TALK SENSE

How much sway does our language have over our thinking?

- MANVIR SINGH

Something as basic as how you conceive time may be specific to your language.

In 2010, a new goddess, about two feet tall and cast in bronze, was set to appear in a village within the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. She looked nothing like the deities of Hindu mythology. In lieu of Durga's bright saris or Lakshmi's opulent jewels, she wore a wide-brimmed hat and the robes of the Statue of Liberty. She wasn't riding a lion or a swan; she stood on a desktop computer. Instead of a sword or a spear, she held a pen in one hand and the Indian constitution—with its promise of legalized equality—in the other. Her name was Angrezi Devi, the Goddess English, and she was intended for India's Dalits, or “untouchables.”

“The Goddess English can empower Dalits, giving them a chance to break free from centuries of oppression,” her creator, the prominent Dalit writer Chandra Bhan Prasad, declared. He saw English as an immensely valuable resource for the Dalit. “Will English-speaking Dalits be expected to clean gutters and roads?” he asked. “Will English-speaking Dalits be content to work as menials at landlords’ farms?” An atheist, he designed the goddess in order to infuse English into the Dalit identity, propelling his people from a feudal subaltern standing to the ranks of the modern and independent. “Learning English has become the greatest mass movement the world has ever seen,” he wrote.