Sir, I am a lover of the English language and literature in as much as it is the one priceless thing that we have acquired in all our humiliation, miseries and sufferings during the English rule. My honourable Friend, Shri Gopalaswamy Ayyangar, was referring to it as the instrument with which we got our freedom. I found derisive laughter was going round at this observation of his. But is it seriously proposed that the English language should be completely banished from this land and not allowed to play any part in our future lives ? If today, Mr. Krishnamachari or Maulana Abul Kalam Azad or Pandit Balkrishna Sharma and myself have to talk together, not in the English language but in our own tongues., it will be a veritable babel. it is out of such babel that the English language has drawn us together. And if any attempt is made now to banish the English language from this country. India will lapse into barbarism. We must have an international language and English is a language which is spoken by sixty crores of people. English is not now the property of the English people alone. It is their property and mine. There is a brilliant chapter in the book written by one of the Viceroys, called “Babu’s English”. The Britishers know the profundity of the knowledge of English that Indians possess; they know the clarity and precision with which the Indian people speak the language. This has been our reputation. In my experience extending over a decade and a half in high British circles, I have seen how the European members of the Legislative Assembly of old days had often wondered at our mastery of the English language. They often remarked, “We wonder how you people in the Legislative Assembly immediately after you listen to ‘the speech ,of the Home Member or the Railway Member, stand up and criticise. We cannot do it. We must have enormous time to Prepare for it.” So, we had beat them in their own field. English language has opened to us the vast store house of knowledge and wisdom of the world accumulated throughout the ages. We cannot afford to close its doors now. While English win be there, you will also develop Hindi, or for the matter of that every provincial language. Give every regional language of India free scope to develop according to its own genius, to be enriched by accretion of accession from other languages. If you want to do that, you must have Sanskrit as the national language.
