Cultural Interferences: England and India
Cultural Interferences: England and India

Summary/Abstract: My paper presents the cultural interferences between India and England. Today both countries are members of the Commonwealth of Nations and the relations between them have been of mutual respect and friendship. Both India and England have many areas of interest such as their culture, history, language, administration, industry, the field of computers etc. It is a known fact that in India, English is one of the most used languages often used in society and official documents and the English sport - cricket is among the most popular sports. England, too, adopted some of India’s products and today the Indian food is highly appreciated by everybody. Tea is another Indian product enjoyed by most Englishmen. There are many teashops in England and large quantities of tea are imported from India. In fact, the English people enjoyed so much this drink served both hot and cold that they transformed it into a national custom known all over the world as the “5 o’clock tea”. My paper starts with a historical presentation of the two countries and their relation. India has been for a long period the most valuable possession of the British Crown and one of its most important colonies. The following part of my paper is a presentation of the Colonial India that includes the history of the British colonialism in India, its psychological effects on Indian people and their struggle to preserve their traditions and believes. England is also a country with an interesting and long history that deserves to be presented. Another chapter of my paper presents the concept of hybridity. This concept characterizes the postcolonial literature and the Indian society. We can link this concept to language and culture. It is recognized fact that Indian language is in fact a mix between English words and native ones. There are many explanations for the interference of the English language with the Indian one. One of them is of course the colonial heritage. The colonized nation adopted the colonizer’s language. The English language has been for a long period and in fact still is an expression of power, domination and communication all over the world. Although, today there are no more colonies, the linguistic and cultural consequences of colonialism are still seen in certain parts of India. English is used as a second language. In the case of government, English has two purposes. The first is that of linguistic tool for the administration of a country and the second is language of wider communication (national and international). The next part of the paper presents the postcolonial literature. It is a controversial concept mainly because this type of literature can be interpreted in many ways. Scholars tried to define and find it a place in the English literature for a long time. They found this was a difficult thing to do because it was neither pure English nor Indian literature but a mixture between them.

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