LANGUAGE AND CULTURAL POLICY
Language and culture are intimately related, as language is both a vehicle for and an expression of culture. Indeed, language is a basic element in all human group activity and thus too broad and encompassing a phenomenon to be understood adequately by the limited techniques within any single discipline. Though language is as much a cause as an index of social and cultural change, by considering it omnipresent in society, one can lose sight both of its role in society and its casual influence on social behaviour. No wonder most social scientists have failed to take due notice of the interdependence of language with social and cultural structures.
Language has the potential for integrating as well as separating people. In societies based on exploitation, the vested interests often use it to promote civil strife. In colonies, dependencies, and countries under international "spheres of influence", language has very often been used to further the interests of privileged groups. In British India, Indian languages were passed over in favour of English, allogedly for administrative convenience. Wealth, rank, and status were attendant on English ducation, and the British successfully used language differences to divide and rule. Hence, our elitist education and mass illiteracy.
Language is the key for transforming an elitist culture into a mass culture, for it is crucial in expanding or contracting the communication network. Thus it influences the implementation of any decisions concerning socio-economic change which would necessarily restructure the patterns of individual and group interaction. Consequently, the beneficiaries of the status quo would naturally oppose any radical change in language use. However, the use and development of language cannot be controlled by a few institutes academies. Ivan lllich correctly says that "not a draft into specialised institution, but only the mobilisation of the whole population can lead to popular culture"(lllich 1971).
Individuals and groups draw a sense of identity and routedness from the language they use. Furthermore, the structure of social relationships in non-literate societies, transmitting their values orally, is quite different from that in literate societies, transmitting their values which record events and thus distinguish between myth any history. With accelerated technological and related changes, the chances of acute social dislocation increase. History has shown time and again that language identity can arouse emotions of such depth that people lose their rationality and often become violent. Given such explosive potential, it is necessary to take bold action to integrate speakers of different languages without hurting their attachment to particular languages.
Culture is transmitted both formally and informally, and language, important both for expression and comprehension, is by far the most important tool for cultural transmission. Hence, the importance of language education. Yet language teaching is one of the most neglected areas in India. There is no awareness of the difference between teaching a language, teaching about a language, and teaching through a language. Goals of language teaching are seldom defined, and consequently no serious thought is given to the methods, materials and media of instruction. 52 per cent of the total study time in schools is devoted to language instruction without commensurate results. Both educationists and politicians talk about language "load" in schools. Yet they do not realize that, for most people, language is only a means of acquiring new knowledge or an additional facility. Not understanding these fundamental issues, we fail to avail of the numerous opportunities which come our way. To liberate education from these constraints, we must realize that by providing a language choice we can resolve the minorities' identity crisis. By focusing on language use it is possible to relate the social effects of art to its artistic merit and thus elevate the cultural level of the masses. By language engineering it is possible to widen the scales of communication and to reduce factors which divide and stratify the population.
In his famous talk at the Yenan Forum on Art and Literature, Mao Tse-tung raised the question of the "audience" for art and literature. He said that the failure of the artists and the writers to grasp the people's living idiom was responsible for the distortion of standpoint, culture content, and art forms in all artistic creation. Bernstein, the famous English sociolinguist, has concluded that all educational failures are essentially linguistic failures. Since we have failed to appreciate the pervasive importance of language, we have also failed to cope with the persistent high illiteracy, stagnation, and waste in primary education, the large scale failures in secondary and higher education, and the continuing dominance of a middle class oriented elitist culture.
In social evaluation some features of a language are prestigious and others stigmatized. This evaluation correlates with that of various social features, and together these stratify the speakers of any language. Different varieties of speech, whether dialects or languages, become acceptable and acquire prestige because of their usefulness in particular contexts. Therefore, in a multilingual society, the language planner's tasks are to help the processes of language standardization, and to initiate such measures as would motivate a citizen to choose, for any particular communication need, one language out of the many he uses at different times. This can be achieved by promoting selective bilingualism at different levels. In the Indian situation the bilingualism has to turn around the language of the minority group and the dominant regional language, the latter and Hindi, and Hindi and English, leading to balanced multilingualism. Such a strategy alone can reduce the language variation to manageable proportions and lead to national consolidation.
It has been suggested that such multilingual planning would isolate regional elites intellectually. By definition, intellection with the elites elsewhere : the question of elite isolation is a non-issue. The real isolation of the Indian elite is from the masses, as in the distance between the 4 per cent English-knowledge elite-with the rank, status, and wealth which accrue from English education-and the rest of the people; between the Sadhu Bhasha and Calit Bhasha users of all the dominant languages; between the stigmatized and prestigious varieties of languages, with prestige linked to high caste, higher education, and a good standard of living. It is this gap that needs to be bridged. By using regional languages for education and administration, the masses of people would be able to participate effectively and consciously in the governance of the country and thus to achieve the socialist economic goals within a framework of participatory democracy.
A three-language formula, along the lines indicated above, is likely to meet the communication needs within the country and also to provide a language for communication with the international elite or a large section thereof, enabling us to share the wealth of knowledge with the scholarly community, to participate in international commerce, and to further good neighbourliness as far as possible. Thus, it is only through meticulous language planning that culture can be rescued from the stranglehold of the middle class elite.
In India, today, almost all significant art forms are created and utilised by the middle and the upper classes for their own entertainment. Most new experiments in literature, music, drama, and other art forms are oriented towards the urban middle class. No effort is made to make the arts a "campaign of enlightenment" for the masses. Even when folk forms are adopted, these are merely diversions for urban audiences. Very little "high culture" reaches the people. Art forms portraying the life of the weaker sections of society are tolerated. These arouse pity and pseudo-sympathy and may even be extolled for political reasons. I know of powerful novel in a regional language which has effectively caught the idiom and the rhythm of tribal life, but it was not considered for a national award on the ground that, since it dealt with tribal life, it was not universal enough. Any new cultural policy formulation must face these anachronisms, break sharply with past practices, and give art and culture a mass orientation. Trying to understand the idiom of the common man is the first step towards it.