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World Englishes, Vol. 20, No. 2, pp. 145159, 2001.

08832919

Contextualizing range and depth in Indian English

JEAN D'SOUZA*

ABSTRACT: This paper examines the `range' and `depth' of English in India and argues that these
Kachruvian notions go a long way towards explaining how the language is used, exploited, extended and
recreated in the sub-continent. Data from a variety of sources, both written and spoken, literate and notso-literate, are presented and it is suggested that in-depth analyses of such data are a prerequisite to any
real understanding of the local manifestations of English in the world context.

INTRODUCTION

Towards the end of the twentieth century world Englishes came to be accepted as an
inevitable result of the world-wide spread of English (see Kachru 1997 for a state-of-the-art
survey). Study of world Englishes has much to offer in terms of a better understanding of
language acquisition, multilingualism, language convergence, language loss and so on and it
is to be hoped that in the present century the varieties of English beyond the Inner Circle
(e.g., the USA, Britain) will be studied more rigorously and comprehensively than they have
been until now. One of the major drawbacks to any real understanding of the New Varieties
of English (NVEs) has been that scholars have all too often tried to fit them into established
moulds and in doing so have lost sight of what it is that makes these varieties `new'.
In this paper I focus on English as it is used in India, contest some academic approaches
to English in India and Indian English as being less than insightful, and suggest that it is
only when academics take the time to listen to the voices of ordinary (as in `not academic')
Indians that we will begin to understand the place of English in the country and the role it
plays in the lives of the aam janta (common people). I will provide data from a variety of
sources, both written and spoken, literate and not-so-literate, in order to profile the range
and depth of English in India. Range and depth (see Kachru, 1986) are used to refer
respectively to the wide variety of uses, both international and intranational, to which
English is put in India, and to the fact that the language has penetrated all layers of society.
Before turning to the data (which I will present `warts and all' with no attempt to clean up)
I will briefly examine a couple of approaches to Indian English that have appeared in print
in the last decade of the preceding century.
THE RELATIVE APPROACH

The Otherness of English: India's Auntie Tongue Syndrome by Probal Dasgupta (1993)
takes what I call a `relative' approach to English. English is `other', an `aunt' not a `mother'.
It is there to be used and exploited but can never get close to the heart of the user. It is not
`one of us but is an important presence that one must be polite to' (p. 201). According to the
author, Indians enshrine English as High and keep it Other `an instrument, at a stable
* B7 Shardaram Park, Sasoon Road, Pune 411001 India. E-mail: jeandoza@hotmail.com
A Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2001, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

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distance from the heart of the community it serves' (p. 73). English is `culturally sterile' and
has no access to the creative centre of the speech community. The language signifies
technique, technology and technicality and is `not primarily a human language' (p. 214) in
India. Given the range and depth of the data presented in this paper, I wonder how tenable
Dasgupta's claims of otherness and distance are. More seriously, can English (or indeed any
language) function just as a tool and `not a human language'? I will leave the reader to
decide for him/herself but before that a quick look at a more recent attempt to understand
English in India.
THE MODULAR APPROACH

In The Politics of Indians' English: Linguistic Colonialism and the Expanding English
Empire (1998) Krishnaswami and Burde present a modular approach to English in India.
They claim that English in India is used according to the speaker's needs but is kept
separate from their local identity. It is pigeon-holed and compartmentalized and this
enables the common people to preserve their inner-selves and the core aspects of their lives
which English has nothing to do with. English in India is not a dialect but a module. Its
uses are restricted and it is not allowed to become an integral part of life in India. The
authors stress the urban character and domain specificity of English as this strengthens
their claims of modularity. In order to do so they ride roughshod over any users of English
who would undermine their arguments. Thus, speakers who use English in the social
domain are summarily dismissed, `quite a few people have started using English even in
areas where it is neither necessary nor appropriate' (p. 127); while mother tongue speakers
of English are treated even more harshly:
English and English education have been with a section of the urban population so long that it has
uprooted quite a few, and the result is that they are neither here nor there; this section of the
population has no mother tongue and no cultural roots in the conventional sense; they are
comfortable only with English but the English is not `native'. These displaced people
linguistically and otherwise are in their `camps' or `settlements' in the urban areas and such
settlements are on the increase. (p. 127)

It seems to me that there is something of the Procrustean about this approach as it rejects
an important segment of the Indian population for no valid reason other than that it does
not fit into the authors' framework.
The Otherness of English and The Politics of Indians' English have much in common as
both books emphasize the alien aspect of English, stressing its urban character and
highlighting its distance from the common man or woman. Neither accept that there is
such an entity as Indian English or consider the possibility that English has become an
Indian language. The data I will now present tell rather a different tale.
ENGLISH IN INDIA

English in India is used for a wide range of purposes: political, bureaucratic, educational, media related, commercial, intellectual, literary, social, intimate, religious and so
on. It has penetrated all layers of society and though it may be used with ease and fluency
only by the so called elite, it is not alien or unfamiliar to the masses. Consider the
following: Gangoobai is a 65-year-old malishwali (masseuse) who has never been to school.
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She lives in the city of Pune. She is a native speaker of Marathi but can also understand
and speak Hindi. Her Marathi includes the following English `borrowings':
admit (to hospital), injection, heart attack, cancer, saline, double saline, pension, slice (of bread),
bread, bathroom, x-ray.

