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| Language matters in Sino-Indian relations | | Indians have been found eager to learn Chinese | | B L KAK
NEW DELHI, SEPT. 16: With language going to play a vital role in the future world, the Chinese have been found doing the heavy lifting and learning English, while Indian students are eager to learn Chinese. Not long ago, Britain's Finance Minister, Gordon Brown, said: "By 2025, the number of English-speaking Chinese is likely to exceed the number of native English speakers in the rest of the world".
But, unlike what Brown feared, the rest of the world is not content with lightweight lifting, even though gen tianshu yiyang is no longer considered that ethereal by the Chinese. The French saying, "C'est du chinois" literally "it's Chinese," but meaning "it's unintelligible" is a thing of the past for the rest of the world. And of late, joining the increasing ranks of this "intelligible" brigade are the Indians.
Indian students and professionals, even though late, have awakened to the needs of the "language." The reason for that is there for the world to see: China could surpass the United States as India's largest trading partner. Bilateral trade between the two Asian giants has been growing at a healthy 35-40 per cent much ahead of the targets. It is projected to reach 20 billion US dollars by next year, one year before the target of 2008.
China Bhavan (Palace) in Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore's university at Santiniketan in eastern India used to be the best-known place to learn putonghua (standard Chinese) in India. No more! Now, one can just walk into an institute in any major Indian city and enrol as putonghua student. In New Delhi alone, 60 per cent of such "students" are working professionals from the software and tourism industries.
Earlier, only Indian universities, more than 95 per cent of which are run by the Central and State governments, could afford to have link-ups with their counterparts in China to get native teachers. But today even private institutes are doing so, indicating the huge demand for putonghua in India. And India's premier seat of learning, Jawaharlal Nehru University(JNU) in New Delhi, has been offering graduate and masters programmes in Chinese language for more than 30 years. In fact, it is in talks with the Chinese Ministry of Education to set up a "Confucius Institute."
As if that was not surprising enough, a management institute in South India has made Chinese compulsory for students in its one-year postgraduate programme. More and more jobs are being created for teachers and translators in the IT, pharmaceutical and chemical industries and in scientific research projects in China. And Indians, with their advanced knowledge in software and relatively strong experience in many other fields, are ready to take whatever China has to offer. All this should naturally make the people of China feel proud!
But it should set Chinese thinking too. India's economic growth is second only to China's. India enjoys advantages in areas that Chinese are still trying to catch up with and vice versa. This seems to be the right time to have more exchanges between the two neighbours to learn from each other.
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