ENGLISH ESSENTIAL

Hokitika Guardian, 2 March 1931, Page 2

ENGLISH ESSENTIAL

Lecturin'? at Multan, Professor NC. Davmviila told a gathering of Punjab educationists that “the English language has come to India to stay” (reports the “Christian Science Monitor”). Proceedings tile professor said: “If, like Alice in Wonderland, Miss English were asked, ‘Are you to get in at all? she might reply: ‘I taught you everything I could, without distinction of caste or creed. I was perfectly straight, perfectly fair in ail my dealings with you. 1 did not care whether you were a Hindu, a Moslem, Sikh, oi Parsec, whether you were fair, or blacky or brown, or yellow. Shakespeare was Shakespeare to everybody who wanted him, and Milton, Burke, Shelley, Byron, Rousseau, J. S. Mill and other lovers of liberty. I taught you to read the speeches of Chatham, Charles James Fox, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, John Bright, William Wdl)Oi force and others. Through me you studied the problems of your country, learned economics, statistical methods, the natural sciences, arts, geography on modern lines, and, above all, history, political science, political institutions and political philosophy from Aristotle to Locke,, Hobbes, Bluntsohli, I.encock, Getrel, Woodrow Wilson , Skleny and Beatrice Webb, not to mention literary writers like H. G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw. 1 have taught you to become men of wisdob like Rose, industrialists like Sir Ratnn Tata, barristers like Jinnnh, Nehru, and a host of others. Tn shops, in export and import trade, in commerce and business | help you, Now will you please let me enterP’ " Tim only language In which politicians from various parts of India can converse with each other is English Any attempt to talk politics in the two hundred existing vernaculars would he impossible.