It does not do to rank the darkest chapters of human history, but if the topic should arise, a strong case can be made for the rapacious greed and violence central to British rule over the Indian subcontinent. The inverse of the journey taken by my grandfather centuries later, the British East India Company (EIC), with agreement from the Mughal Shah Jahangir, established a trading port in the Gujarati port of Surat. As decades passed, the Mughal empire crumbled and amongst a backdrop of native factions scrambling for power, it was the Company that emerged victorious. Following the Battle of Plassey in 1756, the company, and later the British state would, as Tolstoy remarked, “enslave a nation comprising two hundred million people”.
Under such hegemony, the lives of its subjects change, sometimes subtly and in secret, oftentimes overtly, and most prominently of all, the dominant language used by the population alters. While communities and families still engage in the native language, professional and commercial duties are coloured and influenced by the language of the hegemon. As such, hegemony makes the robust backbone of a culture malleable, shaping both tradition and development in a direction favourable to the hegemonic power.
I do not know Gujarati, my ancestral language. It feels like a phantom limb; an apparition promising access to shades of myself I have yet to uncover. I consider my inability to materialise this a personal failing, but how do I reconcile this with the widespread phenomenon that is “language death” across immigrant communities throughout the UK? Cartographic propaganda often utilised the octopus, with its sprawling arms striving in all directions to engulf the world, in an attempt to instil fear of an opposing international power. Much like the octopus, the hegemon’s tendrils invade every aspect of culture, suppressing customs and language. From Irish Gaelic (Gaeilge) under the British to the suppression of Turkic languages such as Tofa and Ös under Russian rule, “language death” is the result of colonial policy at worst and societal othering at best.
Eoin MacNeill, an architect of Irish nationalism and proponent for the revival of Gaeilge amongst a population which could scarcely speak it, believed that language and nationhood were intertwined. In MacNeill’s view, the traditional language of the native population could be “the essential and universal element of national life” of an unified Irish people. The development of language is seen as a key process in our evolution, enabling the transfer of ideas, preservation of knowledge, and formation of social groups. As such, fostering a specific language within a community will not only embolden it, but also deepen the ties between its components and preserve its heritage. The hegemon understood this, seeking to weaken the languages of marginalised communities, thereby furthering their own dominance. As detailed by linguist K. David Harrison in his book When Languages Die (2007), the death of a language typically begins with discrimination against a language or its speakers, either through official policy or merely benign neglect. For example, the 1366 Statutes of Kilkenny declared that the Irish must adopt English surnames or else lose their property. Elsewhere, the American indigenous language of Wôpanâak (Wampanoag) was phased out as its speakers were barred from work and trade unless they did so in English. Acquiescing to the hegemon was a matter of survival.
As history tends towards the present, the reasons underlying the suppression of indigenous languages become more subtle. The prevalence of English is a symptom of an old world order. Its expanse, with dominion over the world, and the parallel loss of local languages, identities and cultures is the result of that old colonial order. English ascended, not as a “gift”, as many commentators state, from the civilised to the barbaric, but as a byproduct of imperial expansion and atrocity. Some countries formerly under colonial rule, such as Nigeria and South Africa, have even adopted it as their national language.
Nowadays, English dominance is perpetuated by globalisation and the desire for shared communication in an increasingly smaller world. Most scientific journals publish in English and so English becomes the language of science. A research team from the University of Queensland, led by biodiversity researcher Tatsuya Amano, showed that non-native English speakers require up to double the time to engage with scientific literature published in English. Compared to native English speakers, they are 2.5 times as likely to have their work rejected on the basis of language use and then may spend up to 12.5 times as long making those language-based changes. This is just one example of how competency in English splits the world into two: the haves and the have-nots. Those who have, are welcomed into a diverse network of knowledge, innovation and progress. The have-nots either struggle to enter this network or are left lagging behind.
