By Robert Sanga
India is a very large multicultural country since the ancient time. The first inhabitants were black people who now live in southern India. They were originally living in the northern part of the country, but were driven out from those areas because of several decades old occupational wars throughout ancient & medieval time.
The language of the country has been diverse even before the invasion of Mongol empires. The coming of occupational empires to the country had made the language more diverse. It was because those ancient kings and their people spoke totally different languages. They have had a great deal of difficulty in communicating with the local people because of the language barriers.
An urgent need of having a common language was there when the British colony tried to colonize the country. It was the British Empire who had brought modern English to the country. English was first used among British Indian officers as medium of communication. Later it was introduced to ordinary people to unify the language difference among the people.
Republic of India was formed by several hundred different languages speaking ethnics’ people right after it got independence from the British colony on August 15, 1947.
English is use among civil servants from different states of the republic as it was regarded as the official language of the country.
However, a few Muslim and Hindu religious extremes people refused to learn English because they regard it as a foreign language. But nobody could ignore the important of English as the country needs to have a common language.
There are several hundred thousands of English medium private schools and colleges in different places of the country. The government promotes the language as a result of which the popularity of English increased within the Indian society.
I had studied a bachelor in political science from Dyal Singh College, Delhi University and a master of the same subjects from Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU). I had been in New Delhi, India for more than 11 years for which I have certain knowledge on how Indian uses English.
In fact, English is the only medium of communication between ethnically very diverse Indian. And they are smart to modify and enrich English words & grammar for their own convenient. Indian version of English is also known as Hind-English which has steadily gains popularity throughout the world. It’s because of the large number of Indian English speaking people!