These words are integrated into her vocabulary and are said fluently and without
hesitation or self-consciousness. While her English borrowings do seem restricted to the
register of medical terms and (marginally) food, the same is not true of Ashabai, a
domestic in her forties. Ashabai has studied till class seven and is proud of the fact that she
can read and write Marathi. She claims that she doesn't know `your English' but her
Marathi includes the following English words:
carrybag, tension, garden, motor (for pump), poster (for cardboard), full, round, problem, admit (to
hospital), patient, serious, pneumonia, cancer, poison, colour, sorry, car parking/parking (for car
park), bucket, society, secretary, maintenance, football (as used in plumbing), chamber (to refer to a
drainage outlet), footpath, column (as in architecture), advance, cutting, luxury (for luxury bus).

My interactions with Ashabai and Gangoobai are pretty infrequent and I am sure that
both know and use many more English words than I have listed here. They are
representative of a large section of society which has accepted English as part of the
environment and made it their own in their own unique way. Vendors in the market, for
example, increasingly make use of English to attract customers and sell their produce.
`Fresh' and `very sweet' are words on the lips of all fruit sellers regardless of their
educational background. Doubts about the ownership of English trouble them not at all
and lack of an English education does not curb their creativity. Difficult to resist, on a hot
summer's day, the offer of an `air conditioned watermelon'!
More about creativity later, the point I would like to emphasize at present is the fact that
English words are borrowed into all the Indian languages and far from being strictly urban
English has penetrated deep into rural India. Even village Marathi, for example, is full of
borrowings from English. If the language were indeed alien, kept at a distance, detached,
surely this widespread interpenetration of languages would not have taken place. The
integration of English and the languages it is in contact with does not just manifest itself in
borrowing or in code-mixing or code-switching but in many strange and interesting ways.
Consider the following excerpt taken from a flyer handed out to the general public. The
flyer is in the Devnagari script but as the transliteration below shows, almost every other
word is English:
Gift kazaanaa
Super market
aap ke ghar, kitchen, office ke liye 50 se 100 rupees tak milne waalii vastue jaise kitchen brush,
bathroom brush, kitchen wiper. 200 gram bathroom air freshener, 250 gram Daavar golii,
fancy photo frame, paav bhaajii maker, khalbataa, steel supaDii, taabaa loTaa, clean burner
sirf 20 se 35 rupees me
aap ke ghar, kitchen, duukaan, office, factory me upayogii, baccho ke liye electronic khilaune
aur birthday, marriage partyo me gift dene ke liye hazaaro vastue jinhe aap market se 200 se
500 rupees tak khariidte hai, jaise *steam inhaler (electrical) * national hair driyer *fancy
wall clock saaii baabaa* *salad maker * milk and ghee container * dhokla steel stand * iddli
and medu vaDa maker * cassette stand (42 cassettes) * multipurpose rack * (nonstick) dosaa
tavaa * copper bottomke bartane 3 piece . . .
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Though all English words have been rendered in Devnagari script the Arabic numerals are
used throughout. Punctuation has also been taken from English e.g. commas, full stops,
parentheses. How does one account for data like this? The idea of a module does not really
help. To view English as a module is to see it as independent and self contained, but
English in India is neither, as it interacts both with the other local languages and with
world Englishes to give a synthesis that is unique and Indian. I believe that the Kachruvian
notions of range and depth give a better idea of how English functions in India than does
the notion of module. It is only when we examine a whole range of uses of English with
open and unjudgemental minds and explore the depths to which the language has
penetrated that we will begin to understand the role it plays in the verbal repertoire of
India and what it is that makes English Indian.
ENGLISH AN INDIAN LANGUAGE

The matter is far from being uncontroversial, but it does seem that in recent years
English has gained greater acceptance in India. In newspapers and magazines one
frequently comes across the assertion that English is now an Indian language and is no
longer alien. For example, Ruchira Mukerjee, author of the novel Toad in my Garden
(published by Picador, 1998), in an interview with the Maharashtra Herald (MH), an
English daily published in Pune, had the following to say about English:
I think at present there are many people writing in English in India and at last people are
beginning to think in English. Many are writing today with a great flow and flair, which proves
that English is no more a foreign language but a part of our psyche. (MH, 5 October 1998)

