ABSTRACT
The heritage of the English language in India is relevant, as it provides the background to the supervalent importance given to the language in the country, which helps explain why the language has such an eminent role – both detrimental and favourable – in India relative to other developing countries. Therefore, this chapter provides an overview of the historical and contemporary picture of the language in the country. Through this historical analysis, the complex reasoning behind the dominating and persistent prevalence of the language, despite the fact that a mere 28.7%Indians speak it (a deduction done in the chapter using the latest India Human Development Survey data), is summarised into seven factors.
The chapter concludes that the seven reasons, phased in at different point in times throughout history, have compositely made English a necessity for India’s political, educational and economic functioning.
