999). As a result, we have seen a sharp rise in the number of un- or semi-regulated, private English-medium schools, most of which serve those from the lower socioeconomic strata, with many linguistic minorities among them (Aggarwal 2000; Annamalai 2004; De et al. 2002; Jhingran 2009; Nambissan 1994). Mohanty et al. argued that such schools aim for “cosmetic Anglicization,” where, despite the nominal presence of English, vernacular languages dominate (2010, 216; see also, Khubchandani 2003). Students acquire “bookish,” non-communicative language skills in English; what they learn is to imitate, not interpret texts, not unlike in many government schools (Annamalai 2004). In contrast, elites are able to access far more effective and empowering English instruction (Mohanty 2006). As a result, Sheorey refers to English as a “divider rather than a unifier” in India, pointing out that the “advantages and the ‘power’ inherent in English literacy are enjoyed primarily by the middle and upper classes” (2006, 18). These advantages are beyond the reach of students who are hindered by their financial and social conditions (V. Ramanathan 1999). Either they cannot access English instruction, or the kind of English they acquire is insufficient for success in higher education or the demanding job market. In today’s India, the language of instruction thus reflects, maintains, and perpetuates socioeconomic divides (Mohanty 2006). This rich-but-messy language educational environment forms the backdrop against which we shape our argument in this chapter. Having established the context, we next turn to the theory of dis-citizenship, which forms the lens through which we examine the issues under investigation. The next section outlines the design of the chapter and describes its approach in combining policy texts and scholarly sources. In the discussion section, we look at the implication of language policy issues within the RTE Act, as well as 212

T he R ight to E ducation A ct

concerns regarding access, inclusion, equity, and rights. We conclude with policy recommendations as well as suggestions for future research. Our ultimate aim is to shine a spotlight on the critical language policy gap within the RTE Act so that policy makers and practitioners may create more equitable rights for all schoolchildren.

Theoretical framework To better explore the gap in the literature about the RTE Act and medium, this chapter uses dis-citizenship as the theoretical framework. The investigation of dis-citizenship hinges on a comprehensive, expanded understanding of the notion of citizenship. It has been advocated that “citizenship” should incorporate more than the commonly perceived denotations referring to one’s legal status, geographical affiliation, or a goal that ends once an immigrant gets naturalized (Devlin and Pothier 2006; V. Ramanathan 2013a; Wodak 2013). Instead, it should more deeply address individuals’ political, sociological, cultural, and educational possibilities and engagements. This advocates for an understanding of citizenship that includes one’s civil rights for political, social, and economic freedom, equality, and equity (Blackledge 2005; Block 2002; Makoni 2013; van Dijk 1997; Widin and Yasukawa 2013), or, as V. Ramanathan states, “being able to participate fully” in all institutions and activities in society (2013b, 162). Citizenship depends on major factors such as human capital (e.g., one’s racial, linguistic status and education), communal capital (e.g., recognition from neighbors and communities), and social capital (e.g., influence of national and local policies) (Portes, Fernandez-Kelly, and Haller 2005). A denial of a citizens’ equal rights to freedom and equity leads to “a form of citizenship minus, a disabling citizenship,” or, in other words, “dis-citizenship” (Devlin and Pothier 2006, 2). As Devlin and Pothier argued, dis-citizenship can profoundly affect one’s ability to exercise one’s individual rights, relationships within communities, and the development of society as a whole, “rais[ing] questions of access and participation, exclusion and inclusion, rights and obligations, legitimate governance and democracy, liberty and equality, public and private, marginalization and belonging, social recognition and redistribution of sources, structure and agency, identity and personhood, self and other” (2). Dis-citizenship is possible because of the different levels of inequality overtly or inherently existing in society, and this in turn creates conditions for “oppression and marginalization” (Ricento 2013, 184). Furthermore, the right to education, when framed as a basic social right, lays a solid foundation for the realization of one’s citizenship (Heller 2013; Makoni 2013). Therefore, it would profoundly restrict citizens’ ability to “fully participate” if school systems and educational policies enacted dis-citizenship. More fundamentally, as citizens’ fuller participation in society “depends on the full range of linguistic legitimacy: speaker, 213

U sree B hattacharya and L ei J iang

hearer, activity, [and] form” (Heller 2013, 190), language education and social and political support for it become significant (Blommaert 2013; McCarty 2013; Menken 2013). However, in a linguistically diverse society, minority groups would face serious hurdles if their right to education, which depends on facilitative language educational policies, are not thoughtfully considered and protected (Erling et al. 2016; Haugen 1973). These problems would be exacerbated particularly in circumstances where there is a lack of special attention to language education for linguistic minorities in educational policy, lack of clarity in educational language policy more broadly, and a gap between policy pronouncements and their execution (Bhattacharya 2013; Dubey 2009). Such is the case, we argue, in India. Ultimately, we contend here that these problems are instrumental in ultimately limiting many students’ ability to participate in civic, political, and social activities. We demonstrate how, as a result of unclear guidance and poorly planned policy, the RTE Act does little to alleviate existing language-in-education concerns. Using the theoretical lens of dis-citizenship, we show how this failure leads to the dis-citizenship of linguistic minority students, either ignoring and/or aggravating existing social inequalities.

Methodology Combining theoretical and empirical sources This chapter includes a literature review of both theoretical and empirical studies. In order to be comprehensive, we systematically gathered and reviewed relevant works including official documents, articles, and books from many electronic databases such as JSTOR, ERIC, Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts (LLBA), Web of Science, Taylor & Francis Online, and Wiley Online Library. The literature search in multiple databases was mainly powered by EBSCOhost. In order to locate a comprehensive set of pertinent studies, we used combined keywords during the search process. The keywords included “The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act,” “language policy,” “Indian Constitution,” and “discitizenship.” Furthermore, we utilized multiple searching strategies to avoid omitting valuable works, including: adding asterisks after each keyword to include more publications (such as “dis-citizen*,” “India*,” and “Constitution*”); replacing the original keywords with alternative synonyms such as using “RTE” and “Right to Education” to replace “The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act,” and using “linguistic” and “multilingual” to replace “language.” Upon finalizing the primary literature, we examined the authors and reference lists of the chosen literature to access additional related information.

