VI
the cause of education in this country can feel satisfied with the way
in which it is used officially in this country. The spirit of the language and
its standard must be impaired, if not only middle and higher education are
entirely conducted through the channel of a foreign language, but also if
almost the whole spiritual exchange takes place in English, if all the scien
tific acquisitions and everything above the level of common daily life are
communicated through the medium of a language understood only by a few
initiated.
The fatal consequences of this state of things are obvious. What
the Lord Bishop of Lahore says is really a matter of fact. The gap between
those, who have the benefit English education and the vast number of
such as are excluded from education increases every day and, even between
such as are joined by natural and the closest and holiest ties, a barrier is
raised, which makes spiritual exchange impossible.
Another fatal consequence of this undue predominance of English in
our Malabar education seems to me to lie in this, that even with those, to
whom English education is accessible, the whole of their knowledge must
rest on unsafe ground. One's own language is not a mere accidental thing;
it is in a language that the spiritual physiognomy—the peculiarity of a
nation—finds expression. Languages cannot be changed like a dress; if
done so, much of the genuineness and originality of a nation would be
lost. There is much truth in the saying of an ancient philosopher, that
with every language we learn, a new soul comes to existence in us; and
truly, is not the Malayali talking in English quite a different person from
the same man speaking his native tongue? But fully appreciating the ad
vantage of having different tongues and different sources of knowledge at
one's command should not the native tongue and that soul, which consti
tutes our original self, be cultivated at first? And at a time, in which
English is not properly mastered, is it not absolutely necessary, that for
an entirely new subject the foundation should be laid in the Vernacular;
if not, can we have any guarantee, that the material taught has been
assimilated and has become a mental possession? Not only the words
even the thoughts and ideas ought to be translated into and moulded in
the native tongue. Only after knowledge has become thus a real spiritual
possession, we may hope, that erelong it will become a common treasure
of the nation, and only then a self-dependent co-operation in scientific in
vestigations can be expected from the educated natives of this country.
