Relevance of English Studies in India

An interesting essay. Nilanshu, could you spare a few moments of your time and sort of compare how the

Western critical tools like catharsis, fancy, imagination, Impressionism, Expressionism, new criticism, formalism, structuralism, neo-historicism, post-structuralism, deconstruction and reader response theory etc. Compare with Indian critical theories like Rasa, Alamkara, Dhwani and Vakrokti

If we take lets say as you like it or merchant of venice how would these two sets result in a different analysis.

You can always make an alternative selection of works for this.

It would be great if you could it.

Many thanks

English Studies start from the most basic ABC's and children's books which are woefully substandard in India. Also all of the English Nursery rhymes in archaic English are still staples of pre-schools.

English books for children need to be in currently used English and not full of outdated words.

Most of these books are just recycling of old works and include spelling mistakes and nonsense that needs sifting out.

There is a big opportunity for producing decent books for children.

Gramsci, Said, Foucalt, post-colonialism etc is a bunch of wank and this article is crap also.

All this high faluting shit about textual analysis when the country can't even mass produce decent books for 5 year olds.

Colonised Indian mind, subjugated mindset etc....

What a boring article full of regurtitated crap from a substandard subjugated and colonised mind. No wonder hardly anyone will bother to read such crap.

Re BKisan #2

[Gramsci, Said, Foucalt, post-colonialism etc is a bunch of wank and this article is crap also.]

Calling an article crap is insulting the judgement of Chowk Editors who have chosen to publish the article and could lead to you being banned.

I on the other hand believe that the ideas expressed in this article are just wonderful. In fact, there are no words in the English language that could do justice to the ideas the author espouses.

In short, one-penny words -- which are what the English language equips us with -- have been used to express ideas worth their weight in gold.

It is very good analysis of the situation. In India we have innumerable kids schools. Till some time past they were all convent public schools as they called themselves. They charged a fortune for providing English education- english speaking education. Demands for such schools continued to increase because the govt. primary schools did not provide proper education. Gradually the so called convent English schools also graduated and now they have all become 'International schools'. This is the latest trend and the charges are not only exhorbitant, but much much more than that.So it requires special efforts to organise the education system so that no one feels left out and all get the full benefit.Govt. seems least bothered about it.