I appeal to all the Shudra/OBC/SC/STs to celebrate the Indian English Day on 5 October, 2018 as we have no significant place in the world of English even after 200 years of English education in India. We need to own the language as ours and learn it with vengeance. We have never been allowed to learn any Pan Indian or global language for millennia. Even now, the conspiracy of English educated Brahmin/Bania intellectuals is to deny this language of power and glamour to us. 
 
English teaching for the Indian Brahmin children started in the year 1817 on 5 October, which coincided with my birthday, much later in 1952. I was born in a shepherd family which had no right to education in any language. However, I went to Telugu medium school in the early sixties and learned the English language I speak and write on my own with an undaunted struggle. I then realized this language has the power to liberate education starved SC/ST/OBC/Shudras for centuries.
 
The Indian Christians taught English only to Brahmins and Banias but not to the Shudra/OBC/SC/STs for a long time. Now scores of world-class English medium private schools, colleges and universities are coming up with the tacit support of the ruling Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the Bharatiya Janata Party.
 
Even now the best Christian and Non-Christian private schools only teach Brahmin, Bania, Kayastha and Khatris as they have economic resources at their command. As a result, Delhi is being ruled by these four castes, no matter who is the Prime Minister of the country. Narendra Modi and Amit Shah, though non-English speaking Banias, rule politics. All the top industrialists, politicians, bureaucrats, economists, media men, women, educationists, mainly coming from those four castes with good command over English rule India.
 
The complete control of the RSS over central power structures has not changed the power position of the Bania, Brahmin English class of India. The English speaking and writing intellectuals (most of them are BJP spokespersons on English TV channels) cannot win elections, hence get into Rajya Sabha as Arun Jaitley, (earlier Arun Shourie did), Nirmala Sitharaman, Prakash Javadekar, Ravishankar Prasad, Smriti Irani, Swapan Dasgupta, Rakesh Sinha, GVL Narsimha Rao did and so on. They became rulers and policy makers. Hardly any Shudra/OBC/SC/STs exist in this crop of rulers.
 
During the Congress regime, Manmohan Singh, Jairam Ramesh, Abhishek Singhvi, Manish Tiwari, Janardhan Dwivedi and so on, used the same channel of entry to get power. This caste- class that controls the nerve centre of the nation is in every major national political party.
 
The present English speaking and writing intellectuals, who rule India through Rajya Sabha, are strong RSS army men and women. Hence it now says the “RSS is not opposed to the English language” and wants the English education to remain in the private sector but not in the state sector.
 
It is fully supporting the establishment of private schools, colleges and universities by the top 20 monopoly companies—including Reliance, Adani, Vedanta, Lakshmi Mittal, Bharti group, Azim Premji and so on. They are establishing rich private English medium schools and colleges and universities in which no SC/ST/OBC/Shudra from rural areas can get in.
 
Even though a section of Jats, Gujjars, Patels, Marathas that are fighting for reservation could afford it because of their hold on the agrarian economy, they never realized its importance. They were or are mad linguistic chauvinists of their regional language. This is what the Brahmin, Bania English educated elite want so that the power of English could remain in their hands.
 
The Shudra agrarian castes have never understood the link between English education and Delhi’s power. After four years of RSS/BJP rule, they seem to have realized that the Brahmin, Bania forces have become more powerful than ever before. Hence many are asking for reservation but the English educated forces in the top judicial system will not allow that to happen. It is this English educated class that interprets the constitution, mostly in the favour of its own self.         
 
The ST/SC/OBC/Shudra children and youth can never get into these institutions as they could not enter the best Catholic schools and colleges like St. Stephen’s of Delhi or St. Xavier’s of Mumbai for several decades. Now they cannot get into the rich private universities because they lack that kind of elite English and money.
 
The lower caste, community children have only one way to get the English medium education. They have to force the state governments of all states to make all government schools teach in English medium. For that, these castes and communities must overcome the hatred and fear of English education and fight for that language medium in government schools.
 
All the major public and private schools, colleges and universities run in English medium where the presence of Shudras like Marathas, Patels, Gujjars, Jats, Kammas, Reddys, Lingayats are marginal, leave alone that BC/SC/STs. Unless these castes take the initiative, the Government sector will not change the language policy in the provinces.    
 
The very same English educated Brahmin, Bania intellectuals injected anti-English culture into the psyche of lower castes. They also injected a fear that no first-generation school going children can learn English, as it is a foreign language. They never let the examples like Mahatma Phule, Ambedkar or this author, who not only learned but mastered English without even going to the Christian or Non-Christian English medium schools within one generational learning of reading and writing. They do not let them realize that English is the easiest language that the children from the productive castes and communities could learn.
 
The higher Shudras like Marathas, Patels, Jats, Gujjars and so on, realized, of late, that their position in the Delhi power structure, in the national and international markets, is very poor because of lack of English education and reservations. Their feudal estates, the landed properties, no longer allow them to control the power structures of Delhi or the massive capitalist industries and markets, both in India and abroad.
 