Indicative of the controversial nature of the subject is the response to this view in the form
of a letter to the editor by one Sumit Paul:
Mother Tongue Supreme
This refers to writer Ruchira Mukherjee's assertion that, `People are beginning to think in
English' (MH, October 5).
Well the question is: Can an Indian really think in English? As far as thinking is concerned, one
can only think in one's mother tongue.
Since English is an alien tongue to every Indian, no Indian can claim to think in English.
Because it is linguistically next to impossible to be equally at ease with a target language, which
English is, for every Indian.
I've been speaking Persian right from my childhood. In fact Persian was the first language I
picked up. My Persian is as good as that of a native speaker of Iran and Central Asia and it's
replete with typical native idiosyncrasies and idioms of written and colloquial Persian.
Yet Persian is not the language of my consciousness, though I do my written work mostly in
this language.
My mother tongue, which is Bengali, always comes to me naturally and it predominates my
thinking process. Likewise, however good one may be at English, he can't have that native
sensibility.
You can never iron out the ingrained impressions of your respective mother tongue which at
times prevail over English or for that matter, any language learnt at a relatively later stage.
English will always play second fiddle to an Indian's linguistic mental make up. (MH, 13 October
1998)

Four days later Nigel J. Shaughnessy had the following to say:

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What's Mother Tongue?

Sumit Paul's letter `Mother Tongue Supreme' of October 13 is not correct. He wonders if an
Indian can `really think in English'.
First of all, I would like to define mother tongue. The mother tongue of an Indian can be
French or English or anything. One's mother tongue is that which one learns from infancy. (For
example, a language learnt from one's parents.)
Secondly, if one's parents are, let us say, Bengali, but never spoke to the child in Bengali but
only in English, then the mother tongue of the child would be English and not Bengali. A
language cannot be inherited, it is taught and learnt.
How can Sumit Paul claim that English is `an alien tongue to every Indian'? Sumit is not a
spokesman for Indians. I personally know many Indians whose parents' language is Hindi or
Malayalam or so on, but whose own mother tongue is English, or rather family language is
English.
They excel in English above anything else. Many times, even when neither the mother tongue
nor family language is English, the person excels in English above all else. Many service officers'
families are good examples.
Paul assumes that every Indian first learns his parents' language and then English. And that an
Indian has to be better at the parent's language than English. He further assumed that everybody
learns first the language of his parents' race, and that it is the same as the language spoken by the
parents, and that it is called the mother tongue! (MH, 17 October 1998)

Such controversies may go on ad infinitum but incontrovertible evidence for the

`belongingness' of English comes from the fact that Indians have been, and are, teaching
English in the countries of the Middle East, Africa, Thailand, Japan and so on. According
to Professor Pramod Talgeri, the Vice-Chancellor of the Central Institute of English and
Foreign Languages, Hyderabad, Indians are uniquely placed to become a source for the
propagation and teaching of this truly international language. The CIEFL, which has
trained as many as 50,000 English teachers in the last forty years, has already started
exporting English to non-English-speaking countries. It has arranged courses for students
from Iraq, Yemen, South Korea, China, Uzbekistan, Kirghizstan, Tajikistan and plans to
reach out to Japan, Cambodia, Laos, Senegal and so on (MH, 12 June 1998). No denials of
English nativeness here, just an acceptance of the fact that Indians have the ability and the
right to teach the language.
Symbiosis, an educational institution in Pune, advertises `25 years of quality education.
A lifetime of international Brotherhood' with the following quote from Sayon Suwan, a
Thai student in its English Language Teaching Institute: `At Symbiosis, I learnt the
language of love and brotherhood. I also learnt English' (emphasis mine).
Unsolicited attitudes to the language are also indicative of the place English has in the
minds and hearts of Indians. In a column titled `Penning for Pune' Pradhnaya Ras Gruh
has the following to say:
Pune is a good city and so far nothing seemed hard for me. I run a tea shop near to a college in
Aundh, where I get opportunities to encounter with English speaking customers. I am a school
drop-out, yet Pune city has taught me how to be a better and civilized citizen, I am also aware that
Pune is an outstanding cosmopolitan city. I understand the multi-cultural environment and the
regular seasons ending in many festivals.
English is my dream language that, I always take interest to interact with the English speaking
customers at my shop. I am content with the bits of English I have picked up. (MH, 1 November
1999)
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The following column from the Maharashtra Herald (9 April 2000) is also interesting:
English please!
Half the world is irrationally fascinated by the English language, so is a quaint little tribe in
Maharashtra! Though most of the members of this tribe cannot read nor write they have a
penchant for picking up English words and naming their children after anything that sounds even
vaguely English.
Thus government officers are often faced with first names such as Chocolate, Metal, Boot
Polish, Englishya, Buckle and even Tyre Fix while checking population statistics or enrolling
names in city registers.
Quipped one officer, `Now that there is a big IT boom on the industrial front it is just a matter
of time before we are swamped with first names like Windows 2000, Page Maker or Quark
Express in the next generation of this quaint tribe!'

