‘You Taught me Language’: Shakespeare in India

Summary

If one were to name the most significant and abiding legacy of the British Empire in India it would not be parliamentary democracy, nor cricket, but the English language. Though, at a generous estimate, only 8 per cent of the people can read and write English even now, the impact of its introduction since the early nineteenth century has been incalculable. Because with the English language came not just its literature and Shakespeare but, for better or worse, the whole intellectual tradition of the West, interaction with which has had a far-reaching effect on Indian society and culture. Yet, if catalysis is the introduction of a foreign element to precipitate a transformative change or development, it was neither English nor Western thought, but colonialism which produced a paradigm shift. In the cultural history of modern India, it is colonialism which has been the main cause of cataclysmic change and since English language and literature, with Shakespeare at its centre, came in its wake, their role and impact are intertwined and tainted with that of colonialism.

This relationship of over four hundred years between India and Britain has been an evolving one: from one of mercantile trade, to territorial expansionism, to imperial domination, to equity in a ‘commonwealth of nations,’ to today a tentative reinventing towards a more meaningful sharing and exchange as voiced by the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, on 30 July 2010, during his first visit to India, in his wish to see more British students enrolling for study in India! The fortunes of English literature and Shakespeare in India have also undergone similar shifts. This India–Britain relation, politically fraught and socially and intellectually contested, has been copiously written about, and dissected too. One need not recapitulate these debates – most are well known. This article will narrow down to some key moments which have been bypassed in the more socio-political debates to focus on the linguistic and literary impact of colonialism with Shakespeare as its centre, its repercussions on the theatre and on the pedagogic and literary-critical sphere. In short, a look at the literary, performative and critical languages we were ‘taught’ or imbibed through colonialism.