They are slowly realizing about the link between bureaucratic power and globalized English language-controlled market system. Their feudal estates are shifting into the hands of monopoly industrialists in the form of special economic zones. The old Shudra feudals have now become rich farmers without understanding modern markets and the new Mall Economy. They are just sellers of produce in that market.
 
In one of my recent interactions with one of the richest Private English Medium Universities, The Ashoka University Haryana, among the alumnae who have undergone high-end leadership training course, there was not a single Jat or Gujjar, or Patel. They were all Brahmin, Banias with sympathy for poor and lower castes. There are no organic English speaking and writing intellectuals from the agrarian Shudra communities. They need motivation for English medium education.                               
 
Each year, the Shudra/OBC/SC/ST exclusion from the main market of India is increasing. Top industries, both hardware and software, is run by the Banias and Brahmins who have international standard English education that is acquired both in foreign and Indian schools, colleges and universities. All ideological forces, the right, left and liberal Brahmin, Banias are comfortable with the present private English medium education and regional language ghettoized in government sector education.
 
The Shudra/OBC/SC/STs must break this monopoly of the caste/community elite. The lower caste forces must begin to celebrate English language education as Indian. The double standards of the Brahmin, Bania elite must be fought with the same weapon that they control the lower castes with: first with Sanskrit and now English. Therefore, the new slogan “Bahujan Bache English Pado, Brahmin Bache Sanskrit Pado,” makes sense.   
 
The youth from all the Shudra/OBC/SC/ST communities should not remain in the regional language trap and in the grip of the propaganda that English is a foreign language. English has become a very powerful Indian language that controls the power, industry and communication structures of India. It has survived here more than two hundred years. Hence, we must own it, learn it and rule the nation through it.
 
Therefore, celebrate the birth of that language on 5th October to motivate ourselves.        
 
Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd is the Chairman, T-MASS and political theorist. He is the Director, Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policy, Maulana Azad National Urdu University, Hyderabad.
 

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In 1817, sometime in the month of October, English teaching was started in Calcutta by gathering together a few Brahmin male children both by British educationalists and Indians. Today, in 2017 we need to celebrate the 200^th year of English education in India.
 
For the last few years we Osmanians at the Osmania University, within the monumental arts college building built by the famous Osman Ali Khan, the last Nizam, celebrate October 5 as the ‘Indian English Day’. Everyone knows that October 5 is ‘International Teachers Day’. Some of us thought that it should also be celebrated as the Indian English Day.

As I said in 1817 the English teaching started by imparting English alphabets to some Brahmin children because in those days there was no scope for the Dalit-Bajujan or even the  upper Shudras to study in any school.  Even persons like Rajarammohan Roy who was associated with that initiative were casteists. Roy thought of reforming Brahmin women’s life but never took any initiative for educating the lower castes.

The first educated modern Shudra in India was Mahatma Jotirao Phule, who studied in a Scottish English medium school in Bombay province. That was much later in the 1840s as Phule was born in 1827. The Calcutta province was in the grip of both Britishers and Brahmins. No caste reform movement was initiated by the Bengali Brahmins. Because of a Shudra ruler like Shivaji  who resisted Brahmin hegemony in the Bombay region some changes began there. 

Subsequently his grandson Sahu Maharaj took a serious step towards the anti-Brahmin mobilisation of Shudras and Dalits. Thus, that land became the land of the Dalit-Bahujan English Education also. If Calcutta province represented the Brahminical English the Bombay province represented the Dalit-Bahujan English.

Dr.B.R.Ambedkar was the first Dalit to get education in an English medium school and later on world class higher education. Even the Muslims of India were pushed back from access to English education because they went in for education in the Persian and Urdu medium. Sir Sayyad Ahmmad Khan pushed the ideology of English education within the Muslim community. Now there are several English educated Muslims in India. But for their English education the Universities like Aligarh Muslim University and Jamia Millia English medium universities would not have existed and because of these institutions there is a modern Muslim community emergent and resilient.

Today the Dalit-Bahujans and Muslims and other minorities have attained their present position because of English education, though they are the least educated among all. If a person like me having come from a totally illiterate shepherd family could challenge mighty Brahminism that controls state power, temple power, even the educational power it was because of my access to ‘their’ English (earlier Sanskrit), though learned under the tree schools, at a very late age in my village.

The celebration of the Indian English Day is also needed to checkmate Hindutva forces from confining the SC/ST/OBCs to regional languages while they educate the rich and the upper castes in private English medium schools with their money power. Our struggle is to establish common medium and syllabus based schools for all children—the rich and poor of any caste.

I appeal to all those lovers of equality to celebrate today, October 5, as the Indian English Day and send a message to the diabolical convent and foreign English educated people: you cannot stop us from accessing good English education in our village schools by selling the bogus theory that English is not Indian language. We declare that ‘English is Indian’. We study in English and preserve our buffalo cultural nationalism as against the unproductive cow nationalism which is for Brahmins alone.
 
 
 

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