Click to play videoSaharanpur (Uttar Pradesh): It is a regular morning at the Gochar High School in Saharanpur in Uttar Pradesh.
Since it is a Hindi medium school, few students care to speak in English with even the teachers preferring Hindi.
However, there is someone who speaks in English, and that too with an American accent.
“I know English fluently. Nobody taught me,” says Rakesh.
Rakesh is a 14-year-old class 11 student, who belongs to a dalit family.
When he's not at school, he's in the fields helping his family out. And his accented English is because of some hard work over the last three years.
He's so hooked to the language now, that Hindi has become a foreign tongue for him.
“I speak in Hindi but I prefer to speak in English,” says Rakesh.
The boy has been convincing everyone that English is God's gift to him and an inborn talent.
However, if prodded a little and he reveals, “I watch a lot of Hollywood films and try and speak like they speak in the films.”
Saharanpur in North India is known as the Hindi-heartland. But even here English is becoming very popular.
A Dalit boy who taught himself to speak in English by watching Hollywood films is a good example. And he's spreading the English fever.
So what is behind this newfound craze?
“It's a mixture of fascination and need for a good career, so because of these two reasons English is very popular,” says Rakesh.
While Rakesh takes the English craze to one-extreme, there are those who're taking it to another idol-worship.
“Since Dalits never had any gods or goddesses we decided to build this idol. She stands on a computer, has a pen in her hand and is called the English Goddess. If Dalits want to join the new economy they have to learn English, which is idea behind this idol,” says author, Dalit Diary, Chandrabhan Prasad.
From believing that it is a God's gift, to worshipping it as God itself, Dalits in India it seems are using English to demand for an equal society.
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