Myths about colonialism

This will be a reoccurring post and will deconstruct myths about colonisation. Yes, I know colonisation was terrible but it was not genocide. I am tired of it getting misrepresented because it has consequences on people living in former colonial nations. The idea that we were passive observers of our own destruction  

Myth 1- The English language was imposed on us.

• At present (2014) the Republic of India does not have a national language. However, we have official languages- Hindi (in the Devanagari script) and English. India has over 700 languages and dialects. State languages are equally represented. 
• A highly Persianized and technical form of Urdu was the lingua franca of the law courts of the British administration in Bengal, Bihar and the North-West Provinces & Oudh. Until the late 19th century, all proceedings and court transactions in this register of Urdu were written officially in the Persian script. In 1880,  Sir Ashley Eden, the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal abolished the use of the Persian alphabet in the law courts of Bengal and Biharand ordered the exclusive use of  Kaithi  a popular script used for both Urdu and Hindi Given the diversity of languages we have always chosen one spoken by the majority.
• In late 1964, an attempt was made to expressly provide for an end to the use of English, but it was met with protests from states such as  Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Karnataka Puducherry and Andhra Pradesh. Some of these protests also turned violent.
• Given the kind of ethnocentrism we have towards our regional languages English is neutral.
• Learning English does not mean you wont remember another one. There is such a thing as multilingualism.

The idea of us being forced to learn English and not our mothers tongues is lovely for a few sado masochists who enjoy hearing stories of the Raj and its many oppressions or for Indian nationalists. It might be good to back a few centuries in the pure past for a few but for most of us adapting to a language that can help us expresses our current reality suits us best.  Partha Chatterjee's essay   - Whose Imagined Community? questions this assumption by pointing out how the writing in regional languages was encouraged displacing Persian (the language of bureaucracy). 

Reference- Chatterjee, P. (1991). Whose imagined community?. Millennium-Journal of International Studies, 20(3), 521-525.