With English, We Are The World

There is an almighty fuss going on in Goa these days - with parents demanding English-medium instruction in schools. Some decades ago, these very people had opted for instruction in Konkani - and, indeed, the whole of India was divided into "linguistic states." Then, Hindi was forced into the curriculum, and many states and regions protested - while others fought and died for their language, and states based on that language. Potti Sriramulu is the best example of such a martyr.


In time, India was hopelessly divided - with  people from different areas unable to understand each other. It was forgotten that what brought the Indian National Congress together in the years 1885-1947 was English. This was the language of the INC elite - who had different mother tongues. Yet, independent India did not increase the scope of English - opting for Hindi chauvinism instead. All the states chose the vernacular as the medium of instruction. In West Bengal there was a backlash several years ago - and English was re-introduced by The State. This is exactly what is happening in Goa these days.


One wonders why The State is required to teach English?  Or to teach anything at all? Already, there are many firms offering short English-language learning courses. I even saw one in Margao. I personally know two entrepreneurs of this kind - and one of them has developed a pedagogy that he sells to franchisees all over the land. Our software geeks have all been privately trained by NIIT, etc. Why can't English be taught the same way?


There is a more important point to make here - that India is "globalising" in all seriousness, what with even the poorest preferring that their children study English, which is a World Language. They are all seeing that the biggest opportunities knock on the doors of those who know this language - while they themselves cannot survive outside their home states because they only know their native tongue. A Tamilian who knows only Tamil cannot survive outside Tamil Nadu. For a Tamilian who knows English, "the world is his oyster." The next generation of Indians are going to be like that, it seems.


In his Nation, State, and Economy (1919), Ludwig von Mises began by asserting that the idea of "nation" lies in a "speech community." Western Europe is thus divided. And the vast regions of Eastern Europe that the Hapsburgs ruled comprised many, many linguistic nations. This book was written in Vienna, in German, just after WW1, in the very same year that Keynes wrote The Economic Consequences of the Peace.


In this book (PDF here) , Mises made the acute observation that the USA and Great Britain are "one nation" but "different states." He also wrote of how Germans were similar - with the Swiss-Germans and the German-speaking Austrians preferring different states.


Almost 100 years have passed since this book was first published - and it seems in another 20 years, most Indians will be part of an English-speaking globalised "nation." Mises champions a "liberal nationalism," of which he writes:

The nationality principle above all bears no sword against members of other nations. It is directed in tyrannos [at tyrants].

Therefore, above all, there is also no opposition between national and citizen-of-the-world attitudes. The idea of freedom is both national and cosmopolitan. It is revolutionary, for it wants to abolish all rule incompatible with its principles, but it is also pacifistic. What basis for war could there still be, once all peoples had been set free? Political liberalism concurs on that point with economic liberalism, which proclaims the solidarity of interests among peoples.

He adds that this "liberal nationalism  does not clash with cosmopolitanism, for the unified nation does not want discord with neighboring peoples, but peace and friendship." The example he gives is of the Swiss-Germans: 

... the idea of unity cannot exert its state-destroying and state-creating power where freedom and self-government already prevail and seem assured without it. To this day Switzerland has scarcely been tempted by that idea. The least inclination to secession is shown by the German-Swiss, and very understandably: they could only have exchanged freedom for subjugation in the German authoritarian state. But the French also, and on the whole also the Italians, have felt themselves so free in Switzerland that they felt no desire for political unification with their fellows in nationality.

Mises defines this "liberal-pacifist nationalism" in these words:

Liberalism, which demands full freedom of the economy, seeks to dissolve the difficulties that the diversity of political arrangements pits against the development of trade by separating the economy from the state. It strives for the greatest possible unification of law, in the last analysis for world unity of law. But it does not believe that to reach this goal, great empires or even a world empire must be created. It persists in the position that it adopts for the problem of state boundaries. The peoples themselves may decide how far they want to harmonize their laws; every violation of their will is rejected on principle. Thus a deep chasm separates liberalism from all those views that want forcibly to create a great state for the sake of the economy.

Liberal nationalism has to be clearly distinguished from nationalism of the "militaristic-imperialist" kind. In the former, the economy is separated from The State - and, in this manner, the State itself is made quite redundant to the entire scheme of things. Theirs is a "limited State." In the other kind of nationalism, the militaristic-imperialist kind, the State is joined with the economy, and therefore seeks more territories and subjects. The liberal nation is different, as Mises says:

Liberalism knows no conquests, no annexations; just as it is indifferent towards the state itself, so the problem of the size of the state is unimportant to it. It forces no one against his will into the structure of the state. Whoever wants to emigrate is not held back. When a part of the people of the state wants to drop out of the union, liberalism does not hinder it from doing so. Colonies that want to become independent need only do so. The nation as an organic entity can be neither increased nor reduced by changes in states; the world as a whole can neither win nor lose from them.

As more and more Indians learn English and become part of the global community, it is hoped that a liberal nationalism will prevail here - as it should. In India, a vast sub-continent comprising many linguistic nations (like the Austro-Hungarian Empire of the Hapsburgs Mises was familiar with) English remains the uniting factor among the elite. Once the language is learnt by the masses, we will all hopefully become "cosmopolitan" in our outlook.


But then, my optimism may stem from the fact that I am writing this in Goa, where, because of tourism, the people are naturally welcoming to foreigners. There is no reason why the entire country cannot be like that. After all, every region has tourism potential - and tapping this potential requires cosmopolitanism, not the narrow, militaristic-imperialistic nationalism we sometimes find in some regions.


Of course, to me, writing 90 years after Mises, the idea of "free cities" sounds much better than "nationalism." Every Indian city is multi-lingual and multi-cultural. And most Indians speak not one, not two, but three languages: English, Hindi and the mother-tongue. They may not be able to read and write in all three, but they can speak them and be understood. For Indians, therefore, a "national language" makes no sense - and Hindi lost this battle long ago. With language gone, the only other basis for nation are religion and race - and we are too mixed a population for these narrow identities to work. Thus, the "idea of community" must be rejected here in favour of the idea of "catallaxy": which is a free trading market arena where strangers of all kinds can make peaceful and gainful exchanges with us. I have written about this in a column published by Mint.


I am extremely happy that the masses are demanding English language education for their children. It means that the masses are "globalising" while our "political society" is not. In time, these new-kids-on-the-block will all be singing "We are the World." I most certainly hope so.