Are drunks and cops best judges of English?

Professor Henry Higgins’ remark to Col Pickering that My Fair Lady Eliza Doolittle should be “taken out and hung, for the cold-blooded murder of the English tongue”, would not find many takers in India, including among our esteemed law enforcement personnel. Indeed, whether the Indian police force is competent to judge fluency in English is far from certain.

By definition, of course, fluency also means “effortlessness” and, hence, can just as easily denote confident enunciation without necessarily adhering to the tenets of grammar and syntax normally associated with another meaning of the same word, ease and elegance of expression. A torrent of words nominally in English but not necessarily intelligible is a hallmark of many a public discourse these days in India anyway. And, the standard of English fluency here is, well, rather fluid.

So, the Delhi Police’s revelation that a man was allegedly beaten up by five inebriated louts for speaking to his friend in “fluent English” is hard to believe. Are intoxicated men generally able to discern the quality of any language and take umbrage at fluency? And were the policemen called in to help the aggrieved party any better qualified to ascertain that to be the cause of the fisticuffs? However, fluency in English may well be under threat in India, but not from drunken rowdies.