214

T he R ight to E ducation A ct

Selection criteria After having collected the written resources, we conducted a detailed examination of official documents, articles, and reports. We then selected resources that strictly addressed language policies and literacy education in India, while connecting these to theories of dis-citizenship. For published studies, we carefully read through different kinds of research material and excluded documents and studies that did not sufficiently engage in language education and related issues. For online resources and essays, we traced all authors and sources, identified their authenticity and reliability, and excluded articles that lacked proper attributions or well-founded argumentation. For official documents and related resources such as newspapers, reports, and policy memos, we included both important general legal documents that discussed language education (e.g., the Constitution of India) and policy memos and articles that specifically discussed the publication and execution of Indian language policies. For peer-reviewed articles and books, we incorporated both theoretical and empirical studies that investigated the history of and recent changes in language policies and medium in India. We welcomed all studies, whether qualitative, quantitative, or mixed-methods. For articles and books on theories of dis-citizenship, we included those that addressed this social and political issue from multidimensional perspectives, from foundational pieces in critical disability theory to works focused more specifically on language education. The literature Based on the literature search and selection criteria, 102 documents and studies (not including references from the first author’s previous studies) were scrupulously reviewed for this study. All of these engaged with the issue of medium in India. Within this literature, seventy-six documents or articles contributed to the study on language education in India, among which twenty-six were official, legal documents or policy memos issued by the Government of India or media, and fifty were peer-reviewed articles published by journals. Finally, twenty-six articles helped us build our theoretical framework of dis-citizenship, and consider its applications to the RTE Act.

Discussion RTE and language policy The roots of the RTE Act can be traced back to the crafting of the Constitution of India in the 1940s (Selva 2009). However, it was not until the 2000s that the most comprehensive universal education policies were articulated

215

U sree B hattacharya and L ei J iang

for Indian students. In December  2002, the 86th Amendment Act to the Constitution of India formally included Article 21A, aiming to provide free and compulsory education for all children between six and fourteen years of age. In October 2003, a first draft on education based on Article 21A, Free and Compulsory Education for Children Bill (2003), was completed and opened to the public for feedback, and revised in 2004 based on the discussion of public suggestions and comments (MHRD 2016). After that, from 2005 to 2009, the government committee and Parliament discussed the draft of the Right to Education Bill submitted by the Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE) committee, and, after multiple rounds of debates and revisions, the Indian Parliament passed the RTE Act on August 26, 2009. It officially came into force on April 1, 2010 (MHRD 2016; PTI 2010). The RTE Act emphasizes the terms “free” and “compulsory,” and the Ministry of Human Resource Development defines them in the following manner: “Free education” means that no child, other than a child who has been admitted by his or her parents to a school which is not supported by the appropriate Government, shall be liable to pay any kind of fee or charges or expenses which may prevent him or her from pursuing and completing elementary education. “Compulsory education” casts an obligation on the appropriate Government and local authorities to provide and ensure admission, attendance and completion of elementary education by all children in the 6–14 age group. (2016) Framing education as a fundamental right, the RTE Act addresses governmental efforts and goals at both the macro- and the micro-level. Pivotal to note here is that the burden of enforcement of the RTE Act is placed on the government. Within the RTE Act, children who are seen as belonging to the “weaker section” or “disadvantaged group” receive special attention. Those belonging to the former category are identified as those whose parents or guardians earn less than a state-defined income cap. The latter category includes those who are “Scheduled Caste, the Scheduled Tribe, the socially and educationally backward class or such other group having disadvantage owing to social, cultural, economic, geographical, linguistic, gender or such other factor.” The RTE Act further calls upon the government or local authority to ensure that a child belonging to either group is “not discriminated against and prevented from pursuing and completing elementary education on any grounds.” Additionally, the RTE Act stipulates that a quarter of the seats in private unaided schools would need to be students drawn from those categories. Further, Section 29(2)(f) of the RTE Act was specifically meant 216

T he R ight to E ducation A ct

to assist linguistic and other minorities. It recommends that the “medium of instruction shall, as far as practicable, be in child’s mother tongue.” This particular provision forms a central focus for us in this investigation. RTE Act: access, inclusion, equity, and rights Although the RTE Act offers all children in the 6 to 14 age group the right to education, the issue of what kind and degree of educational access this affords needs to be carefully unpacked. Mere access to a classroom and teachers is not sufficient; educational stakeholders need to be vigilant and ensure that conditions are created so that all students may be able to access quality, equitable education. Several scholars have outlined how the RTE Act, in fact, does not push far enough in ensuring students’ schooling success (e.g., Sadgopal 2010). The particular problem we focus on in this chapter entails two aspects of the RTE Act, both pertaining to language policy. We argue here that they both jeopardize children’s ability to access education equitably. The first issue concerns the RTE Act’s vague language policy guidelines, which suggest that schools offer instruction in the child’s “mother tongue.” The second issue relates to the requirement that 25 per cent seats be reserved from specific minority groups, placing students with differential access to linguistic and other capital in the same classroom, but without any supplemental support. The first issue has long been a problem in Indian schools. As noted earlier, the Constitutional Directive on medium – a recommendation rather than a requirement  – has similarly failed to protect linguistic minorities in classrooms across India. The three-language formula, while well-intentioned, has also proved to be an inadequate recommendation. From a language policy perspective, then, there are no explicit or concrete guidelines from the government about how schools should cope with a complex multilingual context. The RTE Act, a well-intentioned policy that compels children to attend school, is also silent on how to assist students who must learn in a tongue that is either unfamiliar to them or that is not one with which they are comfortable. This is not inconsequential. As noted earlier, multiple studies have demonstrated that when students are compelled to learn in a nondominant or unfamiliar language, it can have a significant negative impact on their ability to access both the language and content (e.g., Bhattacharya 2013; Erling et al. 2016). A variety of questions arise as a result: What kind of educational “access” does the RTE Act afford children? That is, if the child is not proficient in, or is unfamiliar with, the medium, what constraints are placed on the child’s ability to access language and content? Further, how does this impact children’s educational futures going forward, if foundational language and content knowledge is constrained in this manner? This question applies both to hegemonic vernacular languages (such as Hindi) that function as 217

