Lakhasly

In the eighteenth century, the Moghul Empire in India gradually declined, resulting in a
century-long struggle for mastery over India, fought between the British, the French,
the Hindu Marathas and the Muslim leaders in the north and south of India. Britain
became more and more engaged in the rivalries and conflicts on the subcontinent and
established footholds in various coastal areas, especially on the west coast (the Bombay
area) and the east coast (in Bengal). The victory of the British forces in the Battle of
Plassey in 1757 marks the beginning of the British Empire in India as it established
British administrative and political power over the provinces of Bengal and Bihar, the
starting point for the colonization of the entire subcontinent over the next decades. The
Regulating Act (1773), turning the East India Company into a British administrative
body, and the East India Bill (1784), passing the control of the East India Company
from the British parliament to Her Majesty’s government, indicated the consolidation of
British supremacy over India. One could thus view the second half of the eighteenth
century as the beginning of the second phase in the evolution of Indian English, i.e. its
exonormative stabilization.
Both the STL strand and the IDG strand were now fully aware that British presence in
India was not to be a transient phenomenon and that, accordingly, the language of the new
power would stay and become increasingly important: in the early nineteenth century,
Britain controlled almost the entirety of India, either by direct rule or by setting up
protectorates over Indian vassal states that were ruled by Indian princes. The growth of
British power made more and more British people come to India. From the beginning
of the nineteenth century onwards, many more missionaries arrived, spreading the English
language among Indians, and many more Indians enrolled in the British-Indian army.
Naturally, in this phase a range of local Indian words were absorbed by the English
language that referred to items unique to the Indian context (e.g. curry, bamboo,
mango, veranda). Despite the influx of Indianisms in the English language in India, the
standards and norms of the English language in general – as it was used in the STL
strand and taught to the IDG strand – remained British and, thus, exonormatively set.
In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, a relatively small but influential
group among Indians became interested in Western and English education, culture and
sciences. This was complemented by a growing interest among British linguists, philosophers
and scientists in Indian traditions and expertise in their respective fields of
research. Against this background, the colonial administration had to decide on what
kind of language-educational policy to follow in India: should Indians be taught primarily
in their local languages, or should there be an education system with English as
the medium of instruction? While the Orientalists suggested that education for Indians
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should focus on Indian languages, literature and culture, the Anglicists viewed the English
language as the more appropriate medium of instruction for two reasons: (1) English
language and culture were regarded as more valuable than Indian languages (including
Sanskrit); (2) the establishment of a bilingual elite among the Indians would help the
British to stabilize their position as the supreme power over the subcontinent. In his
famous Minute on Indian Education (1835), Thomas Macaulay made a strong plea for
an English-medium education system for a new ‘class of persons, Indian in blood and
colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect’. Macaulay’s ideas
were officially accepted by the colonial administration so that soon afterwards an Englishmedium
school system, especially designed for the education of the growing class of
Indians to be appointed as members of the Indian civil service, was established. English
became the sole language of instruction in secondary schools and also in the first universities
in India, which were founded in Bombay (today: Mumbai), Calcutta (today:
Kolkata) and Madras (today: Chennai).