In this paper, I interpret the perspectives of 19 economically oppressed parents and five teachers from the Indian city of Vadodara, in the state of Gujarat, as they discuss the unprecedented emphasis on the learning of English in education in India. In this ethnographic study, I employed participant observations, sentence completion tasks, in-depth interviews, and focus groups. Verbatim transcripts were uploaded into the qualitative software NVivo. Open, axial, and selective coding was used to identify themes, which were supplemented by coding notes and commentaries. The parents dwelt on the dominance of English in the educational and professional landscape in India, and designated English as the most prestigious subject taught in school. They spoke eloquently about its irreplaceability for gaining social status and mobility. Notably, they indicated that the heavy emphasis on English is a frustrating reality given their own unfamiliarity with the language, which limits the amount of academic support they can offer their children.