English and Immigration

In the early nineteenth century, when the British Raj took complete control over India (the big undivided India) after removing the puppet King, the then intelligentsia’s mantra became, ’Learn English and beat them at their game.’

The Muslims in that country had never had to learn an invader’s language before. In fact their ancestoral language, Persian was the official language. They resisted learning a new language and the decadent aristocracy watched in more or less paralysis when the administration of the country slipped away.

When progressive writers and thinkers recovered from the shockof the passive fall of the Moghuls, the mantra, ‘Learn English and beat them at their own game’ was the only rational choice.

People in India learnt English, but far from beating the English at their game, as the ensuing decades showed, they beat the people in their own countries who didn’t know English.

Socially, the English game is a sometimes subtle, sometime crass game, and once people develop a taste for it, nothing is as much fun as correcting someone’s English.

I was born in a family of English speakers 21 years after the exit of the British from undivided India. India was now divided. On one side was India, on the other the embryo of Pakistan, a brand new person, into whose confused belly I landed.

In our family of English speakers, accents ranges from the white lady who married my uncle to my South Indian father who speaks with a broad Tamil accent. There is the usual array of flowery colonial Convent English to technical, professional English. As is the historical norm, the best speakers of English fight the most. Or, more accurately, perhaps the most vindictive adopt English. Predictably, the greatest rivalry over English is between the white lady, her husband (my uncle) and my mother, who are the peer group of brown, convent educated, perfect post-colonial speakers of English. But alas, not quite perfect, because the bottomline is that they are brown. A recent second bottomline after 2001, when a Christian man rules the world is that they are Muslim, whereas the white lady is a Priest’s daughter. A third bottomline, that they are Pakistani Muslims. A fourth, that the Pakistan reared branch is just as successful as the Britain reared branch.

It has become a very fast, rough game of word play now. My neck sometimes throbs from watching the splintered camps of my post colonial family hurl English, self-worth, roots, identity, old-age, fitness and migrant loneliness across the net of immigrant alienation.

By default, I choose being the just referee. Always content to watch and record, my contribution is minimal. At most I hand out yellow cards and deflect but mostly I just listen. Is it a cop-out? Not really. I do not wish to abuse the intelligence of these people, who, far smarter than I, have chose the path that conforms over rebellion. Much as I respect them, I hide a terrible secret in my smiles and humour. I am a rebel. A rebel of ideas but nonetheless a rebel. Much as I love and respect my family’s energy and will, I pity them for their choices. I try not to openly state that they are, inspite of their success, victims just like the poor sod in a shalwar suit standing on some street corner. That even though we have succeeded in so many ways, we have a better life, a post-industrial, English speaking migrants life, we are still searching for some way to feel a little more like us, a little less like them or a little more like them, a little less like us.

The truth is that even natives are migrants now. The natives of North America, the natives of Australia, Europe, Britain, China, India, the First Nations, we are all migrants together. Even if the land is ours, we have little inherited claim on it, because we must pay for land use. (This relates to the economic fact that we are no longer bound to the lands we are born on, but are instead vehicles for tax annuities all our lives).

In today’s migration, the lack of taxable man power has driven many countries in the West to try and get educated labor from the East. The stated mantra in these countries is Get Them to Learn English and Integrate. Ironically, more people in the world are born outside native English speaking countries, yet learning English is like a passport to having identity. Yes, I agree we must communicate, and if English be the common word, so be it. But the human tragedy is not the feared inability to communicate that English prevents, but rather it is the desire for assimilation (referred often as gatekeeping). Any tendency to flaunt foreign roots (unless you have the requisite Mercedes in the driveway) is dangerous and signals low income. Low income is the taboo of the post-industrial age. Be anything, gay, divorced, black, fat but never poor.

Inspite of learning English from childhood in India and getting a divorce from the culture of our land roots and language, the issue now rests on accent. Statistics show a passive, dug- into-the ground conclusion, ’Ok, we don’t embrace the FOB generation, they must toil in low-end jobs, in rural Canada, but we will hug the 2nd generation to our bosom.’ Then when the next decade rolls in, ‘OK, not those homegrowns who are plotting murder in our backyard, but may be those with the short haircut, the lesbian background, the business suit, the non-muslims, the other Browns (coz USA says so), those then are okay, they are mirror images, they are acceptable. ‘But (in a stage whisper) shouldn’t she change her name to Irene ?’

Over time the immigrant’s various identities splinter. First he is halved, than quartered, then further quartered to a distilled elixir of all that is Western. His past identity, a showcase in a festival.

The question worth asking is not, ‘When is it that we will be accepted?’ because the answer is too easy, we already know it is, ‘Never, as you are.’

The real question that the world today is facing, which will become articulated more clearly over time is, ’why is a mediocre civilization, without any new ideas other than Industrial 101 and the World Bank/IMF, calling the shots in the world today? Why is it ‘us’ who must assimilate, never ‘they’? Why is it ok for them to stockpile weapons, but not ok for ‘us’ to do the same? Why Korea, Japan, China, South Asia, Iran and other non-white countries cannot invade or kill at will, but the West can?

Even more difficult are the questions, ‘Why does the global immigration bureacracy’s knife cut only one way.’ Why do words like ‘immigrant’ exist? why does ’immigrant’ sound poor and desperate? Why does ‘native’ sound like a brown guy in a grass skirt? Why does the phrase ‘developed country’ always look white?’Why is that from frying onion and garlic to oiled long black hair, we must revoke all that is non-industrial?. And, the greatest question of them all, “Why must we all adopt white and blonde, plastic, pre-assembled and petrochemical?.”

When we speak of immigration, the well meaning always put forward the idea of integration. ‘Learn English and Integrate.’ The fearful question is: ‘Are they the user friendly interface to a much nastier global political agenda?.’ The agenda not only to Integrate but to Assimilate. Or rather, Ass–Similate.

To be counted as an independent force that can make a difference, volunteer associations, immigrant societies and other concerned people must ask the difficult questions. The easy ones were answered when the immigrant filled the application.

From the blog: Headlines/Bottomlines. Inspired by the Canadian Governments continuous stress on the issue of English proficiency.