Rudyard Kipling wrote "The Road to Mandalay" in 1892 when Burma was a British colony and Queen Victoria was the Empress of India. In the poem, Mandalay is a city some 500 miles along the Irrawaddy River from the capital, Rangoon. British troops stationed in Burma were transported on the river by paddle steamers. The picture painted of…

Notes that the decline of English in India began soon after its introduction into Indian universities near the middle of the nineteenth century and was precipitated in part by too lofty aims and too little attention to Indian languages at the university level. (RL)