The Great Continental Divide

We, the Indians, have an innate dilemma, which we are born with. We feel the intensity of this dilemma during our period of education and we recognize its importance once we start bickering for our pay checks. This particular predicament plays a major role in exponentially increasing the size of our text books and also in over-burdening our mental retentive capacity. I am referring to the everlasting, loyal and faithful question of- US or UK. From the time we are born to the time we die, we constantly choose between the American uber-cool way or the British elegant way. The English language which we rigorously mug up during our education is bursting with anomalies arising due to two ways of achieving the same thing. The paradox starts with spellings. We can “colour” a painting or “color” the world with hues, we can be a part of an “organization” or we can be a member of an “organization” as well. Of course, the power to discriminate and choose is in our hands, which is an exciting concept for any student. It is our prerogative which spelling we choose to implement. No power in the world can point out that we misspelled the word. It definitely decentralizes the power of education and grants a miniscule portion of that power into the hands of the students. I suppose it is not a bad concept considering the aforementioned. On the other hand, psychologically speaking, it has a negative impact on the people. Innumerable choices spoil the piety of the language. Unconsciously, we use both the Queen’s English and its American dialect interchangeably, intermixing and entwining both inseparably. Sorry for the orthodoxy, if it may sound that way, but the sheer elegance of English is lost by the chutnification.
Another platform providing a vast scope for the successful growth of this paradox has been pronunciation. The accent of Americans is immensely different from that of the British. The British pronounce every single syllable in the word, even the terminating sound of “r” in “center”. The British defy lethargy when it comes to pronunciation. The integration of glides in the pronunciation provides a touch of elegance and grace to the language. The Queen’s English is mellifluous, soothing to the ears. On the other hand, the American way is built around convenience. The Americans are firm believers in abolishing the needless. As a consequence, there are a lot of letters which are present in writing but which never make it to the tongue. The terminating “r” is invariably dropped from pronunciation, as in “center”. This gives a raw appeal to the American way of pronunciation. It might not be elegant and graceful, but it surely hits a few chords. Thus far, I have had no qualms in admitting the importance of both the British and the American way of doing things. But, in the whole process, the most critical point is not obvious. The most important fact which can be derived out of it is- where is the Indian way of doing it? In choosing between the US and the UK, we have lost our own identities. Why do we blindly chase the two superpowers, instead of carving a niche for ourselves? The answer to that is quite obvious. The maximum employment opportunity for the Indian workforce is provided by companies based in US or Europe. So, to follow the rule of “When in Rome, do what Romans do”, we vigorously try to mould ourselves to suit the cast defined by the Americans or the British. In the process of trimming ourselves to suit these Multi-National Companies (better known as MNCs), we are gradually whittling ourselves away.
Perhaps, the phenomenon of defining dialects of English depends on the status of the nation. Two superpowers of the world have their dialects of English, we do not. So, today, in a spate of patriotism, I hope that someday we will have an Indian English too, an Indian way of pronouncing words and an Indian way of spelling words too. Maybe we will be able to spell “organization” as “organizashun” someday. That will be the day when the tricolor will sprawl across the horizon.