[Reader-list] "The English Class System" by Sankrant Sanu

[Kshmendra Kaul]

The document "The English Class System" by Sankrant Sanu  (SOUTH ASIAN LANGUAGE REVIEW - VOL.XVII. No. 1, January 2007.) is available at http://salr.net/Documents/Sankrant.pdf
 
What led me to this very interesting document are the following comments made by Sankrant Sanu in a different context:
 
""""""""" This collective irrationality exists because, often times, the problems we are solving are not the real problems—but imagined or received problems; similarly the solutions that we are proposing are equally not real solutions but irrational ideas that create more problems than they solve. This is a result of the fact that we operate from a colonial mind—and have retained the colonial system, colonial institutions and a colonial academic basis, little of which is rooted in our own cultural moorings or existing  reality. Take a few examples:
 
1.       The English-based Class system is a far greater reality of everyday social consciousness in urban India than “caste” is. We judge people, in everyday social interactions, on their knowledge of English, and further on the “accent” by which they speak it, and we relegate people from villages into “yeh log aise hi hain” based on their differentiated existence in the English-based class hierarchy. Note that these” lower people” may be “Brahmins”—as many railway coolies are—and the employers may be “SC’s” but the social reality is actually determined based on a combination of English class and their current profession. Yet, how many social scientists in India study the actual class system they inhabit rather than obsessively studying the categories of caste that British Indologists had established as the unchanging reality of India and, later, the British had enshrined as a fixed reality through the census. As a
 result we legislate based on this artificially static reality—and that legislation further moulds us into a caricature of that colonial description and prevents us from addressing the real problems of inequality and social justice. (see for instance, The English Class System: http://salr.net/Documents/Sankrant.pdf)
 
2.       Similarly, if we look at other one’s of our “favorite” problems—dowry, “female foeticide”, “child marriage” and so on, we will find that these are the exact problems that the British had defined as the “ills of Indian society”—largely as a justification for their civilizing mission. We have pre-determined, for instance, that our skewed sex ratio in certain areas is due to selective sex abortions. This may very well be the case, but I have yet to see a scientific study that actually proves this—that goes through the number of abortions in the population that would be required for the gender imbalance, determine the number of clinics that are providing this service, looks at how many abortions per clinic must be happening and actually presents evidence that this is happening in that magnitude in reality. Rather than a scientific study, this “fact” that skewed sex ratio is due selective sex abortion is taken as
 gospel that needs no scientific proof other than anecdotal data—and legislation is created on that basis. To question this would be heresy. Therefore, relatively few social scientists would look for other explanatory factors. This Harvard study (incidentally by a non-Indian) that  hypothesizes that the gender imbalance may be due to the hepatitis B virus( http://www.cid.harvard.edu/cidwp/pdf/grad_student/007.pdf) is rare. 
 
3.       Rare also is Manushi’s campaign for rickshaw pullers-- a breath of fresh air. It goes against the grain of “shame”—where we have determined that this work is demeaning and an embarrassing reminder of our primitive state— and legislating based on an imaginary ideology than the reality as it exists.
 
To rectify it we need a strong empirical basis for our legislative work and establishing new paradigms for serious academic work in the social domains. I highly recommend Prof. Balagangadhara’s work in this regard, starting from his book, “The Heathen in His Blindness.” """""""" 
(Quoted comment by Sankrant Sanu)
 
Kshmendra