Well Hindi is just as alien linguistically to the south as English is. English and Hindi have more in common with each other. I guess English is a neutral second langauge.

English is the lingua franca in India for a reason, one of the things I found interesting about the British Raj, is, the english sowed the seeds of tools of their own exit - Railways, English and Civil Society (specifically the Indian Civil Service and some vague ideals of Democracy).

Those three things took the area that comprised British India, from a bunch of loosely connected nation-states, each with their own cultures, languages, and religions - while still having much in common, but not something that was easily unifiable, to something much more cohesive, to something that could be united.

Then leaders came along who were educated in Britain, filled with British democratic ideals who learned how to subvert to colonial system from within. Who then did so, they wrestled what was considered the crown jewel of the empire from the British, with the tools the British gave them. It's still a brilliant feat, because it used colonialism to subvert and ultimately defeat colonialism.

None of this should be construed as a defense of the Raj, or to imply that India could not have unified itself without those tools, but it turned an impossibly gargantuan task into a merely very hard one, because those tools allowed (at least temporarily) for people to overcome sectarian differences, and work together as one people towards a common goal with a common understanding.

I wish people knew more about partition however, partition is the greatest humanitarian crisis the world knows nearly nothing about, it rivals even the holocaust in size, and it didn't have to happen, but for a lack of trust between the Indian National Congress and the Muslim League. I believe that India, Pakistan and Bangladesh would be stronger today if it was one nation rather than three.

To add: the Dravidian languages of South India (Malayalam, Telugu, Tamil, etc) have no common ancestor with the Indic/Indo-Aryan languages of the North (Hindi, Gujurati, Punjabi, etc) which are part of the Indo-European family. So while they may have some loanwords across them, the grammar and the majority of the vocabulary is totally foreign.

>And I understand English is still widely taught there, as a legacy of British colonialism, and so many (most?) Indian people - especially in urban areas - do speak English to some extent.

"English is still widely taught here" is an understatement. Upper- and middle-upper-class children usually go to "English medium" schools, where all classes are taught in English (except for the local language class, eg the Hindi class is taught in Hindi), and you're expected to speak only English when talking to other kids and teachers as long as you're on school grounds.

And yes, the only common language you can expect to find when talking to someone who could be from any other part of India is English. If you were talking to shopkeepers, laborers, etc, you'd likely need to use the local language, though they'll have a bare understanding of English words for things like the items they sell.

Even when speaking to people who do understand the local language, most people will speak in a blend of English and the local language, eg Hinglish (English + Hindi) where many nouns will be from English and connecting words will be from Hindi. People who speak in pure Hindi tend to be of the "old-fashioned" stereotype - Sanskrit / Hindi teachers or religious teachers / saints or nationalist extremists.

Many years ago while travelling in Kerala I got chatting to an Indian guy on the bus. It turned out that he was from northern India and he mentioned that he too was a tourist in Kerala because he did not speak the local language.

He had to speak English to everyone and would have had the same communication challenges that I had. His skin colour was also quite a bit lighter so even though he did not stand out quite as much as me, he was still quite recognisable as an outsider.

Now this sounds quite obvious if you have ever read up about India and its languages/cultures/ethnicities, but even though I technically knew this I was still baffled that you could be such an outsider in your own country.

> English is the language of elitism in India.

English is lingua franca regardless of social or economic status.

Every child gets to learn 3 languages : one local language, One regional elective (or Hindi), and English.

English is now pervasive enough that transliterated words are common in all languages and are being used natively. People use English words and idioms without even realizing they are speaking English. You will find even in remotest corners someone who will understand and converse in rudimentary English (especially the youngsters).

I think the important idea is that with the British gone English is a neutral language not owned by any one group within India

They meant “state” in the general sense, not the particular sense of the federated entities of India, USA, Australia etc.