U sree B hattacharya and L ei J iang

instructional media in India, as well as English. Other questions to consider include: How inclusive is a classroom, when the language of instruction others or disadvantages certain students? How does it affect a child not to have his or her language included or counted in the classroom’s linguistic repertoire? And if the medium restricts students’ access to language and content in schools, what is the impact of this on educational equity in India? Given that the RTE Act is meant to help enhance educational equity in India, this is one aspect that simply cannot be ignored going forward. Crucially, we also have to ask: Can a “right” be one that forcibly imposes instruction in an alien tongue, regardless of the educational difficulties that arise as a result (Sadgopal 2010)? Another issue we must more closely examine is the 25 per cent reservation measure in private schools, specifically what this means when students in the same class have differential access to linguistic capital, including the instructional language (D’Souza 2006; Jhingran 2009; Mackenzie and Walker 2013). The RTE Act offers no guidance for supplemental support for these marginalized students, who quickly need to learn and compete with peers who have significant linguistic and educational advantages in the classroom. This aspect gives rise to questions similar to those raised here. For example, what is the educational impact of differential access to language (and content) afforded to students in the same class? The inclusion of children in the count of the classroom cannot be a sufficient move on the part of policymakers, since there are constraints placed on the inclusiveness of such classrooms. How then will this affect educational equity? What kind of a “right” affords access but does not set up conditions for success in the exercise of those rights? What of a right that does not, in effect, engender equal opportunity for accessing education? In both these cases, we see that while there is an attempt to bring all children into the school system, there is no parallel attempt to ensure that they will be able to participate fully in the classroom. In this manner, they are being set up to be dis-citizened in the classroom. Alongside these issues, the hegemonic role of English also needs to be carefully considered. The promotion of English as a medium in Indian primary and secondary schools has been an important part of the language education discourse since the 1970s (Asher 2008; Sadgopal 2010). Enrolment in English-medium schools tripled in 2012 (H. Ramanathan 2016, 113), demonstrating that interest in English-medium schooling continues to rise exponentially. English-medium schooling will be an issue for both students from the lower socioeconomic classes as well as those who are linguistic minorities, especially given the role of English in advancing socioeconomic mobility. In the private school context, in particular, the lack of additional support for marginalized students will have significant consequences for their educational and professional futures. The influential Position Paper on the Teaching of English by India’s premier educational policymaking body opened with the lines: “English is 218

T he R ight to E ducation A ct

in India today a symbol of people’s aspirations for quality in education and a fuller participation in national and international life” (NCERT 2006). If English is linked to “fuller participation in national . . . life,” we see how restricted access to English leads to dis-citizenship of already marginalized students in schools. The right to education, ultimately, is integral to one’s ability to comprehensively realize and exercise one’s citizenship (Heller 2013; Makoni 2013). In order to be able to “fully participate,” that is, exercise their rights fully, children need to have equitable access to an instructional medium, as well as the content that is mediated through it. Moreover, their own languages need to be recognized within such a framework, so that “fuller participation” entails plurality, rather than mere nominal access to hegemonic languages in the classroom. In the Indian context, linguistic capital  – particularly English – is highly valued, and instrumental in a student’s ability to experience fuller forms of participation. Ill-conceived or poorly planned language policies that do not tackle the inequities engendered by inadequate instructional media practices can exacerbate or ignore students’ dis-citizenship through language (Erling et  al. 2016; Haugen 1973). Effective language policy and planning will be key in offering children equitable educational access in the classroom, and, ultimately, a fuller form of citizenship.

Conclusion In this study, we have examined issues of access, equity, inclusion, and rights raised by the RTE Act’s insufficient attention to the medium issue in Indian schools. Through the theoretical lens of dis-citizenship, we explored how limited access to language and content would restrict children’s ability to participate in the classroom, leading to unequal education. In order to tackle these concerns, we propose policy recommendations and make suggestions for future directions in research. Recommendations and future implications The RTE Act, we argued, inadequately addresses the issue of medium leading to dis-citizenship of linguistic and other minorities. Moving forward, we recommend more comprehensive language educational policies, greater attention to enforcement of those policies, and continuing educational reforms. We suggest that educational legislation and language policy address the fundamental right to education while recognizing the sociopolitical realities that constrain those rights in the multilingual Indian classroom. As Haugen noted, “language diversity is not a problem unless it is used as a basis for discrimination” (1973, 40). Ideally, every student’s mother tongue, or first language, and linguistic background would be valued and celebrated in the classroom, and additional support would be offered to those who 219

U sree B hattacharya and L ei J iang

have less access to the language of instruction in particular. Scholars, policymakers, and practitioners have offered solutions to solve enduring problems concerning language education in India (Erling et al. 2016; AIFRTE 2009). We drew on the literature cited herein, particularly Erling et  al. (2016) and the Hyderabad Declaration in 2009, to offer the following eight recommendations: 1 Educational legislation such as the RTE Act should be consistent with the current Constitution, particularly when protecting linguistic minorities. 2 Educational policymakers should work closely with local school systems, particularly with practitioners. Language policy practices need to be clearly outlined and have a well-articulated enforcement component which would minimize confusion and the exploitation of loopholes. 3 Curriculum developers should take into consideration student’s linguistic, ethnic, and cultural rights, especially those from linguistic minority backgrounds, when designing the curriculum. 4 Curricula and programs that use students’ mother tongues or first languages as the instructional mediums should be encouraged and supported. Efforts should be made to value multilingualism as a resource and asset rather than a problem. 5 For areas with high linguistic and ethnic diversity, or where it is unfeasible to use minority students’ mother tongues as mediums, and the demand for a hegemonic language as a medium (e.g., English) is great, resources and long-term strategies should be provided to promote “sustainable additive multilingualism,” which promotes the “recognition that the mother tongue may be mobilized in the teaching of additional languages, such as English” (Erling et  al. 2016, 302). Therefore, if teacher educators can provide opportunities for students to use their native languages as resources while learning additional languages, these students can better hone their language skills and gain academic knowledge. 6 There is a pressing need to develop effective pedagogies that offer additional support for children with limited access to the medium used in classroom instruction. Teacher training needs to be a core part of this effort (2016). 7 It is time for the government to consider a systematic, large-scale investment in English instruction in the country. This would entail, among other aspects, rigorous training of teachers in the use of the language and appropriate teaching methods, as well as developing English learning resources for local use. This is an urgent issue, whether we consider English as a medium in Indian schools or its learning as a subject in

220

T he R ight to E ducation A ct

vernacular-medium schools. While we need to be mindful of the demand for English in heading in this direction, we must also be careful not to deny ideological resistance to the language that still exists (Bhattacharya 2017). Comprehensive efforts such as these could help alleviate the sharp disparities that exist around the issue of access to English. 8 While the effort to promote educational rights at the national level should be lauded, policymakers should seriously consider and plan for regional, social, linguistic, and ethnic disparities. Educational policymaking needs to be precise in articulating goals and enforcement measures, but also flexible enough to accommodate a high degree of difference. The medium issue will likely continue to be a political minefield, but policymakers need to make sure that their work is not dictated or unduly influenced by political and/or elite interests (Annamalai 2004).

