The Rastriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have opened another front of attack on the future of the Dalit/Shudra/Adivasis. This front has nothing to do with Muslims. In a certain sense, though it appears anti-Christian, it does not affect the future of Christian population of India, which is very small in number. This front is English education. Though their attack appears to be on colonialism and Lord Thomas Babington Macaulay, it is fundamentally against the English education of the Dalit/Shudra/Adivasis, who are slowly getting English education and hoping to compete with the upper castes in all states and at the national level. English is also enabling them to enter into global markets. This language came into their life through Mahatma Phule, Savitribai Phule and Dr. B.R Ambedkar, not through Macaulay.It was Ambedkar who gave them the confidence with unparalleled command over English in India during the freedom struggle and in writing books and the constitution. He had shown the oppressed castes that this language can become a tool of their liberation from their historical slavery. Sanskrit was used as a tool to enslave the Dalit/Shudra forces with a design for millennia. English became a counter weapon in the hands of the oppressed and exploited castes.Now the RSS/BJP, is systematically using an OBC Narendra Modi, as the prime minister, to deny English to these castes. I, as a first generation writer in English from a Shudra shepherd community, know the power of English as a liberative language. For us it is not a Macaulay language but an Ambedkar language. It is an Indian and Dalit-bahujan liberation language.Why it is not a Christian languageThe Telangana social, economic, educational, employment, political and caste survey has shown that though the Christian population is very small in terms of numbers, its English education level is as higher as that of Brahmins, Reddys and Kammas. Perhaps that is because the church system established English medium schools along with churches in several places. However, for them it was a language of job either in India or abroad or of prayer.No Christian scholar of India used it as a liberative tool as Ambedkar, who was not a Christian. For him it was a language that could change the life of the oppressed and exploited people in future.It is also a fact that not many Shudra/OBCs have become Christians and hardly send their children to Christian English medium schools. Some upper castes, particularly Brahmins have become Christian and most Hindu upper castes sent their children to learn that language in Christian schools. Brahmins, Banias, Kayasthas, Khatris and Kshatriyas are the most English educated elite in contemporary India. They have also not used that language as a tool of liberation from caste oppression.Of late, the Shudra-OBCs are realising that Ambedkar’s English writings have helped them to gain the reservation benefits and also the importance of learning the English language.The Telangana caste survey has shown that the most backward in the English education parameter are Adivasis/Dalits and OBCs in that order.According to the Telangana castes survey, Iyers and Iyyangars (they are shown as a separate caste group in the survey) and the Brahmins of the state are most English educated. The highest private school education so far is acquired by Iyyangars/Iyyars and Brahmins. They are the most powerful in the bureaucracy of Telangana. Historically these communities were privileged. Earlier they controlled Sanskrit and Persian language as well. The rich among Muslim have Urdu, Arabic, Persian and English. Even today the Muslim Nawabs are English educated like high end Brahmins. All their languages are not regional and confined to one small area.They are global languages and all Indian languages. They too never used those languages to liberate the oppressed castes. When they ruled the nation before the colonial period they pretended as if caste and human untouchability do not exist. They went by what the Brahmin court pundits told them.English in our timesThe Telangana caste survey also has shown the overall development of Shudra/OBC/Dalit/ Adivasi communities is more linked to English medium education than land. Even the most landed families are looking for an English educated employee in settling the marriage alliance. That is the reason why the Government schools are converted into English medium in the state. The idea of English medium and employment got into the life of the Shudra/OBC/Dalit/Adivasis because of Ambedkar’s fight for new liberation direction during the post-colonial period. No other freedom fighter made as much impact in their homes as Ambedkar did.Ambedkar is not like Gandhi to upper castes, nor like Rabindranath Tagore to the Bengali Bhadralok, nor like Jinnah to Muslim separatists, he is a reformer, a new language teacher and an employment source and divine figure for the oppressed castes. No Indian from marginalised castes knows about Macaulay as source of English language in their lives, and they only know Ambedkar as the source of English language education, employment, in India or abroad, and also protecting them in courts.And yet, the RSS/BJP Macaulay mania will have serious implications to their lives.The Macaulay maniaWhy are the RSS/BJP top leaders like Mohan Bhagwat and Narendra Modi have started identifying English language education to the British official, Macaulay? The RSS/BJP leaders’ pro-Sanskrit and anti-regional language bias towards languages like Bengali has also come out clearly in the debate in the parliament about Vande Mataram Vs Jana Gana Mana, the present national anthem. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru in his letters to the chief ministers and his final opinion was very clear that understanding Vande Mataram is difficult whereas Janagana Mana is easily understood (Indian Express, 10 December) not only by Indians but by foreigners. Both its anti-Macaulay campaign and subtly opposing regional languages in favour of Sanskrit or Hindi is a long term deceptive policy of the RSS/BJP forces.The RSS/BJP main leadership seems to have planned to systematically go about denying the future global mobility by slowly undercutting the English language education in government schools in the states. However, they are not against the rich mainly (Brahmin/Baniya/Ksatriya) forces studying in private English medium schools and universities.As I said above, for the Dalit/Shudra/Adivasis English is not a language given by Macaulay but by Ambedkar. Ambedkar wrote all his books in English. It is true that he wrote in Marathi for his journals such as Mook Nayak and Bahishkrit Bharat. But his transformative writing starting with his famous essay Caste in India ended with his last book The Buddha and His Dhamma. He wrote all in English. He gave his major speeches in English. His Constituent Assembly debates are in English. A first generation untouchable became such a renowned lawyer, thinker, writer and speaker influencing the whole nation because of English, a global language by then.Ambedkar’s writings were translated into all national languages because in every region there were/are English speaking Dalits, who wanted to introduce Ambedkar’s writings to their children and grandchildren. Thus, Ambedkar’s writings in English became a source of their liberation all over India. Now the RSS/BJP want to disempower them by removing that national and global inter-connecting language from these communities.English as our future national languageIndia is not a one language country like China or Japan or Germany. It is a country of several castes, communities, tribes still speaking several small languages in small regions, apart from several regional official languages. They need one national language to communicate with each other and that should be English. But the RSS/BJP want to impose Hindi on them, while allowing the rich to use English as home, market and job language. The top rich class of India uses English as a global language for frequent migrations to different Euro-American nations. If the Dalit/Adivasi/OBC communities do not learn English they will remain oppressed for centuries to come. The RSS/BJP top leaders know the power of English.It is a conscious attempt of the RSS/BJP to club the question of learning English with colonialism and Lord Macaulay. Macaulay’s central theory by arguing in favour of English education was to create a class “Indian by blood and colour, but English by tastes, opinions, morals, and intellect”. Which castes and communities became Indians by blood and English by taste?Did V.D. Savarkar not become exactly that? He studied in England, ate English food and wrote books in English not to liberate the Dalits and Shudras from untouchability and oppression but to construct a theory of upper castes to establish a Hindu theocratic state. His book Hindutva: Who is a Hindu?, was written in English only. It is from this man their core theory of Hindutva and Hindu nationalism emerged.Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd is a political theorist, social activist and author. His latest book is, The Shudra Rebellion.