How English survived in India

The Times of India: "Many ceremonies recently marked the 35th death anniversary of C N Annadurai, first DMK chief minister of Tamil Nadu. He is remembered mainly for ending Congress hegemony and Brahmin supremacy in the state. But today we should see him in a new light: he saved India from Hindi imperialism, ensured the continuation of English, and so made possible the outsourcing revolution that is moving lakhs of jobs from the West to India.

Today we boast that India has a competitive advantage in outsourcing because of its English-speaking population. But most politicians at independence wanted to eliminate English, then seen as a vile colonial implant, and replace it with Hindi. The Constitution in 1950 decreed that Hindi would be India�s officials language, but as a transitional measure allowed English to continue for 15 years (till 1965).

Nehru wanted Hindi as a national language, but also saw the value of English as a window to the world. Socialists like Lohia were rabidly anti-English, and launched an Angrezi Hatao agitation in 1957. The Jan Sangh in 1963 launched a violent agitation for abolishing English not only in official use but in shop signs, street signs and even car number plates. "