Commenting on the use of English in an Indian television serial A Mouthful of Sky

Santanu Borah, a journalist, has the following to say:
The English spoken in that serial is not how I, a natural English speaker would speak. I would
never ever think of saying `Alas!' or `Hey!' if someone died. I am more likely to say `Oh shit!' or
`Oh f***!' `Arre' or some such Hindi cocktail, but not meaning it in a derogatory sense. It is a sad
expletive. It is natural, and language is a natural exposition of our thought processes.
If the British have the right to misconstrue a term like `Full Monty' into removing every piece
garment, I could always use a sad expletive or mix-and-match my Indianness with the language I
have grown up with English. There may be a thousand errors that professors of English would
take great pleasure in dissecting. But don't bother me, I am speaking a living language and writing
one too. I don't hate Bob Marley's English anymore than Paul McCartney's. Paul's got rain and
snow in his way of speaking and Bob's got sun and sand in his speech. I have the monsoon, the
mystic, religions, castes, poverty, the Queen . . . the list is long, in mine. (MH, 19 July 1998)

The above data show very clearly that English is not just a tool, an instrument, an unloved
other. Indians have a stake in it, lay claim to it, love it, hate it maybe, desire it and revel in
their mastery over it. It is perhaps, along with Hindi, the only truly Indian language.
Others may find it quaint, strange, bookish and so on but, to use an Indianism, what to do?
we are like that only.
INDIAN ENGLISH

Krishnaswami and Burde (1998: 4) very pertinently ask, `What is Indian English?' Allied
questions they raise are: Is it the language of the metropolitan English-educated Indians? Is
it the language of the indigenous elite? Is it the language that is taught in educational
institutions in India? I think that Indian English is all these things and more. As the
following data will show, English is used in certain ways in India, these uses have stabilized
and play a part in characterizing the language. English has been Indianized by being
borrowed, transcreated, recreated, stretched, extended, contorted perhaps. It has been
used and `abused' but the abuses are not serious ones and the uses are often joyous. Once
again, let the data speak for itself. (For ease of presentation I have divided the data into
several sections: teen talk, humour, code-mixing, interesting innovations and the
monitor. These sections are not discrete, however, and considerable `leakage' should be
expected.)

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Teen talk
Teenagers all over the world have their own peculiar lingo and Indian teenagers are no
different. In colleges, shopping malls, coffee houses and other teen hangouts one finds an
intriguing mix of American and local slang. As Santanu Borah, a reporter for the
Maharashtra Herald, puts it:
Teenagers have a lingo all their own. Since students from far and wide and `thick' come to study
here, language undergoes great metamorphosis. It assimilates and deletes what is boring to the
ears. That's why we have remarks with a na in the end, or shortened and prolific words like `fund'
and `funda', `fundu', inappropriate usage like `sexy' for everything that's good and `sad' for
everything that's bad. There is too much actually. Leave it for the next time, na. (MH, 19 July
1998)

The following data have been taken from Teen World, a section devoted to teen affairs in
the Maharashtra Herald.
We drop in to check out Shiamak Davar who is supposed to groove and rock us and what not.
The crowd is absolutely chillar, full timepass. And the heights is a waiter telling my fellow
colleague to make way by saying chalo chalo . . . as if we were on some station platform, Shiamak
came at around twelvish, cut a cake (it was Crystal Ball's 2nd anniversary) posed for snaps with
some kids . . . After his five minute sojourn when he tried to leave, you could see the babes in those
sweet nothings urging, `Shiamak please take a pic with me na! Please na!' (by the way does anyone
know what this `na' means. Tell me na.). (Samvit Rawal reporting on events at a disco, MH, 12
March 1998)
Well, you dodos, you lazybones gear up yourself for the year end bash, grab your date(s) and pick
some dough (well you will need a lot) and let's get ready for the boogie woogie. (Samvit Rawal,
MH, 28 December 1997)
dear 1997, I guess it's time to say goodbye. But before you go, I gotta thank you for being such a
great guy throughout. Hell, if it wasn't for you, we guys wouldn't know what to do with ourselves,
we wouldn't have had the blasts of our lives, either. (Rachel Dias, MH, 28 December 1997)
Hey, I ain't complaining. Everybody gets their fifteen minutes of fame under the sun. I guess, this
time it was my turn! Seriously, I had such a fabulous blast. The enthu crowd was really really
charged! I think my poor eyes are having a tough time settling down after they took in all the
gawking I put them through. Honestly, I don't know what I liked better. The very shy looking
Mira-ites wearing killer looks; or the COEP guys with their Yanky twangs, or Quicksilver look; or
the Wadians who would break into their battle cry at the drop of a hat; the cool dude NDA guys
trying to patao anything that moved in a skirt or deciding who was the better cadet in the gang.
(Rachel Dias, MH, 1 February 1998)

The following examples are taken from the Teen World of 10 August 1997 written by a
reporter who signs herself as Radhika B.
I'll tell you guys no lies
. . . usually bindas kids look over their shoulders and mutter . . .
Two rival groups are out to have fun . . .you know generally indulge in dhamal and time pass. So,
what do they do? Pick on this bechaara bakra, who has entered college . . .
Till next week then, chill.

