Primary Education and Language in Goa: Colonial Legacy and Post-Colonial Conflicts

Abstract

Languages are a privileged means of social, economic and political mobility. In multilingual countries, like India, they are functionally distributed and the relationship among the different language categories, viz. official language, mother tongue, etc., is hierarchical. Mother tongue languages evoke strong emotions. However, socially less prestigious mother tongues are often discarded in favour of languages useful for social and economic advancement. The language shifts at home, school and other spheres are determined by the social, cultural and political contexts. This paper examines language shifts in the context of primary education and language in colonial and post-colonial Goa. The language shifts and the consequent controversies in Goa are manifestations of two opposing forces: the instrumental draw of language assimilation and the primordial pull of language preservation. The latter regard language shift as pathological and ubiquitous; the former view it as perfectly normal