Daddy had a great father too. Before independence of India, when Baba was a child; his father ( our grand father ) Pandit Triveni Tiwary told my father Shree Krishna Deo Tiwary to learn English well. My Grand Father clearly told Baba that only the english speaking people will rule India. This advice was given to Baba when the World War 2 had started and India was likely to get independence in the near future. Today after over 80 years one can clearly realize what a far sighted man our Grand Father Pandit Triveni Tiwary was when we see that the elite of India are english speaking and without good knowledge of english language, it is not possible to rise in India and not possible to occupy high positions of authority. It is not only colonial hang over that is responsible for the dominance of english. The Indian languages have not been able to evolve in terms of even basic terminology of science. Moreover, there has not been only one language spoken in India. There are several languages and scripts and none of them allow any upper hand to any other language. So, english has served also as a link language in India, particularly between the north and south Indian states.

Some political leaders tried to sideline english in schools in their states. But it did not work as they soon realized that not knowing english was a handicap for the children. A notion has also been spread that the best education to a child can be imparted only in his mother language. As a result english only remains a second language in most of the schools and mostly the medium of instruction remains the local language. But these children face obstacles in later parts of their career as english has progressed from merely being a colonial language to a language for science and the primary language of Computer Science. India’s much touted advances in software technology is also attributable to the exposure of vast numbers of Indians to english. Meanwhile, the senior bureaucracy including the military as well as the judiciary are highly english centric. Any person not well versed with english can not hope to rise much or occupy high offices in India even today. Such was the far sight of my grand father.

As a result of this advice from my grand father, my father took it to his heart to learn english well. He would, as a young child, always look for english to read ; from sign boards on shops in the block and district headquarters to all available books and pamphlets in english. With this dedication he learnt english well and made no grammatical errors. He was the only Advocate, who used only english language even in district courts. Baba used the example of his father’s advice to inspire us to learn good english. He taught us perfect english. When we went to hostel, Baba taught us english by letters. As phone was not very prevalent in 1973, when I went to Netarhat Residential School, we agreed to send two letters a week to each other. Baba insisted that the letters will be in english only. And through this way, Baba taught us and corrected the mistakes. During holidays, when we came home, he found time to teach us english in person and made it sure that we learnt to make no spelling or grammatical errors.

A good grip on the english language really helped us rise much higher in life. I have seen several talented people left behind just because they were not good at english and in many cases, where they could write english well, they were not good at spoken english. These days engineering colleges are trying to teach english to their students for better employment opportunities and call it soft skills.

Baba was very clear on this. This language issue in schools forms an important policy matter for the future of the children. No language chauvinism should come in the way of learning to enable our children to compete in the world arena of knowledge and performance. We fully agree with Baba and we have always pursued this line of thought.