Nepali political leaders in both the ruling coalition and the opposition are caught in an interesting situation concerning the use of language. In their speeches in Parliament and political forums, they sometimes sound impolite, harsh and propagandist. Politicians’ favourite mode of language is oriented to the addressee. When they are aware of an audience at public meetings or in Parliament, they tend to make it invective or, at times, vituperative. I have no appetite for such modes of language they use.

Addressing this problem, George Orwell, known for his writings on politics and the use of language, wrote an essay titled “Politics and the English Language” in 1946. He saw a trend of language misuse. For instance, he observed politicians’ penchant for evading the truth and called this the “ugly and inaccurate” use of the written English of that time. He noted a connection between the political orthodoxies and the bad shape of language. Orwell believed that a disturbing aspect of such use of language was the practice of making lies sound truthful. What worries me these days is that we are slowly drifting away from the condition of the truthful use of language. As a language and literature student, I see a trend of evasion and distortion of truth in the use of language.

I have devoted much of my life to teaching language and literature. Sometimes I wonder if there is any connection between my teachings of language and the students’ pursuit of truth. Perhaps my connection between the two is episodic and coincidental.

There are some stories I want to share about being a teacher of the English language. There are two sides to that. At the college level, I taught English as a compulsory subject. However, while teaching at the Central Department of English at Tribhuvan University—at the MA and MPhil levels—I observed that English became a medium of serious literary and cultural studies. It became interdisciplinary. Politics, history, ideologies and subaltern studies came to form a composite academic discipline. But teaching English as a compulsory college subject linked me to a wider literate public. This reminds me of my career as a language teacher and my contextual connections with teaching subjects, including literature and politics.

One common experience of compulsory English or Nepali teachers is that their students are spread all over the country. And it is common to find students of diverse backgrounds who greet you as a teacher.

My experience of meeting the leader of what was known as the ‘ferocious’ leader of the Maoist guerrillas is worth recalling. The Maoist leaders who had come out of the jungle to sign an agreement with the seven parties in 2006 were at the centre of attention. I met them at an academic research centre run by Professor Lok Raj Baral at Sanepa. As a playwright, I was keen to study the mood and features of the guerrilla leaders. They were sitting there. The leader of the Maoist party addressed the 15 or so academics. But he addressed me as his teacher. I realised that I had taught him compulsory English at Patan College, Lalitpur. That was Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’. I did not teach him ideas and ideologies; I did not teach him Marx’s The Eighteenth Brumaire; I taught him the simplified stories of Shakespeare that were grouped under tragedy, comedy and history.

In an interview, Nepal Television’s Bijaya Pandey asked me what I taught Dahal. I said, “I taught him tragedy, comedy and history, and now he is doing all three.” The other Maoist leader sitting with Dahal was Baburam Bhattarai. In college, I taught English to the erstwhile Panchas, now the prominent leaders of the Rastriya Prajatantra Party, except for Rabindra Mishra, whom I taught English literature at the MA level.

What I am narrating here is the story of a teacher who taught the English language as part of general language education. In Nepal, the role of a Nepali or vernacular language teacher would be greater than that of an English teacher who teaches Shakespeare's stories. The experience of a language teacher would say that the teacher teaches skills of language use, but not the modes and ethics of its use. On the whole, language teaching or learning is part of general education.

I return to the topic. There is no institution that teaches politicians about the use of language. Moreover, there is no identifiable register of language to teach those who are or would be taking up politics as their vocation. There is no evidence to prove that language education as a subject would be more useful for a particular group of people. But what is true is that you measure a politician’s use of language in terms of his or her level of education in general. Can the reckless use of politicians’ language show that they are not adequately educated? Empirically speaking, that may be the case. But there are no answers to the question—what can you do about it?

Orwell found politicians’ use of language “ugly and inaccurate.” But I would say the reckless use of language by political leaders, mainly in their speeches, sometimes makes one feel that they are perhaps not adequately educated. Information is tricky; gathering information using various means available today is more challenging. Linking politicians’ use of language to their level of education or opportunity may not be easy, but on the whole, we can say that they are related subjects.