In an effort to bridge this gap and improve English fluency, there arises the concept of “linguistic injustice”. Non-native English speakers must put in time, resources and energy to achieve sufficient competency to get involved with the world. Western European countries are estimated to spend between 5 – 15% of their education budget on foreign language teaching, the vast majority of which for teaching English. Meanwhile, foreign-language teaching in England has long been in decline. Elsewhere, the links provided by globalisation lead those to believe English is the key to opportunity and a better future and so they dedicate their time to English fluency, sacrificing their own customs and culture in the process. Overall, it was an understanding by the hegemon of the power of language that led to English assuming the lingua franca role. This remains a double-edged sword, a tool used to open some doors yet close others, sometimes indefinitely. As the world continues to grapple with the consequences of historical imbalances, fostering a more inclusive linguistic landscape is vital to usher forth a future in which opportunities exist independent of one’s proficiency of a particular language.
In considering why native languages are lost elsewhere, I can now better grapple with my own lost language as a third-generation immigrant living in the UK. My grandfather moved from Surat, that place where the British East India Company set foot all those years ago, to the UK in the early 1960s, joining a community of pioneers in the North West of England. Similar individuals also came to settle in the surrounding area, populating various working class towns in Northern England. At the turn of the century, ensuring that such great stories weren’t lost to time, volunteers began interviewing these first immigrants and, in 2002, the community project was completed. Through interviews (including one with my grandfather) and archival excerpts, the project details the migration of Gujaratis, their early plight in the UK, and ultimate settlement in the North West. As I don’t speak Gujarati and he spoke little English, I realise that reading the interview with my grandfather constitutes the longest conversation I will ever have with him. Earlier that term, I had committed to learning the language to better understand him – an endeavour that was too little too late. I had spent my life trading the chance to hear about the history of “me” and my ancestry and deepen familial relationships for the empty trophy of academic points and the promise of social mobility.
It’s easy to blame my parents, who elected not to teach me Gujarati as a child and instead focus on developing my eloquence in English only, but this is entirely in-keeping with the experiences of many. Their decision was based not only on societal pressures, but also on hope for a better future for myself. K. David Harrison details that unsuccessful language transmission from one generation to the next is rarely the result of free will, but a decision culminating from years of learned societal perceptions of them as other. Shifting to the dominant language is seen as progress by many, especially immigrants, and so they don’t want their children to speak an obscure and politically inferior language. Similarly, those in minority communities feel, either through subtle or overt pressure, that assimilation into national culture is central to advancing in society. Examples include the Wampanoag nation detailed earlier, or the Tofa people, who “were told not to come to the village shop wearing traditional clothes. ‘Dress Russian, then come!’”. My grandparents definitely did not understand what Enoch Powell meant when he foresaw the Tiber foaming with much blood, but they definitely felt it.
The result? A grandchild stripped of his heritage. As Eoin MacNeill predicted, due to my lack of Gujarati, I feel no connection with India. Unlike my parents, who consider themselves to be British Indian, I consider myself British. There is an economy of words that develops within a language, a certain quality accurately described by one language which remains intangible to another. For the Tofa, it’s different words to describe obscurely different deer (e.g., ‘Chary’ describes a five-year old male castrated reindeer). I wonder what it could be for me; perhaps the specific texture of food, the way the breeze feels in the early hours of the morning, the silence you break as you finish praying. These things that intuitively convey meaning to the speaker of one language which would require a poem just to reflect in another. There is richness in diversity, something which could only amplify anyone’s experience of the world, not detract from it.
As we mourned the passing of my grandfather, extended family came around and told stories. In one week I learned more about my family than I had done in twenty years. Sat next to my father, who translated between all my relatives, I learned what it meant to be a member of my family and the trials they had to endure for me to be able to write this piece. I loved my grandfather, but I didn’t know him. Given the dominance of western ideals in driving global thought, most societies now consider a “person” very much as an individual. Elsewhere, the Melanesians, hailing from areas between New Guinea and Fiji, have a different idea of what it is to be a person. In their relational concept of the individual, a person is the sum of their relationships with others. Much like a language, the person is not truly dead until they are forgotten.
This work was first published by the Cambridge Language Collective, 2024.
Yusuf Adia 