The following data are taken from interviews with students:

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It isn't fair on us, yaar ! Do you know on the first day of exams there was a major tamasha outside
our centre. As it is, we were so terrified and worried. (Sunita Gupta, MH, 22 March 1998)
Yeah, well let's see . . . earlier we were at the Magar Farm bash, God that was a great one. We
were there for Christmas and we planned to be there for new year's too. So, there we were. And
man, did we have fun or did we have fun. (Ashwini Mane, MH, 4 January 1998)
A 17 year old asked about the New Women by a reporter replied `Bore mat kar yaar, talk about
something that is ding chang, about the latest happening place or something of that sort.' (MH, 7
March 1998)

Here are a group of youngsters who are clearly fluent in English. They are influenced
strongly by American slang (note the `groove', `rock', `bash', dough' and so on) but are not
slaves to it. They have made the language their own by incorporating words and concepts
from Hindi and the local culture (chillar `small change', chalo chalo `move on, move on', na
`no', patao `convince', bindas `carefree', bechaara bakra `poor goat' etc.). This is what
makes the language Indian, the fact that it is being used by Indians, to express an Indian
reality. That this reality (in the examples given above) is limited to teenagers or the youth
does not make it less authentic. Words used by the teenagers like Funda and Fundoo have
spread into the language of advertising and beyond:
Valentine's Day has really become some sort of new `funda' these days because its value has
deteriorated. (Meghna Khanna TY BCom. Wadia College, MH, 14 February 1999)
I don't subscribe to this Valentine's Day funda. It will just be like any other Sunday for me.
(G. Sampath, MH, 14 February 1999)
Mr Fundoo's new funda. (Advertisement for Arena Multimedia)
V. J. Gaurav of Channel [V], DJ Ivan also of Channel[V] and DJ Zubair, Pegasus, regaled the
crowd with their funny fundas at the Bacardi Blast at Pegasus last week. (CityBeat, 7 November
1999)
The idea is to introduce them to the fundas of computing, not to teach them software packages.
(Living Computers, August 1996)
Fun ka naya Funda. (Advertisement for Thunderbolt, a video games parlour)
Our man poor man has daughters who have no feminine traits in them nor are they interested in
girlish fundas. (Movie review, MH, 25 June 2000)

This spread of usage roots the language in the community and gives it its characteristic
flavour. `Funda' is an innovation and is still in the process of getting stabilized. Its spread
from the teen community into advertising, journalism and so on, adds to the meaning of
the word. Thus `funda' can mean both `fun' and `fundamental' and it is not quite clear yet
what its primary meaning is.
Humour
English in India also has its lighter side. As I see it, the range and depth of English are best
illustrated by the manner in which it is used to make people laugh. Some of this humour is
unwitting, as in a caption under a photograph of computer monitors which reads:
Computer monitors which were trying to be smuggled into the city without paying octroi by a
firm called Blue Point (MH, 8 September, 1998)
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or a hotel which proudly advertises:

Fully self contented rooms

or a wonderful pronunciation spelling like:

`Hand in glow' (MH, 9 June 1998)

yet a great deal of it is conscious and very clever, illustrative of an assured command of the
language. The tumultuous world of Indian politics provides numerous opportunities for
humour. At a time when Indian politics was dogged by the phenomenon of parties
supporting the ruling party from the outside rather than as part of the government, a
cartoon by Mangesh Tendulkar depicted P. V. Narasimha Rao of the Congress sitting on
the shoulders of Deva Gauda of the United Front and proclaiming `We have decided to
support him from the upside now.' A 1999 advertisement for Amul butter depicted the
battle between Sonia Gandhi (Congress) and Sushma Swaraj (BJP) for the prestigious
Bellary Lok Sabha seat. The caption read `Her Raj or Swaraj?', a clever play on Swaraj's
name which is the Hindi word for self-rule. When, after an election, the Congress party
found that it could not muster enough support to form government the Editorial headline
in the Maharashtra Herald (31 December, 1997) read: `Sonia . . . and yet so far.' When the
government launched its Voluntary Disclosure of Income Scheme (VDIS) to mop up
illegal money (black money) in 1998 an Air India Hoarding queried: `Happy New Year?
Quo Va DIS.'
These humourous uses of English indicate that the language is more than just a tool in
the community, it is part of the verbal repertoire and can be used to put across a message in
ways that are both clever and effective (see also D'souza, 1996). Essential to any understanding of this creative aspect of the use of English is the fact that the language functions
in a multilingual environment. Mixing of languages allows for the presentation of
information in pithy and attention-getting ways that are not available in a monolingual
environment. Advertising draws maximum benefit from this fusion of languages.
Code-mixing
Advertising uses language fusion to advantage and this code-mixing is not only of
vocabulary and syntax but also of script. Some advertisements make use of mixed Hindi
and English using the Roman script throughout while others combine Roman and
Devnagari as in the following examples:
Vicks

Fix
Lips

I Love Uncle Chipps.

These advertisements presume literacy in two languages and are to be found in posters,
flyers and other promotional material targeted at the general public. This combination of
scripts, however, is not as common as the Romanization of Hindi. Let us look at some
examples of this:
Grab a BINDAAS snack With MAJOR mazaa. A CHATPATA taste With a new funda. Jis mein
hai woh crispy CRUNCH Aur hai sub se Fun to munch. A masala taste for anywhere Itna achha
you won't share. Khao isey ANY TIME of day Shout for more Lehar Masala KUR-KURE
Gives your mouth a real Jhatka Kya Karein Control Nahin Hota! (Advertisement for KurKure)
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Feel like a sandwich?

