Redefining the Concept of English Bilingualism in Asia

Abstract

(English) is the language of our intellectual make-up — like Sanskrit or Persian before — but not of our emotional make-up. We are all instinctively bilingual, many of us writing in our own language and in English. We cannot write like the English. We should not. We cannot write only as Indians. We have grown to look at the large world as part of us. Our method of expression therefore has to be a dialect which will someday prove to be distinctive and colorful as the Irish or the American. Time alone will justify it.