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name either. 



The chairman, Dr. Kolthan didn't exercise much 

 initiative or control over the commission. He was pretty 

 thoroughly involved with the University Grants Commission, 

 which he was chairman of also. One of the big things that 

 he had the University Grants Commission do was to translate 

 scientific books into local languages. So he would have a 

 physics text translated into Tamil, and Punjabi, and Hindi, 

 and Bengali. They had to invent words, of course, in these 

 different languages for scientific terms. 



Sharp: An enormous project. 



Revelle: I thought it was ridiculous. In fact, I was practically the 

 only voice on the commission saying that we should emphasize 

 English, that English was the only language that all Indians 

 were willing to speak. Of course, they didn't like that 

 very well at all because they were at that time feeling 

 their nationalistic oats more than they are now. 



Now it's quite obvious that I was right, that English 

 is the one unifying language in India. All Indians are 

 never going to accept Hindi, let alone Tamil. But 

 interestingly enough, they are developing a language of 

 their own which you can call Hindish, which is English with 

 an Indian accent and Indian definitions of the words . It's 

 almost impossible to understand for a foreigner, for an 

 American, these fourth generations of Indians after 

 independence. For example, a word like probable; they call 

 it pro bab le. 



Maybe there'll be another generation before they 

 really decide that they should really concentrate on 

 English. As they get more self-confidence, and more feeling 

 of being a great power in the world, then this will be 

 easier for them. And particularly as Hindish develops and 

 becomes a unintelligible language to anybody else, it'll be 

 a good thing too. 



Sharp: They will see the drawbacks of it. 



Revelle: Of Hindi. 



The difficulty was, and is, that very few people 

 actually speak English, or whatever you want to call this 

 new language, Hindish. Only about 10 or 15 million people 

 . speak it. They are the governing class, the upper class, 

 and particularly the south Indians all speak it. They are 

 damned if they're going to speak Hindi and nobody 

 understands — . 



This helps them get civil service jobs. One of the 

 principal reasons for getting an education in India is to 

 get a civil service job. Of course, there aren't very many 

 civil service jobs, so lots of people are disappointed. As 

 time goes on, maybe that will be less and less of a problem 

 as industry and business services develop, so there'll be 

 many more opportunities for young people. 