Future directions Going forward, researchers need to continue to explore how to improve language education in India and ensure that every student has access to quality education. Firstly, we would recommend conducting more comparative studies across multilingual contexts where universal education is a policy goal in order to arrive at a more comprehensive picture of the issues involved. Secondly, we also suggest that researchers conduct more empirical projects in classrooms to assess the impact of medium in student achievement, as well as the consequences of placing disadvantaged students in private schools without any form of support. Thirdly, we recommend extensive language policy analyses, focusing particularly on their effectiveness in multi-tier, multilingual systems and at different levels of education. We also suggest greater dialogue among policymakers, practitioners, and other stakeholders on the issue of instructional language across higher education institutions, primary and secondary schools, private and nonprofit organizations, as well as relevant government bodies. Given the scale and scope of the problem, it will only be through collaboration and cooperation at multiple levels to ensure that children, when given the right to an education, can exercise it freely and equitably, and be equal citizens in the classroom.

Acknowledgments We would like to thank the editors of the volume, Chaise LaDousa and Christina P. Davis, and our reviewers, for their insightful comments and suggestions. This chapter has benefited greatly from their advice. All errors are our own.

221

U sree B hattacharya and L ei J iang

References Aggarwal, Yash. 2000. Public and Private Partnership in Primary Education in India: A Study of Unrecognized Schools in Haryana. New Delhi: National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration. Accessed January  10, 2017. www.dise.in/Downloads/Reports%26Studies/Public%20Private%20Partner ship%20in%20India.pdf All India Forum for Right to Education (AIFRTE). 2009. “Hyderabad Declaration.” Accessed January 10, 2017. www.aifrte.in Annamalai, E. 1998. “Language Choice in Education: Conflict Resolution in Indian Courts.” Language Sciences 20 (1): 29–43. ——— 2004. “Medium of Power: The Question of English in Education in India.” In Medium of Instruction Policies: Which Agenda? Whose Agenda? edited by James W. Tollefson and Amy B. M. Tsui, 177–94. New York: Routledge. Asher, Nina. 2008. “Engaging Identities and Cultures in a Globalized, Postcolonial India: Implications for Decolonizing Curriculum and Pedagogy.” In Second International Handbook of Urban Education, edited by William T. Pink and George W. Noblit, 97–112. Berlin: Springer. Bhatt, Rakesh M., and Ahmar Mahboob. 2008. “Minority Languages and Their Status.” In Language in South Asia, edited by Braj B. Kachru, Yamuna Kachru, and S. N. Sridhar, 132–52. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bhattacharya, Usree. 2013. “Mediating Inequalities: Exploring English-medium Instruction in a Suburban Indian Village School.” Current Issues in Language Planning 14 (1): 164–84. ——— 2017. “Resisting English: Excavating English Ideologies of Young Boys through Chutkule at an Indian Orphanage.” Journal of Language, Identity  & Education 16 (6): 349–64. Blackledge, Adrian. 2005. Discourse and Power in a Multilingual World. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Block, David. 2002. “McCommunication: A  Problem in the Frame for SLA.” In Globalization and Language Teaching, edited by David Block and Deborah Cameron, 117–33. London: Routledge. Blommaert, Jan. 2013. “Citizenship, Language, and Superdiversity: Towards Complexity.” Journal of Language, Identity & Education 12 (3): 193–96. Bose, Sunita. 2012. “A  Contextual Analysis of Gender Disparity in Education in India: The Relative Effects of Son Preference, Women’s Status, and Community.” Sociological Perspectives 55 (1): 67–91. Chaudhary, Saket, director. 2017. Hindi Medium [motion picture]. Mumbai: Maddock Films. Daswani, Chander J., ed. 2001. Language Education in Multilingual India. New Delhi: UNESCO. De, Anuradha, Manabi Majumdar, Meera Samson, and Claire Noronha. 2002. “Private Schools and Universal Elementary Education.” In India Education Report: A Profile of Basic Education, edited by Rangachar Govinda, 131–50. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Devlin, Richard, and Diane Pothier. 2006. “Introduction: Toward a Critical Theory of Dis-Citizenship.” In Critical Disability Theory: Essays in Philosophy, Politics,

222

T he R ight to E ducation A ct

Policy, and Law, edited by Diane Pothier and Richard Devlin, 1–22. Vancouver: UBC Press. D’Souza, Jean. 2006. “Language, Education and the Rights of the Child.” World Englishes 25 (1): 155–66. Dua, Hans R. 1985. Language Planning in India. New Delhi: Harnam Publications. Dubey, Muchkund. 2009. “The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009: The Story of a Missed Opportunity.” Social Change 40 (1): 1–13. Erling, Elizabeth J., Linda Adinolfi, Anna Kristina Hultgren, Alison Buckler, and Mark Mukorera. 2016. “Medium of Instruction Policies in Ghanaian and Indian Primary Schools: An Overview of Key Issues and Recommendations.” Comparative Education 52 (3): 294–310. Government of India. 1961. Census of India. Vol I. Part II – C (ii) Language Tables. New Delhi: Manager of Publications, Government of India. Grant, Laura. 2012. “National Coalition for Education India: The Second Freedom Struggle Against Illiteracy.” MA thesis, Universiteit van Amsterdam. Groff, Cynthia. 2007. “Status and Acquisition Planning and Linguistic Minorities in India.” Working Papers in Educational Linguistics 22 (1): 15–41. Gupta, Anthea Fraser. 1997. “Colonization, Migration, and Functions of English.” In Englishes around the World, edited by Edgar Schneider, vol. 1, 47–58. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Haugen, Einar. 1973. “The Curse of Babel.” Daedalus 102 (3): 47–57. Heller, Monica. 2013. “Language and Dis-Citizenship in Canada.” Journal of Language, Identity & Education 12 (3): 189–92. Hornberger, Nancy, and Viniti Vaish. 2009. “Multilingual Language Policy and School Linguistic Practice: Globalization and English language Teaching in India, Singapore and South Africa.” Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education 39 (3): 305–20. Jain, Pankaj, and Ravendra Dholakia. 2009. “Feasibility of Implementation of Right to Education Act.” Economic and Political Weekly 44 (25): 38–43. Jayasundara, Niruba Sarath. 2014. “The Development of Language Education Policy: An Indian Perspective; A View from Tamil Nadu.” International Journal of Scientific and Research Publications 4 (11): 1–4. Jha, Jyotsna, Neha Ghatak, Shreekanth Mahendiran, and Shubhashansha Bakshi. 2013. “Implementing the Right to Education Act 2009: The Real Challenges.” Discussion paper. Centre for Budget and Policy Studies, Bangalore. Jhingran, Dhir. 2005. Language Disadvantage: The Learning Challenge in Primary Education. New Delhi: APH Publishing. ——— 2009. “Hundreds of Home Languages in the Country and Many in Most Classrooms  – Coping with Diversity in Primary Education in India.” In Social Justice through Multilingual Education, edited by Tove Skutnabb-Kangas, Robert Phillipson, Ajit K. Mohanty, and Minati Panda, 250–67. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Kam, Matthew, Anuj Kumar, Shirley Jain, Akhil Mathur, and John Canny. 2009. “Improving Literacy in Rural India: Cellphone Games in an After-School Program.” Proceedings of IEEE/ACM Conference on ICTD, Doha, Qatar. Accessed January  10, 2017. http://ictd2009.org/presentations/pdfs/day2/10_Kam-ICTD2009SemesterPilot.pdf

