Less than three decades ago only the finest, most cultured, highly educated people in India spoke English. If you were one of these people, those were wonderful times. Just speaking the language made you ‘high class’. This rarified set was less than 5% of the population and just saying ‘Hey, how are you?’ instead of ‘Aap kaise hain?’ would set you above the 95%.

You could interview for top jobs, have access to world-class art and entertainment and a circle of similar, refined people. It made life in poverty stricken, miserable India quite wonderful. After all, relative to the rest of the vernacular riffraff, you were so much better and classier.

Of course, there were rarified clubs even within this 5%. If you read English books, for instance, you were upgraded to the elite of the elite tier, in perhaps the 0.5% rather than 5% category. And boy, that was a good feeling. Your kids automatically inherited the privilege. Educated in rarified schools they became even better English speakers and soon climbed to the top rungs of society.

Then came disaster. The magnificent 1980s were gone. Cable TV arrived. The internet arrived. Mobile phones arrived. YouTube arrived. Social media arrived. More English medium schools opened up. And all hell broke loose. English turned out to be, after all, just another common language in the world.

Indian riffraff received English in mega doses. This riffraff knew the language was a ticket to gold and lapped it up. Of course not all of them had access to the best methods of learning English. They did what they could. This riffraff made do with the English teachers available in their small towns, figured out phone menus by themselves and watched English movies with subtitles.

Over the last 20 years, more and more Indians absorbed Eng-lish. Constables, drivers, petrol pump attendants, waiters in small restaurants and call centre staff can understand English today and may even have a limited vocabulary in the language. They may not speak it, but they get it. This was unthinkable three decades ago.

Imagine the plight of the rarified club. Spare a tear for the country club that saw their precious and well guarded language taken up by the hoi polloi. Some of these hoi polloi would compete with them in job interviews. The commoners could now watch Spiderman movies in English. Hell, now commoners were even reading English books and columns written by commoner writers.

What on earth had this country come to? What do you mean everyone could and would speak English? How dare they? I mean seriously, how dare they show the temerity? What, they are even using words like temerity now?

That’s when the elite club needed a new paradigm. No, you could no longer separate the elite from the riffraff with a simple English-Hindi divide. What the club needed and created was a new class system, depending on various proficiency levels of English.

Did you pick up English the elite way, or the commoner way? Did you learn English in Hindi medium or English medium? What’s your accent like? Oh, you have an Indian accent? You are still low class. You cannot use words like dexterity and temerity? Haha, such an idiot.

Did you just mispronounce a word? Oh we must laugh in your face and show you your place. So what if the job market doesn’t care about fancy accents or outdated words? So what if all that is needed is simple and clear articulation? We will still judge you. We know it, you don’t. We are still the country club. You are the country bumpkins.

That, in short, is the state of play of English in the country today. Rarified English clubs are crumbling at a pace faster than they can ever imagine — or replace imagine with a more complicated word like envisage.

I must say I have had a part to play in dismantling this club. Hence i find their discomfiture and disconcertment (oh I love using their words sometimes) rather amusing. However, i would have left it at that but for the fact that the importance of English is immense for our nation. English is a global language. Not only is it an official language in some of the richest and most advanced nations of the world (the US, Australia, Europe), it is also a platform language for business, tourism, law and research.

To be denied English, or to be mocked at over not having elite class proficiency, is harmful to the individual as well as our society. We don’t need to dismiss English, we need to dismiss English snobs. We need more empathy and compassion towards our millions of English learners, who despite having scant resources are trying hard to learn the language for one reason — to make a better life.

Elitism towards these people is insensitive, mean and simply harmful. This is at the heart of the English-Hindi, India-Bharat debates. English vs Hindi is no longer a choice. Every Indian should and will have access to a basic level of English. Basic English should be seen as a life skill, to be given to all Indians on an urgent basis. Elitism about the language should be nipped in the bud.

Let there be English. But let there be no class system about it.

The writer is an acclaimed novelist.