English goes native as more Parsis, East Indians list it as mother tongue

When Herman Rodrigues was asked which language he’d consider his mother tongue, he wondered if mother tongue should stand in for “ancestral language,” which in his case would be Marathi, or the language one grew up speaking. Rodrigues settled on the latter definition, and he’s “pretty sure” that was what he told data collectors who visited his home before the 2011census.


Rodrigues, 67, is part of a microscopic but growing minority in India, who listed English as their mother tongue in the last census. Forty-one per cent of these individuals, who number 2,59,678 across India, are concentrated in Maharashtra, which logged 1,06,656 native English speakers. The overall figure has risen by 14.6% since 2001 (see box).

Anahita Subedar, editor of Parsi Times, estimates that about 80% of Mumbai-based Parsis read only the English section of her newspaper and just 5-8% of their correspondence with readers is in the community’s mother tongue, Gujarati. “The number of Parsis who can read and write Gujarati has dwindled,” adds Subedar, pointing out that just four of the paper’s 24 pages are in Gujarati and those are targeted at readers who are 70-plus or based in Gujarat.


‘40% of East Indians now more fluent in English than Marathi’

An East Indian from Bandra, Herman Rodrigues grew up speaking English at home — his parents also considered it their first language though his maternal grandmother was fluent in English, Marathi and Portuguese. His father even published a local rag ‘Varsity’, which borrowed heavily from English classics, and rewarded any child who could crack a clue in The Times of India’s crossword puzzle with the “princely sum” of four annas. All voracious readers, Rodrigues and his four siblings read Enid Blyton and Billy Bunter before graduating to William Faulkner’s novels and T S Eliot’s poetry, and they listened to audio recordings of Shakespeare’s plays from the British Council library. And when he became a parent, Rodrigues introduced his children to Roald Dahl, Shel Silverstein and Gerald Durrell.

Rodrigues attended St Stanislaus High School with his brothers. His sisters were enrolled in St Joseph’s Convent School. He learnt Hindi and Marathi in school but has only a basic knowledge of both languages. “I can count the number of Hindi and Marathi movies I’ve watched on one hand,” he says, “because I can’t grasp the nuances.”

Rodrigues’s fluency in English isn’t a rarity in the East Indian community, especially in Bandra. “About 40% of East Indians are now more fluent in English than Marathi,” says Alphi D’souza, managing trustee of Mobai Gaothan Panchayat (MGP) . He insists, though, that the tide is changing as MGP is making efforts to promote Marathi among East Indians. Though the census isn’t complete, D’souza estimates the number of East Indians in the state is three lakh.

Vernon Fernandes (62) and his wife Cynthia have been staying in Pune for 40 years but hail from Goa. “My father and grandfather spoke Konkani, but I hardly know it and speak English at home. We consider it our mother tongue and have passed it on to my daughter and grandson,” says Vernon. Their daughter, Sharon, who went to St Anne’s School, had English listed as mother tongue in her school records, and she plans to do the same for her son. Similarly, Alten Lobo (65), who’s familiar with Konkani, put English as mother tongue when the census survey was conducted at his Pune house, though his relatives in Goa put Konkani.

However, many individuals differentiate between first language and mother tongue. Simin Patel, a Parsi who grew up in Mumbai and studied at Oxford, spoke Gujarati as a child but forgot it once she started going to school. Today, she can understand Gujarati but struggles to express herself. Yet, she’d still put it down as her mother tongue but not her “every day tongue”.

Some scholars insist the figures may be survey errors caused by people mixing up their mother tongue with their preferred language. Anjali Radkar, a faculty member at the Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics, explains that Pune is an IT hub that attracts professionals from other states who prefer English. “People in this group tend to have inter-state marriages and hence the spoken language is English. But despite this, the English mother-tongue data shouldn’t see a spike,” she says. “There is a chance respondents misunderstood the question as most preferred language.”