223

U sree B hattacharya and L ei J iang

Khubchandani, Lachman. 1978. “Multilingual Education in India.” In Case Studies in Bilingual Education, edited by Bernard Spolsky and Robert Leon Cooper, vol. 2, 88–125. Rowley: Newbury House. ——— 2003. “Defining Mother Tongue Education in Plurilingual Context.” Language Policy 2 (3): 239–54. Kingdon, Geeta, and Mohd Muzammil. 2009. “A Political Economy of Education in India: The Case of Uttar Pradesh.” Oxford Development Studies 37 (2): 123–44. Kumar, Vipan, Naresh Kumar, and Sapna Narula. 2011. “Mapping of Elementary Educational Infrastructure in India: A State and District Level Analysis.” International Association of Multidisciplinary Research Journal 1: 128–39. Langer, Arnim, and Graham, Brown. 2008. “Cultural Status Inequalities: An Important Dimension of Group Mobilization.” In Horizontal Inequalities and Conflict: Understanding Group Violence in Multiethnic Societies, edited by Frances Stewart, 41–53. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Mackenzie, Pamela, and Jo Walker. 2013. Mother-Tongue Education: Policy Lessons for Quality and Inclusion. Johannesburg: Global Campaign for Education Policy Brief. Makoni, Busi. 2013. “Language, Gender and Citizenship: Re-Framing Citizenship from a Gender Equality Perspective.” In Language Policies and (Dis)Citizenship, edited by Vaidehi Ramanathan, 19–34. Tonawanda: Multilingual Matters. McCarty, Teresa L. 2013. “Education Policy, Citizenship and Linguistic Sovereignty in Native America.” In Language Policies and (Dis)Citizenship, edited by Vaidehi Ramanathan, 116–42. Tonawanda: Multilingual Matters. Meganathan, Ramanujam. 2011. “Language Policy in Education and the Role of English in India: From Library Language to Language of Empowerment.” In Dreams and Realities: Developing Countries and the English language, edited by Hywel Coleman, 2–31. London: British Council. Mehrotra, Santosh. 2012. “The Cost and Financing of the Right to Education Act in India: Can We Fill the Financing Gap?” International Journal of Educational Development 32 (1): 65–71. Meiringer, Julia. 2009. “Language Planning in India: The Influence of English on the Educational System and the Media.” PhD diss., University of Vienna. Menken, Kate. 2013. “(Dis)Citizenship or Opportunity? The Importance of Language Education Policy for Access and Full Participation of Emergent Bilinguals in the United States.” In Language Policies and (Dis)Citizenship, edited by Vaidehi Ramanathan, 209–30. Tonawanda: Multilingual Matters. Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD). 2009. “The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act.” Accessed January 10, 2017. https:// librarykvpattom.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/india_education_act_2009.pdf ——— 2016. “Right to Education.” Accessed January  10, 2017. http://mhrd.gov. in/rte Mitchell, Lisa. 2009. Language, Emotion, and Politics in South India: The Making of a Mother Tongue. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Mohanty, Ajit K. 2005. “Paradigms of Learning: The Total Literacy Campaign in India.” Contemporary Education Dialogue 2 (2): 249–52. ——— 2006. “Multilingualism of the Unequals and Predicaments of Education in India: Mother Tongue or Other Tongue?” In Imagining Multilingual Schools,

224

T he R ight to E ducation A ct

edited by Ofelia García, Tove Skutnabb-Kangas, and María E. Torres-Guzmán, 262–79. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters. ——— 2010. “Languages, Inequality and Marginalization: Implications of the Double Divide in Indian Multilingualism.” International Journal of the Sociology of Language 2010 (205): 131–54. ——— 2017. “Multilingualism, Education, English and Development: Whose Development?” In Multilingualisms and Development: Selected Proceedings of the 11th Language & Development Conference, edited by Hywel Coleman, 261–80. London: British Council. Mohanty, Ajit K., Minati Panda, and Rashim Pal. 2010. “Language Policy in Education and Classroom Practices in India. Is the Teacher a Cog in the Policy Wheel?” In Negotiating Language Policies in Schools: Educators as Policymakers, edited by Kate Menken and Ofelia García, 211–31. New York: Routledge. Mukerji, S., and M. Walton. 2012. “Learning the Right Lessons: Measurement, Experimentation, and the Need to Turn India’s Right to Education Act Upside Down.” Occasional Paper. Harvard Kennedy School. Muralidharan, Karthik, and Venkatesh Sundararaman. 2015. “The Aggregate Effect of School Choice: Evidence from a Two-Stage Experiment in India.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 130 (3): 1011–66. Nambissan, Geetha. 1994. “Language and Schooling of Tribal Children: Issues Related to Medium of Instruction.” Economic and Political Weekly 29 (42): 2747–54. National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT). 2006. “National Focus Group on the Teaching of English: Position Paper on the Teaching of English” (Position Paper No. 1.4). Accessed January 10, 2017. www.ncert.nic.in/sites/ publication/schoolcurriculum/Position_Paper s/english.pdf Pandharipande, Rajeshwari V. 2002. “Minority Matters: Issues in Minority Languages in India.” International Journal on Multicultural Societies 4 (2): 213–34. Pattanayak, Debi Prasanna. 1998. “The Language Heritage of India.” In The Indian Human Heritage, edited by D. Balasubramanian and N. Appaji Rao, 95–99. Hyderabad, India: Universities Press. ——— 2003. “Language Issues in Literacy and Basic Education: The Case of India.” In Towards a Multilingual Culture of Education, edited by Adama Ouane, 129– 38. Hamburg, Germany: Feldbrunnenstr. Phillipson, Robert. 2009. “The Tension Between Linguistic Diversity and Dominant English.” In Multilingual Education for Social Justice: Globalising the Local, edited by Ajit Mohanty, Minati Panda, Robert Phillipson, and Tove SkutnabbKangas, 250–67. New Delhi: Orient Black Swan. Portes, Alejandro, Patricia Fernandez-Kelly, and William Haller. 2005. “Segmented Assimilation on the Ground: The New Second Generation in Early Childhood.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 28 (6): 1000–40. PROBE. 1999. Public Report on Basic Education in India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Accessed January  10, 2017. www.educationforallinindia.com/ public_report_basic_education_india-1998_probe.pdf PTI. 2010. “India Joins List of 135 Countries in Making Education a Right.” The Hindu News. Accessed January  10, 2017. www.thehindu.com/news/

