There are other reasons for Americans to take deeper interests in countries that they did not consider worth a close attention to till two or three decades ago. Among foreign students pursuing higher studies at US universities, Indians form the largest group. The Chinese are a close second. In years to come, some of them would be leading members of business, academic, cultural and political communities of their home countries. It is natural for US academicians to explore countries vital to US interests through the eyes of some of these students and build a knowledge base strong enough to bear pressures of the future.
It is in the fitness of things that the person chosen to be the Senior Director of ICI is a Nepali. Ashok Gurung leads a small team at the centre that attempts to transcend the Himalayan barrier between India and China through studies that are neither hyphenated as in strategic affairs programs nor compartmentalized in the manner of area studies. Nepal is a convenient base to contemplate upon complementarities of the two of the most ancient and lively civilizations of human history.
Relative to the size of the country and its distance from USA shores, Nepali community in New York is sizable. Ashok encourages Nepali students to study its neighbours and tries to convince potential US researchers that studying Nepal could be a useful way of understanding what could be the most dynamic region of the world in the coming decades. Even for people with near-term interests, China is a country of opportunities for US multinationals and their engagements in South Asia has nowhere else to go but upwards.
Apart from the tempering effects of their relationships with USA, Beijing and New Delhi have begun to explore other ways of dealing directly with each other. The economic grouping of BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) gives them a forum to mull over strategies of changing the global economic order that has long been dominated by former imperial powers. Chinese and Indians have begun to simultaneously compete and cooperate in order to survive in a world going through challenges of coping with constraints of energy resources, climate change, multiple extremisms, militancy and terrorism of various kinds including white colour crimes. They are vying with each other in preparing for the new frontiers of globalized economy—the service industry—where borders will matter even less as no bulk transportation would be required. One of the most prized assets in such an economy would be language proficiency. Chinese have begun to learn Hindi, Bengali and even Tamil and Indians are taking interest in a language long considered to have been too testing for the South Asian tongue. However, both seem to have realized that English would retain its primacy in international transactions for quite a while. As in industrial and trading sectors, China has apparently made a huge progress even on the linguistic front.
In an international ranking of English speaking abilities, China has edged past India. The English Proficiency Index (EPI) of 2011 places China at 29th position with 47.62 to India’s 30th with 47.35 score. Both are relatively low in a list that places non-English speaking countries like Sweden (66.62) and Poland (54.62) among the top ten performers. However, the list shows that the legacy of British colonialism alone is not sufficient to sustain proficiency levels in a foreign language for long. Nepal does not figure in the summary of the survey that has Kazakastan at the bottom with 44th position and 31.74 score.
The report indicates that the Chinese are working harder to learn the lingua franca of globalized economy and may get much more ahead in the coming years. Yet, India is the largest English-speaking country in the world, while it is merely a foreign language in China. That difference is an important distinction. For the Chinese, it is important to speak and write English for what it does or can do. Indians consider English as one of their own and think in that language.
In urban India, almost everyone understands English and uses the language in communicating with fellow citizens. Many middleclass professionals not only express themselves better but have begun to emote in English. One could get along in New Delhi without speaking a word of Hindi or Punjabi. From the prime minister of the country to a humble peon in an unimportant government office, speaking English comes almost naturally. Forget foreigners, even South Indians are spoken to in English in a matter of course in the Indian capital. Nepalis have been exceptions for centuries.
Nepalis and Indians have talked to each other in Hindi for long. One of the responsibilities of Munshikhana, predecessor of Foreign Ministry in Kathmandu, was to translate Hindi/Urdu documents. Rather than the power relationship of dominance and subjugation, Hindustani worked as a medium of sublimating differences of interest between political, social, cultural and economic elite of India and Nepal. That seems to be changing.
Increasingly, Indian and Nepali leaders do not speak the same language, literally and figuratively. Indian interlocutors refrain from using Hindi lest it be interpreted as linguistic imperialism. Nepalis try their newly-acquired proficiency in English upon Indians and end up being either misunderstood or pitied upon. Either way, it adds to bitterness. While Kathmandu’s reliance upon Chinese interpreters has not decreased despite the rise of English proficiency among officials in Beijing, the advantage of sharing culturally similar language with Indians is no longer there.
Americans can perhaps show the way. Being overlords of the world, which requires intellectual preparedness to support economic and military dominance, US students are encouraged to learn different languages in addition to producing works of scholarship in English. It is an opportunity that Nepal can build upon.
The idea of ‘land link’ between China and India is somewhat superfluous—both countries share longer border than with Nepal. In any case, bulk transportation overland cannot compete with timeliness of air routes or the economy of shipping industry. The Tibetan plateau is resource rich, but economic powerhouses of China lie far away towards seashores. However, the ‘idea-bridge’ is a concept that has failed to attract as much attention as it should in Kathmandu.
Nepal has the potential of emerging not as an information technology hub, but as a centre of excellence in learning Chinese and Indian economy, culture and society. Japanese monk Ekai Kawaguchi (1866-1945) prepared for his Tibetan sojourns in Nepal, as did various Christian missionaries. Though Hiuen Tsang (602-664) has been less than charitable about his encounters with ‘Nepalis’ of his time, that probably had something to do difficulties he encountered on the way.
Tourism development is a desirable goal, but rich Chinese are not going to come to Nepal to trek in the Himalayas for quite some time—they would rather go to Paris to learn the ways of living like Parisians or travel to London to have suits tailored at bespoke outfitters of Savile Row. Indians have begun to prefer gaming tables of Macau and Genting Islands to casinos of Kathmandu. Similarly, it would be too much to expect that Nepal’s economy stands to benefit from development of trucking routes between Bihar and Tibet.
While the coaching institute signboards are urban eyesores, preparing Indians and Chinese for each other and equipping the rest of the world to face complexities of both countries are some of the business opportunities that entrepreneurs of Kathmandu need to explore. That would be an area where US investments would not raise hackles of regulators either in Beijing or New Delhi. Nepalis have to learn to be interpreters of a new world order of which both their neighbors are going to be important players. Hindi needs to be celebrated for that reason, not because some Madheshis think that it is their mother tongue. More Nepalis have to begin learning Chinese. And Nepal needs to aim for a respectable place on the next EPI list.
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