[Reader-list] foreigners in india, and learning Hindi

[Rana Dasgupta]

one of the things you have to confront as a foreigner in a place like delhi,
where there is a large community of foreign diplomats, researchers, NGO
workers and businesspeople, is that the way this community sees itself in
this place rather resembles a kind of apartheid - and that you, as "one of
them", have a welcome place, ready and waiting, within it.  usually there is
no point trying to imagine that you will be able to sustain relationships
with this community on terms other than its own, so most people who see this
as a problem end up trying not to get involved.

what has often surprised me is the way in which independent, self-reliant
people with egalitarian political beliefs and a horror of oppression come
here from, say, France or the UK and fit so quickly and easily into this
feudal snobbery.  When they have always been "Jack" or "Marie" to everyone,
suddenly they refer to themselves, to most people, as "Sir" and "Madam."  It
comes so naturally that it seems as if this "other self" has always been
there, waiting to be deployed when the circumstances are right.

This is of course the case, to a great extent.  The universalism of western
egalitarian thinking is only apparent, and it does not extend to everyone in
the world.  The imperial persona is still one aspect of the ego ideal of
aspiring westerners, and part of the appeal of a posting to a place like
Delhi is the possibility of living the life, now almost impossible in the
west, of a feared and much waited-upon aristocrat.

It is not the full story, however, because there is a great extent to which
India's own feudal society places them in this role.  The energies that are
unleashed in the street, in markets, in restaurants, when white people (and
colour is very important) pass by makes it difficult for them to act as if
they are "just another person".  They are served first and pampered; the
most banal details of their life arouse astonishment and admiration.  Their
"natural" place in Indian society is alongside the industrialists and
politicians who alone can share in the kind of global sophistication they
are used to - but who can also demonstrate for them what the proper bearing
is of such a person in this society.  It is by upper-class Delhiites, not by
foreigners, that i have been advised to mistrust all non-elites and never to
eat in dhabas, and it is from them that i have learned how distasteful it is
to talk of the dirt of the city.

These reflections follow from a passage in my Hindi course book, written by
Mohini Rao who teaches, so the preamble says, "at the American Embassy and
at the Hindi Institute run by herself."  Ms Rao's work is titled "Teach
Yourself Hindi" but it could equally well have been called "Teach yourself
to talk to the underclass."  Though she says in her introduction that
"Hindustani ... is a pleasant mixture of Hindi and Urdu", her book makes no
attempt to capture her pupils' imagination with the language; full of
postcolonial insecurity she simply presents it as a tool: the skill, that
she can impart, of talking to the proletariat.

The first noun that is declined in the book is "naukar" (servant).  Thus we
have, in the introduction to nouns, the following examples of how a
masculine noun ending in a consonant can be used in sentences:

Yah kam naukar ne kiya (the servant did this work).
Naukar ko kam dijiye (Give work to the servant).
Naukar se kam lijiye (Take work from the servant).
Naukar ke liye bahut kam hai (There is plenty of work for the servant).
Yah naukar ka kam hai (This is the servant's job).

(Translations also from the book.  The next noun, after "naukar", by the
way, is "larka" (boy).  One would have thought that a "larka" could have
something other than work given to him and then taken away, but this "boy",
we understand, is the kind you call "boy" - and we have the same list:
"Larke ne kam kiya..." etc.)

Things do not improve; as pupils become more sophisticated the entire
language is turned into a vehicle for their alternating imperious commands
and aristocratic discontent.  As we learn adjectives we begin to understand
that surrounding the gorgeous gardens that "we" live in, with their roses in
many different colours, there is an entire community of workers who are lazy
and dishonest and who take insufficient care of their children:

Mera kala kot kahan hai?  Yah kot to maila hai.  Yah dhobi achchha nahin
hai.
(Where is my black coat?  This coat is dirty.  This washerman is not good.)

Yah roti bilkul thandi hai.  Garam roti laiye.
(This roti is absolutely cold.  Please bring hot roti.)

Aaj kamara saf nahin hai.  Jamadar bahut sust hai.
(Today the room is not clean.  The sweeper is very lazy.)

Vah bahut laparvah hai.  Uske bachche bahut duble-patle hain.  Ve kamzor
hain kyonki kafi dudh nahin pite.
(He is very careless.  His children are very lean and thin.  They are weak
because they don't drink enough milk.)

Apki yah adat bahut buri hai.  Bachchon ki adaten achchhi nahin hain. (!!)
(This habit of yours is very bad.  Children's habits are not good.)

Vah dukankar imandar hai.
(That shopkeeper is honest.)

Thank goodness for the shopkeeper.

R