225

U sree B hattacharya and L ei J iang

national/India-joins-list-of-135-countries-in-making-education-a-right/article13666115.ece Ramanathan, Hema. 2016. “English Education Policy in India.” In English Language Education Policy in Asia, edited by Robert Kirkpatrtick, 113–26. Basel: Springer. Ramanathan, Vaidehi. 1999. “English Is Here to Stay: A Critical Look at Institutional and Educational Practices in India.” TESOL Quarterly 33 (2): 211–31. ——— 2013a. “Language Policies and (Dis)Citizenship: Rights, Access, Pedagogies.” In Language Policies and (Dis)Citizenship, edited by Vaidehi Ramanathan, 1–16. Tonawanda: Multilingual Matters. ——— 2013b. “Language Policies and (Dis)Citizenship: Who Belongs? Who Is a Guest? Who Is Deported?” Journal of Language, Identity  & Education 12 (3): 162–66. Reddy, Anugula N., and Shantha Sinha. 2010. “School Dropouts or Pushouts? Overcoming Barriers for the Right to Education.” Sussex: CREATE. Accessed January 10, 2017. www.create-rpc.org/pdf_documents/PTA40.pdf Republic of India. 2015. “Constitution of India.” Accessed January 10, 2017. http:// indiacode.nic.in/coiweb/welcome.html Ricento, Thomas. 2013. “Dis-Citizenship for Refugees in Canada: The Case of Fernando.” Journal of Language, Identity & Education 12 (3): 184–88. Sadgopal, Anil. 2010. “Right to Education vs. Right to Education Act.” Social Scientist 38 (9–12): 17–50. Sajjad, Haroon, Mohd Iqbal, Masood Ahsan Siddiqui, and Lubna Siddiqui. 2012. “Socio-Economic Determinants of Primary School Dropout: Evidence from South East Delhi, India.” European Journal of Social Sciences 30 (3): 391–99. Sarangi, Asha, ed. 2009. Language and Politics in India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Selva, G. 2009. “Universal Education in India: A Century of Unfulfilled Dreams.” PRAGOTI. Accessed January 10, 2017. http://archive.is/l9bm Sheorey, Ravi. 2006. Learning and Teaching English in India. New Delhi: Sage Publications. Sridhar, Kamal K. 1996. “Societal Multilingualism.” In Sociolinguistics and Language Teaching, edited by Sandra Lee McKay and Nancy H. Hornberger, 47–70. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tandon, Rajesh, and Ranjita Mohanty. 2003. Does Civil Society Matter? Governance in Contemporary India. New Delhi: Sage Publications. Thiyagarajan, K. 2008. “Higher Education and Practice of English in India.” Language in India 8 (8). Accessed January  10, 2017. www.languageinindia.com/ aug2008/thiyagaenglishpractice.html Tyagi, Yogesh. 2003. “Some Legal Aspects of Minority Languages in India.” Social Scientist 31: 5–28. UNESCO. 2015. “A  Growing Number of Children and Adolescents Are Out of School as Aid Fails to Meet the Mark.” Policy Paper 22 (31): 1–13. Accessed January  10, 2017. www.uis.unesco.org/Education/Documents/fs-31-out-ofschool-children-en.pdf Vaish, Viniti. 2005. “A Peripherist View of English as a Language of Decolonization in Post-Colonial India.” Language Policy 4 (2): 187–206.

226

T he R ight to E ducation A ct

van Dijk, Teun, ed. 1997. Discourse Studies. London: Sage Publications. Widin, Jacqueline, and Yasukawa, Keiko. 2013. “Re-Imagining Citizenship: Views from the Classroom.” In Language Policies and (Dis)Citizenship, edited by Vaidehi Ramanathan, 167–87. Tonawanda: Multilingual Matters. Wodak, Ruth. 2013. “Dis-Citizenship and Migration: A Critical Discourse-Analytical Perspective.” Journal of Language, Identity & Education 12 (3): 173–78. Woodhead, M., M. Frost, and Z. James. 2013. “Does Growth in Private Schooling Contribute to Education for All? Evidence from a Longitudinal, Two Cohort Study in Andhra Pradesh, India.” International Journal of Educational Development 33 (1): 65–73.

