Characteristics of Indian English

by Dr. Asma Rizwan, People’s Institute of Management & Research, Bhopal

ABSTRACT

English has been in India since the early 1600’s, when the East India Company started trading and English missionaries first began their efforts. English started life in India as not just a foreign language, but as a much-hated language. A large number of Christian schools imparting an English education were set up by the early 1800’s. The process of producing English-knowing bilinguals in India began with the Minute of 1835, which officially endorsed T.B. Macaulay’s goal of forming “a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern – a class of persons, Indians in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinion, in morals and in intellect” (quoted in Kachru 1983, p. 22). English became the official and academic language of India by the early twentieth century. (more…)