Dinshaw's ice cream
Sumo
Taste mein heavyweight.
Yeh dil maange more. (Advertisement for Pepsi)
Asli tandoori khana.
Minus the idhar udhar jana. (Aadvertisement for BPL Microwave)
Life mein kuch extra. (Advertisement for Spirulina)
Don't be a bunder. Taste the thunder. (Advertisement for Thums Up)

Notice how the KurKure advertisement uses language mixing to target a youthful
audience. It uses popular teen vocabulary bindaas, major, mazaa, funda; words that
evoke taste sensations chatpata, crispy, crunch, jatka; and an Indian English construction
like `What to do cannot control!' The Dinshaw ice cream advertisement is even more
interesting as it uses a single Hindi word to achieve an effect that would have been less
striking if English alone had been used. `The heavyweight in taste' or `In taste the
heavyweight' do not have quite the same `catchy' quality as `Taste mein heavyweight'.
The Spirulina advertisement does much the same while the BPL advertisement uses
English to balance the two Hindi phrases. This see-saw technique with one language
providing the pivot for the other seems to be a very popular advertising strategy. The
Thums Up advertisement uses mixing to get a rhyme that would not otherwise be possible
and the Pepsi advertisement, which became tremendously popular, uses a single English
word `more' which is by now probably a part of every Indian's vocabulary.
Borrowed or code-mixed words (whether from English into the other languages, or from
the other languages into English) affect their surroundings giving rise to collocations,
nuances, enhancements of meaning that will not be found, in all probability, in other
varieties. Take for example the word `tension'. In its Indian usage it not only carries its
own meaning of `mental strain or excitement' (The Concise Oxford Dictionary) but has
incorporated related meanings of the word `stress' as well demand on physical or mental
energy and the distress caused by this. You hardly ever hear people in India talking about
stress but tension is a very common word:
`Don't take too much tension' Bank officer to worried customer. This is a literal translation of the
often heard zyaadaa tension mat lenaa (Hindi).
Tension bahut baRh gayaa said of someone who is ill as a result of overwork.
a lot increased
Aunty, bahut tension hai ghar me maid to employer
a lot
is house in
Tu tension na le aunt to niece worried about household chores
you
don't take
Driving me bahut tension hai rickshaw driver caught in traffic jam
in a lot
is

Much the same has happened to the word `adjust', and `please adjust' or `kindly adjust',
when said in the context of a crowded railway compartment, can only be understood by a
speaker of Indian English.
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Innovations
There are certain items of usage that have become standard in Indian English but have
so far not been given the attention they deserve. Consider the following data:
Ever so often I am seized with a powerful desire to know why exactly some books move so swiftly to
the top of bestseller lists in countries outside India. (David Davidar, The Hindu, 30 August 1998)
`Ever so often' used twice by Shri Atal Behari Vajpayee in his address to the nation on 28 April
1999. (Doordarshan TV)
Sanity blinks ever so often in these crimes. (Article by Vijay Jung Thapa, Sheela Raval and
Sayantan Chakravarty, India Today, 18 January 1999, p. 55)
Water and firewood collection in particular can prove to be a very heavy drain on a woman's
limited energy, particularly if she is getting pregnant ever so often. (Aditi Singh editorial page
article, MH, 12 March 1999)
The BJP was suddenly a different party than it had been for months. Ever so often we see the
phenomenon in day-to-day life. (Arun Shourie editorial page article, MH, 1 May 1999)
I too have wondered ever so often, `what if all this were true?'(Ankush Gupta, MH, 27 July 1999)
Ever so often, we have people as well as organizations approach us with a burning desire to `do
something for the underprivileged children through CRY' and we dutifully hand them our
brochure which enumerates a number of areas where they can help. (CRY In Action, 3 (1) )
You recognize the character because he pops up ever so often, you identify with the character, you
relate to him. (Media Pulse by Sevanti Ninan, The Hindu, 7 November 1999)
I remember ever so often watching him open his Japanese to English dictionary, to refer to a
particular word, so that he could explain something to me a little better. (Bob's Banter by Robert
Clements, MH, 15 January 2000)