227

INDEX

Acharya, Kiran 74, 75 Afsar, Shahana 104 After Austen: Reinventions, Rewritings, Revisitings 103 Agha, Asif 149 Ahmar, Mahboob 99 Allport, Gordon Willard 183, 192 Annamalai, E. 211 arranged marriages 169, 172, 175, 177 Austen, Jane 103 – 8 Awasthi, Lava Deo 146 Azeez, A. M. A. 121 Azeez, I. L. M. Abdul 120 Bangla medium 44, 45, 49 – 52, 55 – 61, 66 Bangla-medium Khat 60 Bansal, Samarth 24 Batticaloa Tamils 123, 124 Baumgardner, Robert J. 99 Bhabha, Homi K. 98 bilingual program 117, 127 – 31, 183 bilingual stream 127 – 30, 133 bi-media schools 11, 182, 183, 188, 193, 200 Bourdieu, Pierre 8, 45, 95, 100, 108, 109, 190, 192, 200 Brass, Paul 4 Bucholtz, Mary 47 Canagarajah, Suresh A. 185 citizenship 65, 124, 213, 219 class identity 9, 44, 45, 51, 55, 56 class inequalities 129, 131 classrooms 1, 5, 10, 32, 140, 143, 188, 193, 211, 217 – 19, 221 closed-circuit television 9, 23, 36, 37

coaching centers, North India 21 – 39; coaching valuable, Hindi-medium centers 32 – 5; examination and responses, shifts 23 – 6; fieldwork contexts 26; Hindi-medium aspirants 23 – 6; innovation, hinterland 35 – 7 compulsory education 209, 216 cosmetic Anglicization 212 Crenshaw, Kimberle 164 cultural capital 10, 95, 96, 105, 108 – 10 Dawn newspaper 104 deaf students, Nepali schools 71 – 88; classroom interactions 76 – 87; Naxal classroom signing practice 80 – 7; spatial grammar, deaf social interactions 78 – 80 De Groot, Jerome 103 dis-citizenship 11, 209 – 21 discourse 5 – 9 Distinction 100 diversity 11, 121, 127 diversity, recognizing 182 – 202; language and identity, education 185 – 7; pluralism and 198 – 200 Driscoll, Beth 107 Dua, Hans Raj 160 education 4, 5, 11, 46, 48, 95, 96, 99, 101, 117, 119, 145, 182, 185, 186, 209, 213, 216, 219, 221 educational policies 11, 210, 211, 213, 214, 219 English bilingual stream 127 – 32; orientations to English 129 – 32; studying in 127 – 9 English education 46 English language 30, 95, 97 – 101, 103, 110, 131, 133, 141

228

INDEX

English-medium-educated women 161, 168, 170, 176 English-medium education 10, 11, 44, 45, 49, 50, 115, 128, 129, 131, 159 – 78, 184; positioning English, India 160 – 3; Sri Lanka 115 – 34 English-medium instruction 11, 138 – 42, 147, 151, 154 English-medium schooling 4, 95, 96, 100 English-medium schooling, Nepal 138 – 54; English, migration stories 147 – 51; English-medium instruction, aspirational infrastructure 151 – 4; metapragmatics of mobility 147; research methods and setting 142 – 4 English-medium schools 1, 2, 6, 7, 28, 49, 50, 95, 96 English-medium schools, Pakistan: Englishness and 97 – 103 English-medium students 22, 52, 57 Englishness 97 – 104, 107, 108 Erling, Elizabeth J. 220 ethnic diversity 193, 194, 197, 200, 201, 220 ethnic groups 131 – 3, 183 – 6, 190, 194, 197, 199, 200 ethnicity 120, 121, 127, 128, 183 – 5, 189 – 92, 194, 198, 199, 201 ethnographic research 10, 11, 139, 142, 144 ethnography 5 – 9 Evans, Eric 102 fieldwork 96 first language 10, 116, 119, 120, 219, 220 Fletcher, Lisa 107 focus-groups 96, 97, 100, 103, 144, 183, 193; discussions 96 fractal recursivity 28, 152, 153 Free and Compulsory Education for Children Bill, Article 21A 216 friendship 50, 176, 177 Gal, Susan 27, 28, 152 Girls’ College Tamil-medium stream 123 – 7; Muslims’ sociolinguistic orientations 125 – 7; sociolinguistic hierarchies 123 – 5 government-assisted schools 183, 185, 188

government schools 116 – 18, 126, 127, 141 – 3, 145 – 7, 151 – 3, 212 Green, Elizabeth Mara 78 Gunning, Dave 97 habitus 8, 99 – 101, 108, 110, 190, 192, 195 Hall, Kira 47 Haugen, Einar 219 Higgins, Christina 133 Hindi Medium 209 Hindi-medium aspirants 22, 23, 37 Hindi-medium-educated women 168 – 70, 173 Hindi-medium education 5, 11, 160, 161, 170 – 2, 174 – 8 Hindi-medium schools 28, 29, 36, 37, 160 Hindi-medium students 22, 28 – 31, 35, 37, 160 Hofer, Teresia 77 home languages 3, 121, 126, 184, 211 Hopkins, Lisa 101, 103 identity 5 – 9; repositioning 183, 191, 200 Indian women narratives 159 – 78; Abhilasha, end of romance 166 – 9; five participants 165 – 6; Gauri, mother-in-law’s derision 173 – 5; Indrani, spousal contempt 171 – 3; Malti, arranged marriage ordeals 169 – 71; methodology 163 – 5; Nitya, social ostracism 175 – 7 initial reader survey 96 instructional language 218, 221 international labor migration 139, 140, 147, 154 international schools 128, 129, 132, 133, 185 Irvine, Judith T. 27, 28, 152 Jaffna Tamils 123, 124 Jane Austen Society of Pakistan (JASP) 105 Jeffrey, Craig 35 Kamal, Soniah 105, 106 Kandy Muslims 122 Khubchandani, Lachman 2, 211 Kusters, Annelise 81

229

INDEX

labor migration 138 – 54 LaDousa, Chaise 116, 117, 131 Langford, Paul 102 Langlands, Rebecca 102 language: boundaries 71 – 88; debates 47 – 9; education 214, 215, 220, 221; ideologies 7, 8, 22, 23, 27, 28, 45, 47 – 9, 64, 65, 139, 152, 154; policies 2, 4, 5, 139, 185, 186, 197, 202, 214, 215, 217; varieties 2, 3, 8, 27, 83, 186; see also medium Lauder, Allan 163 Lebbe, M. C. Siddi 121 Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) 115 linguistic communism 185 linguistic minorities 209 – 12, 214, 217, 218 Lo Bianco, Joseph 191 local languages 49, 95, 120, 145, 146, 150 Location of Culture, The 98 Logic of Practice, The 190, 200 Lynch, Deidre Shauna 103 Lyotard, Jean-François 162 Macaulay, Thomas Babington 46, 98 Mahmud, Deshamanya Badiuddin 121 Makoni, Sinfree 87 Mansoor, Sabiha 99 Maoist Civil War 73 masculinity 57, 60 – 4 McLeod, John 101 media, medium 71 – 88 medium: debates 44, 45, 48, 49, 60, 63 – 5; designation 1, 21, 28, 140; distinctions 10, 22, 27, 28, 30, 32, 35, 38; of instruction 1, 35, 37, 44, 141, 144 – 6, 154, 160, 209; media 71 – 88 medium, North India 21 – 39; examination and responses, shifts 23 – 6; fieldwork contexts 26; Hindi-medium aspirants 23 – 6; and language ideology 27 – 31 medium, South Asia 1 – 11; ethnography, discourse and identity 5 – 9; sociolinguistics and study 2 – 4 medium discourses 44 – 66; consumerism 55 – 7; data sources and analytical procedures 49 – 51; debates in Bangladesh 49; language debates 47 – 9; language ideologies

