The name is absent

and although she was encouraged to, and participated in,
Hindi plays, with Hindi mother-tongue speakers, she was a
failure. She would miss her cue, or recite the lines in
the wrong order: a serious play would result in an uproar!!

Not unexpectedly, the Cambridge Hindi oral and written
examinations in 1955 were a nightmare. The researcher's
Indian friends passed the examinations with ease, because
they were writing and speaking in their mother-tongue. Her
Indian Christian friends passed the French oral and written
examinations, because they did not find it necessary to
drop French and do Hindi. They would be in India for the
rest of their lives. They were Indian, and did not have
to take any desperate measures to "integrate" by learning
Hindi. They could learn the Indian Languages at their
leisure.

In 1990, during the field research, an Anglo-Indian teacher
commented about Anglo-Indian students in his school.

Out of every twenty Anglo-Indians only one
manages to complete twelve years of schooling.
The reason lies in the language problem.
Anglo-Indians are still failing to learn an
Indian language. We did not know an Indian
language before 1947, and we still do not know
how to read, write and speak an Indian
language. This is why Anglo-Indians are
forced to repeat a year in the same class if
they fail the Indian language examination.
(3)

As a consequence, the language casualty rate has reached
epidemic proportions for Anglo-Indian students in Anglo-
Indian schools. The language policy and teaching methods
have remained unchanged since 1954.

By 1990, passing Indian language examinations was linked to
entry in further education at 16+ and higher education at

15

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