Street urchins would chant and run after the carriage of a chubby Englishman in the streets of Calcutta. The time was somewhere around 1815, when by force of arms and chicanery, a purely commercial enterprise like the British East India Company had attained supreme political power in India. It had made Calcutta its commercial and administrative headquarters - a fast growing city catering to the taste and convenience of foreigners and natives alike.

It was in Calcutta, that the British also came to learn that they had not only militarily defeated the reigning Rajas and Sultans of Hindustan, but also that in the process they had become the newest rulers of India. From Delhi to Calcutta, no native power dared to challenge British authority, in Central India, the Maratha Confederacy had all but broken, and the three Mysore wars had wiped out Tipu Sultan and his dynasty.

England, wrote Lord Seely - a British historian, had conquered India 'in a fit of absent mindedness.'

Absent minded or not, officials of the East India Company realized that military success had made it incumbent on their part to assume the responsibilities of administering conquered parts of India. Hence, began a curious experiment. The merchants were asked also to frame new rules and policies to manage affairs of the Company as well keep peace and order in a poor and subjugated country. Thus began a saga of Imperial rule that had few parallel in the History of Asia.

In time, rapid expansion of commerce and administration demanded the availability of trained personnel in most branches of Government. This meant introduction of a single language, preferably English to meet the needs of time. Besides, English had the advantage of developing scientific temper for improving the personnel and performance of Indian subjects. Also, years before Macaulay's celebrated Minute in favour of introducing English, the language of command in the Sepoy army was framed in a sort of Pidgin English - words that could be easily followed by Indian soldiers, orderlies and members of subordinate rank.

In the civilian sector too, Indians having rudimentary acquaintance with spoken and/or written English were specially favoured for appointment in the Company's services. Such was the market need for English that special coaching schools appeared like mushrooms in almost all Presidency towns.

Calcutta, Bombay and Madras - became centres of university education in the early 1850s. By then, English had also become most prized acquisition of all Indian graduates - first of males, and later, increasingly, also females. Members of India's new middle class realized that they could dispense with reading or speaking Persian or Sanskrit, but they must pick up a few familiar phrases in English if s/he desired to climb upwards in life.

The obstacles of course were many. First was the paucity of teachers having a good command of English language. Also, most established schools where English was officially taught were administered by Christian missionaries. Some of these schools perhaps were keen to apply the language for conversion - a factor that discouraged orthodox Hindu and Muslim parents to send their wards to missionary schools. Third, many Indian languages - especially grammar and syntax - discouraged proper usage of English so that the language as spoken by Indians remained wholly unrecognisable abroad or even in India.

However, English is not an inflexible language - not as rigid as French is. Hence, even when a group of Sikh, Tamil and Bengali boys raise the house of Babel, they follow and understand each other because they believe the language they speak is English. Like Hindi cinema, English as she's spoke has begotten a lingua franca to strengthen India's unity.

Another type of resistance came from advocates of Hindi. Many in the native press, Government sponsored institutions and patriotic Hindus feared that the spread of English would damage the interest of Hindi as the 'official national language.' But such fears were falsely grounded. Hindi made very feeble impact on non-Hindi speaking States because Hindi failed to catch up with the progress English had made in these States.

In the Hindi-speaking States, on the other hand, the satisfaction of being anointed as natural owners of Raj Bhasa, has driven away the incentive to do any more labour. They all have become Sarkari pensioners like the slumbering staff of a nationalized bank.

Yet, India moves forward, and as science and technology make progress, more and more Indian girls and boys want to learn English and make name in their own areas of specialization. And perhaps many more, among the poor, would still continue to chant 'Sahib - Sahib, English - English'