• Arun K Behera

  Author

• Rashmita Behera

  Author

English has come to stay in India for over four centuries now, when the British East India Company started trading and English missionaries first began their efforts. A large number of  Christian schools imparting an English education were set up by the early 1800's. The process of producing English-knowing bilinguals in India began with the epoch making Minute of 1835,  which officially endorsed Macaulay's goal of forming a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern- a class of persons, Indians in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinion, in morals and in intellect (Kachru 1983, p. 22). English gained the status of  the associate official language of India by the early twentieth century. The rising of the nationalist movement in the 1920's brought some anti-English sentiment with it- even though the movement itself used English as its medium.

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