`Ever so often', as the data show, has clearly come to stay. It is used by a whole range of
speakers the Prime Minister, well-known journalists, writers, and so on. It is a very subtle
innovation which probably accounts for the fact that it has not, to my knowledge, been
looked at to date. What seems to be happening here is an amalgamation of `every so often',
meaning `at intervals', `occasionally' and `ever so' (as in `ever so kind') meaning `very'.
Judging from the data, and from a questionnaire I gave to M.Phil. students at the
University of Pune, it seems to me that `ever so often' can be used to mean both
`occasionally' and `frequently', the meaning being decided by the context. However
more research is necessary before anything definite can be said. What makes the matter
even more fascinating are the following examples which attribute the usage to American
and British speakers:
But the appropriate way to raise the issue is to bring it up in a veiled way ever so often. (Bonnie
Erbe, an American, cited in MH, 8 July 1999)
`Ever so often there's a new voice that entirely revitalized the short story', Ann Beattie, whose own
short stories were hailed a generation ago as doing just that, wrote in a publishing blurb for
Englander's book. (MH, 30 March 1999)
Instead, ever so often, a rickety blue pick-up loaded with garlic and bananas skittered off the road
where the pavement crumbled into dirt. (The Orchid Girls of Burma by Paula Bock, Reader's
Digest, October 1999)
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Is `ever so often' really to be found in other varieties of English or is this a case of the
phrase being filtered through the typesetter's own grammar? If the latter, then the case for
seeing the phrase as standard in the Indian speech community becomes stronger.
Much more obvious than `ever so often' but no less interesting is the `to V + back'
construction, e.g. to join back, to install back, to keep back, to escort back, to answer back
and so on where the word `back' is used to mean something like `back to the original state'.
Senior Congress leader Sharad Pawar leaving the Congress House after issuing an ultimatum to
Kalmadi supporters to join back, or face expulsion. (MH, 6 January 1998)
City Sena Chief Datta Gaikwad warned that the activists would continue to hamper the work of
the Mayor, Ashok Dive, if he failed to install the photographs back. (MH, 1 May 1998)
The van was escorting back the prisoners to the historic Yerawada Central Jail at 5.15 pm. (MH,
30 January 2000)
He promptly answered back to say he remembered me and was waiting to hear from me. (Fouzia
K. Shirazi, MH, 6 July 2000)

This usage is so common that the re- morpheme has lost its meaning and one finds return
back, rewind back, reinstate back, revert back, and so on:
Rewinding back, how did you start your career as a singer? (Interview question by Usha Karnani,
MH, 23 August 1998)
The 21 passengers, seated in the jeep, were returning back from the weekly bazar. (MH, 9 June
1998)
Return Back To The Bearded Fold. (Title of Bob's Banter, MH, 21 January 2000)
They demanded that the ashram reinstate the workers back into service. (MH, 28 October 1998)
In the case of visitors or tourists, sometimes, applicants are turned down because we do not know
whether they are going to return back or not. (Donald Wells, Chief of the consular section
American Consulate General, Mumbai, MH, 31 January 2000)
If autonomy means reverting back to 1953 status, we will never accept it. (I. Venkayah Naidu,
BJP spokesperson on Doordarshan, 28 June 2000)

If one adds to this data examples like the following ease out, shed out, assured to, heeded
to, wear on, restrain on, emphasize on, express that, eye at, throng at, mention about, ebb
down, collapse down, call as, result into, land into (see examples below) then one will see
that far from being random this usage is stable and systematic and one that definitely needs
to be studied in greater detail.
Imagine calling Ghulam as Aamir Khan's worst performance. (Director Vidhu Vinod Chopra,
MH, 27 July 1998)
Brushing against the body of the young leopard, the rough tongue of the female leopard resulted
into a minor injury which is expected to heal within a fortnight. (MH, 17 March 1997)
The absence of traffic control signals and total lack of traffic sense, a road-roller, a van
transporting chairs, a police vehicle, rickshaws, cars and two-wheelers land into a traffic
congestion which is a regular feature on Dr. Ambedkar Road. (MH, 18 March 1997)
Ms Durga had till recently eyed at a bluish two story building near Anthony D'Silva School at
Dadar. (P. N. Kumbhare, MH, 18 March 1997)
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Restrain on your parties at home. (Sunita Palkar, educationist, MH, 24 June 2000)
Mr Bhatia expressed that everybody should get an opportunity to do business . . . He assured that
he will talk to the police commissioner. He also promised for full protection at the time of bandh
in future. (MH, 26 August, 1997)
They withdrew after police assured to make arrests. (MH, 8 March 1998)
Only last Saturday this column mentioned about the impending showdown. (MH, 9 July 2000)
According to the organizers, `demand for entrance tickets is not ebbing down.' (MH, 14 July 2000)
Widening has done little to ease out traffic problems on the road. (MH, 18 March 1998)
Twelve-year-old Posha shot in the legs by militants for wearing on trousers. (Photo caption, MH,
17 August 2000)
`Let Pakistan heed to Salahuddin's advice to face annihilation' BJP General Secretary Narendra
Modi said at a function of Hindu Samachar Group of newspapers here. (MH, 15 August 2000)
She has not heeded to repeated appeals from the Congress leaders. (MH, 18 March 1998)
`We need to improve our competitive ability,' Mr Firodia said, `For that, we will have to shed out
age old pessimism towards exports.' (MH, 31 July 1998)
Fifty to sixty years down the line, this hall was in a dilapidated condition with its walls virtually in
the danger of collapsing down. (MH, 1 May 1999)

