Fakrul Alam, Niaz Zaman and Tahmina Ahmed (eds), Revisioning English in Bangladesh (Dhaka: The University Press Ltd, 2001), pp. 186. Taka: 350/-.
Since Bengali was the symbol of ethnic identity in East Bengal since 1948 onwards, it was not surprising that it was Bengali which was emphasized after 1971 when the state of Bangladesh was created. However, it was realized soon that English is an international language and that its role in the country would have to be rethought and determined. It was with this in mind that the Department of English at Dhaka University chose this theme: ‘Revisioning English in Bangladesh’. This book brings together the papers read out at this conference.
As is usual in such conferences, some papers are both relevant and of high standard. Others are competent enough but not relevant while there are some which are neither academically competent nor relevant. Let us only focus on those which are relevant. First, Fakrul Alam begins the debate by looking at the English curriculum of Dhaka University. He describes various attempts at changing the curricula of Dhaka University from time to time. Among other things, English Language Teaching (ELT), classics in translations, linguistics and marketable skills in English have been introduced. The introduction of functional English is something of a revolution as the earlier concept, insisted upon by literature professors, was that English should be taught for purely literary and cultural reasons. Serajul Islam Choudhary, for instance, points out in his own paper that the ‘divorce between literature and language in the pedagogical sphere is both impossible and undesirable, and also that literature is never without an ideology’. Noozhat Amin, in a paper on ‘disengagement’, touches upon the philosophical dimension of whether it is possible to disengage the reader from the text. This debate is written in the somewhat abstract language of critical theory but it can be useful in understanding how Third World readers encounter texts written in an alien land, by people who colonized them. While this article tends to be abstract, Sukanta Chaudhury’s article on cultural politics is very incisive and clearly written. The basic question addressed here concerns Third World literature in English. The author argues that when the literary critics of the Third World restrict themselves to the literary products of their own societies only, they seem to be giving the message that they are not fit to engage with the literary products of other societies. This, in effect, marginalizes them and their ‘garden’ becomes a ‘ghetto’.
A somewhat less competent but relevant work is by Enamul Haque who argues that students should be taught literary theory. The work is very brief but, more damaging than that, it does not tell us exactly what the teaching of ‘theory’ is expected to achieve in Bangladesh. Since this ‘theory’ is controversial, a critic might add that it should be taught but with the added critical insights into its own philosophical roots. A paper which does justify the teaching of bibliography and editing, subjects which are always ignored, is Aali Areefur Rehman’s researched piece.
Two other relevant papers are D. Chakrabarti and T. Banerjee’s ‘Shaking the Superflux’ and Sujit Dutta’s ‘English Language and Literature in Bangladesh’. The first is a trifling piece on the oft-debated question whether English is of any ‘utilitarian’ value or not. The second goes into the methods of teaching English---something which does not fall into the theme of this conference and is, in any case, of little academic interest for those who want to know about the political, economic and cultural aspects of teaching English in Bangladesh. Other articles on teaching techniques are of even lower quality and need not have been included in this book at all. Similarly, the purely literary articles---whether on translations, Tagore, Conrad, Rushdie or Soyinka—seem to be completely irrelevant here even if they would be perfectly acceptable in a conference on literature. The fact that they have been included in this book is either a mistake or simply because there were no other relevant articles of even passable standard in the conference.
In short, then, this collection of papers is of very uneven quality. Most of the articles are either not relevant or relevant but not of high quality. The few articles which are both relevant and of good quality are useful but they are not enough to redeem the whole book.
Dr.
Tariq Rahman