NEW DELHI: The chief of India’s main opposition party has stirred controversy by saying the English language is hurting the country and its rich culture.
Rajnath Singh, president of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), said widespread use of English has stymied growth of Sanskrit, an ancient and ceremonial language mostly restricted to Hindu religious texts.
“The English language has caused a great loss to the country. We are losing our language, our culture as there are hardly any people who speak Sanskrit now,” Singh was quoted as saying by the Times of India newspaper yesterday.
Rival political leaders and analysts slammed Singh’s comments, made on Thursday, as “regressive”.
“Rajnath Singh’s deliberate yet bizarre, regressive statement on English confirms that the BJP lives in the Jurassic Age,” political analyst Sanjay Jha wrote on Twitter.
The ruling Congress party said Singh’s comments reeked of hypocrisy.
“On one side, their (political) vision document is outsourced to people who don’t speak any language other than English. Is this medievalism or hypocrisy?” said Congress spokesman Manish Tewari.
“English represents, for most Indians, the language of opportunity, while their mother tongues are often the language of expression,” the Times of India said in a front-page report.
“The BJP chief should see English as cause for celebration rather than mourning,” the English-language daily said.
The BJP president yesterday said he had nothing against learning English and expressions in that language.
Writing on Twitter, he urged people to watch a video recording of his nearly 17-minute speech at Delhi’s Constitution Club, during a function to highlight the importance of the cow.
Although he says in the video that there was nothing wrong in learning or communicating in English, he adds that a problem arises when people get Anglicised and feel proud of carrying English books while travelling by air or train.
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