This phenomenon of verb plus a grammatical item was noted as early as 1938 by A. F.
Kindersley who commented on constructions such as `rear off ' and `eat off ':
These are derived to some extent by extension of English usage. But a strong influence has been
the extremely common use of ancillary verbs, both in Indo-Aryan and Dravidian, as Hindustani
mar-gaya, Tamil irandu-vittar. (pp. 278)

That these forms have persisted till today and are productive is proof of their stability and
of the fact that they are part of the system of Indian English, not aberrations that have to
be eradicated.
The monitor
To say that English is Indian and that there is an entity such as Indian English is not to
say that there are no standards or that anything goes. Indians are very aware of language
and have definite notions of what is right and what is wrong. This can be seen in data like
the following:
Linguistically and legally, the undertrial is singularly Indian. The noun exists only in Indian
English, kosher vocabularies preferring to use `remand prisoner'. (Article by Ashok Malik and
Sayantan Chakravarty, India Today, 17 August 1998.)

The authors are writing about the `undertrial' but are acutely conscious of the fact that the
word is an Indianism and are at pains to make explicit this consciousness.
Pardon me for `bearding the lion in his den' apropos Bob's Banter `Return Back to the Bearded
Fold' (MH, Jan 21). There is no return back, for the simple reason that it is either `return' or
`back' in splendid isolation, a la `ekla chalo' as there is redundancy in being `surrounded from all
sides' or being `besieged from all sides' because being surrounded or besieged, by itself is selfexplanatory. (B. Sengupta, Letter to the Editor, MH, 28 January 2000)
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Sengupta objects to `return back' and even takes the trouble to write to the editor
explaining why the usage is incorrect.
How often we ask this question at home, `Have you offed the light or have you offed the fan?' It is
`have you put off the light or fan?' `Have you stopped the tap' is incorrect `Have you closed the
tap?' is correct. (N. Ravi in a column on usage in the Children's Section of the MH, 6 November
1999)

This writer negates some very common Indianisms and presents his own version of what is
right.
Data such as these clearly show that there is an awareness of standards and correctness
among speakers of Indian English and it is my contention that it is for the language
community to argue about and to decide on these matters for itself rather than have them
imposed from the outside. Not so long ago the Oxford American Desk Dictionary ended
the ban on split infinitives with the editor in chief of Oxford's US dictionaries programme
in Old Saybrook saying, `the rule is arbitrary' and `has no essential validity' (MH, 30
October 1989). Change is as much a fact of language as it is of life. Speakers of Indian
English should be able to decide for themselves the changes they find acceptable rather
than waiting for the OED or some other august body to authorize change for them.
In this section I have presented various kinds of data but am not suggesting that any or
all of them are examples of Indian English. What I do suggest is that it is only by
examining data like these that we will be able to come to a clear understanding of what
Indian English is. Teen Talk, the language of advertising, language fusion, innovations and
so on all interact to give English in India its own unique character and flavour. Some of
these `Indianisms' the speech community itself will reject, some will go unremarked, and it
is the latter that play a major part in defining the variety. Items that have become standard
in the speech community are accepted without question and very often go unnoticed. `Ever
so often' is a case in point. We need to uncover more such usages as they will give us a basis
for standardization and a clearer picture of the entity we call Indian English.
CONCLUSION

In this paper I have suggested that looking at English in India in terms of its range and
depth will give us a broader and better perspective on the subject. To this end I have
provided examples mainly from lowbrow sources and have tried to bring into focus data
we would otherwise have ignored, rejected, or just been blind and deaf to. I have in the
main let the data speak for itself as all too often data gets relegated to a handout or an
appendix while the speaker or writer hogs center stage. Analysing, in all seriousness and
with an open mind, data of this kind will help us come to a better understanding of Indian
English, what it is, and the role it plays in our lives. This in turn will, must, have an impact
on classroom practice. Accepting that there is an Indian English entails accepting the fact
that it exists in our classrooms, textbooks and so on. `Ever so often', `rewind back', `come
na', `don't take tension', all have to be analysed, understood and dealt with. English today
is not only British English but also Indian English, American English, Singapore English,
New Zealand English, Nigerian English, Australian English and so on. This is what makes
it a World Language.

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REFERENCES
Dasgupta, Probal (1993) The Otherness of English: India's Auntie Tongue Syndrome. New Delhi: Sage Publications.
D'souza, Jean (1996) Creativity and language planning: the case of Indian English and Singapore English.
Language Problems and Language Planning, 20(3), 24462.
Kachru, Braj B. (1986) The Alchemy of English. Oxford: Pergamon Press. Reprinted 1990, Urbana: University of
Illinois Press.
Kachru, Braj B. (1997) World Englishes 2000: resources for research and teaching. In World Englishes 2000.
Edited by Larry E. Smith and Michael L. Forman. Hawaii: University of Hawaii Press, pp. 20951.
Kindersley, A. F. (1938) Notes on the Indian idioms of English: style, syntax and vocabulary. Transactions of the
Philological Society, 2534.
Krishnaswami, N. and Burde, Archana S. (1998) The Politics of India's English Linguistic Colonialism and the
Expanding English Empire. Delhi: Oxford University Press.
(Received 20 December 2000.)

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