Academic Writing

Himanshu Shekhar
Prof. Kashyap
Academic Writing

Is Bilingualism an advantage?
Ramchandran Guha and Ananthamurthy explore bilingualism in India with their scholarly articles. They argue on bilingualism with two different perspectives, giving us the broader picture about the topic of different times and different places.
When we talk about bilingualism India is always a first stop, this is fact is established by the articles of Guha and Ananthamurthy. Where Anathamurhty is using a personal experience where as Guha is also trying to explain it with his nearby surroundings with historical and personal views as well. Bilingualism is something which is a need of society but addition of an acquisitional language should not lead to a loss of first language. Being bilingulism in India is common.
In the rise and fall of bilingualism intellectual’s, Guha argues that early and mid 20th century Indian intellectuals –people like Tagore, Ghandhi, Ambedkar,Anatha Murthy and R K Narayan were effortlessly bilingual. Almost all of them wrote extensively in both English and their native languages depending on the context and intended audiences. Even Anatha Murthy in his essay, in a way he explores the importance of English and how the English has became the language of elite as earlier it was Sanskrit in India. Anathamurthy argues that English brings technological western civilization with it self, which is more powerful. He also argues that because of English regional languages are almost disappearing but still in India due to illiteracy the regional languages has somehow survived and also because of cultural dominance. Therefore, languages strengths lies equally in oral and literary traditions.
Once Ludwig Wittgenstein , a philosopher said “the limits of my language mean the limits of my world”. I believe that by he meant that, the more words there are the wider perspective we have. When we are exposed of different we learn to see bigger world. I firmly, believe that not only speaking multiple language help us to communicate with more people of parts of world, which definitely helps in developing our own self’s and society as a whole so its confers a distinct advantage to a developing brain. Which will certainly lead us to a better life.
But there’s another aspect of bilingualism as well. Till now our regional languages has survived because of high percentage of illiteracy in our nation but as are developing as a nation and getting our children’s education. Their inclination towards English and other foreign languages are leading to extinction of our own regional and ancient languages. The languages which were a part of our own cultural history, the languages which were spoken from ancient time, which were part of the golden period of our history. In perspective it something which is very shameful that we are losing and forgetting our own language. I believe that we should learn the different languages which will be helpful in developing our society and growing as a person but at the same point we should respect our own language as well, which now days I find young people take it as embarrassment. Even, Anathamurthy in his essay argues the same between Sanskrit, Kannada and English. Even he goes on to say that as a writer, he feels that he is living backwards in time as his medium while growing up was kannad and now he is English teacher and therefore he is in pressure to articulate himself in English all the time. He strongly believes that emotionally he is still kannad but intecllectually he is English.Which he finds a very very difficult for himself. Where as Ramchandran Guha is concerned he also metioned in his articles that within India serious thinkers writing today are in English.Also Guha does make a very good point about some of the great writers like Conrad and Nabokov, who were from non-english backgrounds but they moved to English and didn’t go back.
Historian, Social scientist, Leaders and soldiers are the one who can make a best use of bilingualism. They can work in more than one languages which is necessary and very helpful to them. However, the creative writer is forced to choose one language over the other because for them it is the medium which matters the most. Where as for historian, critic and leaders, it is the message which matters the most. But for a writer language is the ultimate focus. There’s a evidence of this in Guha’s essay where is mentioned that Tagore never wrote fiction or poetry in any language other than Bengali.Like wise, when Conrad and Vladimir switched to writing English, they were compelled to discard their mother tongue.

Bilingualism has been a advantage to everyone no matter what profession the person is.It has helped them in each and every way. And the choice the creative writers were facing regarding the knowledge was voluntary one, I believe . As, R K Narayan could have written in Tamil but he preferred to write in English. And at the same point, Anantha Murty taught English literature and even had a Ph.D from British University, Yet he chose to write in Kannada.