Meanwhile I do not want to bring in inefficiency in the administration of the country. Therefore I want that for these fifteen years English should continue as the official language of the country. I know that when I was making a similar speech in another place, I. was severely criticised. A friend of mine from the Hindi-speaking area, told me, “Look here, Maitra, you are passionately pleading for English for the next fifteen years. What is your idea ? Are you waiting for the time when the British would come back ?” I told him that we had our grouse against the Britishers, against the British domination of our country but not against the English language and culture as such. When the Britishers first came to this country, in the last century, English was not understood. People knew not a syllable of it. A story goes that A Bengali babu serving in an English mercantile firm in those days went to his boss and said, “Sir, today is the “Rath Yatra” (car festival). “Leave, Sir, Leave”. “What rath ?”, the boss asked. With, his knowledge of English the Babu could not explain what “rath” was. He said, “Church” “Church” “wooden Church Sir” “Jagannath sitting”, “rope and pull,” Sir. The poor European was dumbfound. ed. This was the earliest stage of English knowledge but soon after, people like Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Keshab Chander Sen, Bankim Chandra, Ramesh Dutt and others mastered the English language. Then, within a few years magnificent poetry and prose were produced in the English language by poets like Kumari, Toru Dutt, Michael Madhu Sudan Datta and others whose poetry compares favourably with the finest lyrical poetry in the English literature So in the beginning there may-be difficulty but if you apply your mind, you will learn Sanskrit in no time. Meanwhile for international commerce, higher and scientific education, Judiciary etc. English has to be used in India.
