A for Apple, why?

Systematic and collective resistance against such normalized practices which are largely hegemonic in nature, is necessary to build an inclusive and independent system. Shadow wars on others' languages, especially on English, or futile grumbles of dejected hearts on International Mother Language Day shall neither save the mother nor the tongue. One has to understand that the best way to save a people's language is to preserve their culture and to instill a sense of pride among people about their own culture. If the tongue is to be saved, the mother needs to be saved first.

- Debabrata Das

There is a popular joke about apples in the district of Murshidabad. A middle-aged father asked his ailing son whether he was gaining in strength each time the latter finished a slice of apple offered to him during his recovery from fever. This apparently not-so-funny joke speaks volumes about the relationship a rural child shares with the expensive and 'medicinal' fruit, the apple. It may sound absurd to urban ears, but, as they say, truth is sometimes stranger than fiction.

Many children from rural areas in this country, especially children from families of small farmers, taste an apple for the first time in their life when they fall sick and a country quack advises the family to provide nutritious food to the ailing child. Thus, the apple is an alien, elite too, fruit to such ill-fated children of rural India.

By no means is this fruit an integral part of their frugal existence, let alone their culture. But the worst irony of the existing education system in this country lies in the fact that the first English word an Indian child formally learns is apple!

It would be an impossible task to explain the reason behind the introduction of such a fallacious learning mechanism, without citing the impact of an obstinate and undying colonial hangover.

It is a well-known fact that the British colonialists introduced a Eurocentric academic curriculum in India, especially at the primary level, with the objective of hegemonizing young Indian minds into the European culture and value system.

They planned to achieve this goal by instilling the idea of a superior Western culture among young Indian students through the English language. Thus, the English language, in this context, served a dual purpose – first, it worked as a medium of communication, and, secondly, as a communicator of Western culture and its inherent value system. This was cunningly designed to produce a hybrid community – Indian in skin and British in taste.