47 – 9; masculinity 60 – 2; sexuality and sexual behavior 62 – 4; taste and presentability 57 – 60; wealth and affluence 51 – 5 middle-class Muslims 131 migration 139 – 42, 147, 148, 154, 163 Minute on Education 46, 98, 160 Mitchell, Lisa 211 modalities 71 – 4, 76, 78, 82, 83, 87 Mohanty, Ajit K. 212 Mohsin, Moni 105 mother tongue 3 – 5, 76, 116, 120 – 2, 126, 127, 130, 184, 186, 189, 220 Mukhopadhyay, Rahul 5 multiethnic schools 182 – 202; assumed realities, denial of ethnic diversity 193 – 5; authorities’ delusions vs. students’ actual experiences 193 – 7; domainlevel language policies 188 – 9; ethnolinguistic identity 189 – 91; languages, majority vs. minority 197 – 8; medium and ethnic polarization 187 – 8; methodology 192 – 3; positive intergroup contacts 192; repositioning conditions 189 – 91; students’ experiences 195 – 7 multilingualism 2, 3, 146, 198 multimodal semiotic ecologies 71 – 88; and Nepali deaf education 73 – 6 Murphy, Richard McGill 100 Muslims 115 – 34; Girls’ College Tamil-medium stream 123 – 7; mother tongue and medium 120 – 3; sociolinguistic orientations 125 – 7 Muslim Tamil 121, 123–6 Muslim teachers 10, 124, 125, 127 Nakassis, Constantine V. 28 national languages 2, 44, 48, 76, 129, 182, 186, 187, 189, 211 Naxal school 71 – 7, 80 Nepali-medium education 72, 73, 76 Nepali-medium schooling 141, 142, 146, 154 Nepali-medium schools: schooling for development 144 – 7 Nepal National Education Planning Commission (NEPC) 146 non-Muslim teachers 10, 117, 124, 125, 127 Nuhman, M. A. 129

230

INDEX

“other” identity, construction 44 – 66 Pakistani readers 96, 101 – 4, 107 Passeron, Jean-Claude 190 patriarchy 159 – 78 Pennycook, Alastair 87, 117 Pigg, Stacy Leigh 151 Poonam, Snigdha 21 positive intergroup contacts 183, 191 – 3, 199 – 201 postcolonial Bangladesh 44 – 66 postcolonial habitus 108 – 10 Pride and Prejudice in Pakistan 106 private schools 5 – 7, 138, 142, 143, 148, 151 – 3, 218, 221 Proctor, Lavanya M. 139 Q-value 186, 189, 197, 201 Rahman, Tariq 95, 99 Ramanathan, Ponnambalam 120 Ramanathan, Vaidehi 161, 210, 213 Rapley, John 161 Rappleye, Jeremy 146 Rassool, Naz 162 religion 3, 8, 10, 115, 116, 120 – 3, 191, 197 – 9 Right to Education (RTE) Act 209 – 21; access, inclusion, equity and rights 217 – 19; and language policy 215 – 17; literature 215; recommendations and implications 219 – 21; selection criteria 215; theoretical and empirical sources, combining 214; theoretical framework 213 – 14 romance 95 – 111 romantic relationships 168, 169, 176, 177 Rubdy, Rani 162 Sahasrabudhe, Sujit 81 Sandhu, Priti 60 Sarangapani, Padma 5 Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) 5 Schieffelin, Bambi B. 123 school system 108, 182, 183, 185, 188, 213, 218 “self” identity, construction 44 – 66 self-identity 47, 48, 51 semi-private schools 123, 128

Shamim, Fauzia 163 Sheorey, Ravi 212 Shrestha, Tina 152 sign language-medium instruction 71, 75 Sinhala medium 116, 123, 196 Sinhala students 195 – 8 Sinhalas/Sinhalese 115–122, 128, 130, 184, 185, 188, 193, 196, 197, 199 social media 9, 44 – 66, 96 social space 183, 188, 190, 191, 197, 198, 200, 201 sociolinguistics 2 – 4 spoken languages 72, 74, 81, 82, 87, 123, 127, 146 Sri Lanka, context of 184 – 5 Sri Lankan language politics 115 – 34; English bilingual stream 127 – 32; methods 117 – 18; regimenting medium and ethnicity 118 – 20; Southern Muslims 120 – 3 Sri Lankan Muslims 10, 115, 116, 120 – 2, 129, 133 Sukhera, Laaleen 105, 106 Sultana, Shaila 66 Swaan, De Abram 186, 197, 201 Tamil language 118, 125, 129, 184 Tamil-medium education, Sri Lanka 115 – 34 Tamil-medium Muslim 117, 125, 126 Tamil-medium schools, Sri Lanka 182 – 202 Tamil-medium stream 122, 123, 128, 130, 131 Tamil-medium students 123, 126, 129, 130, 132, 182, 199 Tamil-medium teachers 123, 127, 130, 131 Tamim, Tayyaba 99 Tanu, Danau 60 Tollefson, James W. 5, 162 transcript 79, 82, 84 – 6 Tsui, Amy B. 5, 162 Unmarriageable 105 UPSC exam 21 – 3, 25 – 8, 30, 33, 34, 36 – 7 Urdu medium 95 Van Dijk, Tuen A. 50 Van Gogh 108

231

INDEX

vernacular languages 2, 27, 99, 212 vulgarity 45, 65, 66 wealth 51 – 6, 64, 123, 130, 162 Weinberg, Miranda 10 Wilkins, Kim 107

women 95, 96, 159, 160, 163 – 6, 168, 175, 177, 178 Wood, Hugh 146 Woolard, Kathryn A. 123 Young, James O. 107 Young, Robert 103

232