In this essay the author is trying to trace the roots of the English
language in India and the beginnings of Indian writing in the English language.
The author focuses on the factors which influenced the literate bilingual
Indians to adopt the language and start writing in English. He identifies the
social zones of interracial contact which were the catalysts in the process of
acculturation of Indians to the British and their language.
The history of English in India begins two decades before the initiation
of the East India Company. Father Thomas Stephens, a Roman Catholic escapee,
studied Indian languages. He wrote the Christian Purana, a mixed
Marathi-Konkani version of the Gospel. It was published posthumously in Goa in
1640. Stephens however did not produce any English text with the intention of
publication. A letter written by Father Estavam (as Stephens came to be known
locally) was found by Richard Hakluyt and published in The Principal
Navigations, Voyages, and Discoveries of the English Nation (1589) which is
the first representation of an Englishman’s actual experience in India. Ralph Fitch
was a British merchant whose collection of letters and journals were also
published in Hakluyt’s extended version The principal navigations: voyages,
traffiques and discoveries of the English nation (1599-1600) and this is
the first account of an Englishman’s personal experience which was produced for
a reading public. Stephens and Fitch represent the two important classes of
historical agents- the missionary and the merchant, whose influence continues
throughout the period of development of English in India. Between 1580’s and
1780s, a substantial amount of literature containing the Englishman’s
experience in the Indian subcontinent was recorded in manuscript or in print.
These were written predominantly in three genres – the personal letter, the
epistolary eyewitness account and the formal travel narrative.
Around the year 1660, the East India Company began to prosper and a
large number of British people came to live and work in India. The resultant
interaction between the British and Indians gave rise to four primary zones of
interracial contact and acculturation. These are – the zone of employment, the
zone of marriage and family, the zone of religious conversion, and the zone of
friendship and social relations. These zones facilitated the flow of English
language from its native speakers to a group of potential Indian users whom the
author refers to as the literate Indian multi-linguals.
Starting in the 1660s hundreds of Indians sought employment in the British
factories as record keepers, translators etc. There was a section of literate
multilingual Indians in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries known as
dubhashis. They were learned in Portuguese, Dutch, French and English as a
result of interactions with the European traders. The East India Company
employed these dubhashis as intermediaries between company officials and local
markets. By the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the dubhashis
occupied two types of position- first, as multilingual interpreters between the
Englishmen and common Indians as well as Mughal bureaucrats, and second, as
personal agents and managers to individual company officials. The personal
agents were called baniyas. Moreover the dubhashis trained as scholars were hired
as assistants and native informants for colonial administrators – scholars and
Orientalist scholars. Historically, the dubhashis can be considered as the
first Indians to be literate in English. From the early eighteenth century,
Indians found employment as domestic servants for British households and
soldiers in the company’s army. However after 1835 the dubhashis gave way to
modern Indian middle class professionals who were formally educated in English.
The earliest Indian writers in English – Din Muhammad, C.V. Boriah, and Raja
Ram Mohan Roy were products of the zone of employment.
Although English women started travelling to the Indian subcontinent as
early as 1617, the number of English men exceeded that of the women. Due to the
church’s prohibition against Englishmen marrying non Christians, they sought
alternative means. They married the daughters or widows of men of Portuguese or
other nationalities, Indian women converted to Christianity etc., and, a few
took Indian mistresses. The children of these marriages were brought up as Christians
and they experienced a mix of both European and Indian cultures. Therefore they
learned English as well as native Indian languages. The zone of marriage and
family is responsible for the production of a number of significant Indian
writers in English including Henry Derozio, Michael Madhusudan Dutt, Anita
Desai, Dom Moraes etc.
The influence of Christian missionaries in the Indian society and the
conversion of Indians to Christianity is defined by the zone of religious
conversion. This zone appeared in the early sixteenth century with Catholic
missions in Portuguese India and Protestant missions in other parts of the
subcontinent. However the east India Company prohibited missionary activities
in its territory until 1813 due to the disturbances it caused in the Indian
society. However after its removal British missionaries flourished in colonial India.
The Indians who converted to Christianity acquired literacy in European
languages and became accultured to western lifestyles. The zone of religious
conversion combined with the zone of marriage and family produced the major
Indian writers of the nineteenth century including Michael Madhusudan Dutt,
Govin Chunder Dutt, and his brother Girish, his daughters Toru and Aru, and
Pandita Ramabai Saraswati.
In the second quarter of the eighteenth century, there emerged the zone
of friendship and social relations where British and Indian men developed
closed relations based on mutual dependence and indebtedness. These relations
include the close ties between young company officials and their dubhashis and
the European scholars and their Indian assistants and collaborators. This zone
was helpful for the Indian writers in achieving a deeper acculturation to
European ways which influenced their writing and is reflected in their works.
However it is important to note that these four zones of acculturation
benefitted only those sections of Indians who were already learned in multiple
Indian languages which helped them to acquire European languages including
English at a faster pace.
Din Muhammad, C.V. Boriah and Ram Mohun Roy are considered to be the
first Indian writers in English. The lives of these writers were greatly
affected by the four zones of acculturation. Din Muhammad belonged to a family
with diverse religious and cultural history which served the Mughal rulers
before the British. Din Muhammad himself became a camp follower to Godfrey Evan
Baker at the age of eleven. With this kind of close association he was able to
learn to speak, read and write in English. This level of acculturation also
helped him when he moved to Ireland and published his book The Travels of
Dean Mahomet in 1794 which is the first text written in English by a man of
Indian origin. Similarly, Boriah and Roy’s lives were also influenced by close
relations with the British. Boriah was a dubhashi and later became a field
assistant to Colonel Colin Mackenzie. Ram Mohan Roy was born in a Bengali
Brahmin family. In 1804 he joined the company’s Revenue department. He acquired
most of his knowledge about the English language and European culture while
working with the company.
The multi-lingual efficiency that these writers possessed allowed the
interaction of several pre colonial as well as non colonial elements within the
zones of contact. This phenomenon is reflected in their writings as well as in
all other Indian writing in English, and this is what differentiates this genre
from British literature about India. After analyzing these various socio
cultural factors the author comes to the conclusion that Indian writing is not
a homogeneous entity and that colonialism cannot be asserted as the only origin
of Indian writing in English.
