Bharat that is Hindia?
Bachi Karkaria's Erratica and its cheeky sign-off character, Alec Smart, have had a growing league of followers since 1994 when the column began in the Metropolis on Saturday. It now appears on the Edit Page of the Times of India, every Thursday. It takes a sly dig at whatever has inflated political/celebrity egos, and got public knickers in a twist that week. It makes you chuckle, think and marvel at the elasticity of the English language. It is a shooting-from-the-lip advice column to the lovelorn and otherwise torn, telling them to stop cribbing and start living -- all in her her branded pithy, witty style. LESS ... MORE
Raj (not Makepeace) Thackeray jumps on banwagon
My joined-at-the-lip columnist, Jug Suraiya, wrote on Tamil Nadu CM Stalin's battle against infiltrating Hindification. Now Maharashtra's desperately-wannabe-CM, Raj Thackeray, has joined Word War too, leading to All Unquiet on the Western Front as well. With all guns blazing, Raj T wants to enforce the use of Marathi instead of not just Hindi, but also English. Bank of Maharashtra staff even had to ask for protection against his stormtroopers.
This now-toothless tiger's latest rampage is of a piece with his aggressively cultivated image as last remaining champion of the original Shiv Sena raison d'être: 'tod-phod party'. But Balasaheb's hotheaded nephew tod-phodoed the party itself, forming breakaway MNS in 2006, after uncle anointed his own (milder) son Uddhav successor. Now both cousins are desperately seeking relevance, which has led to this week's talk of rapprochement. If that actually happens, it will be quite a Tamasha for Marathi and 'Marathi Manoos'.
But there are no 'ifs' about forcible Hindi jaw-jaw leading to war-war. From South to East, the battle has been joined against this covert neo-colonialism by Hindi-speaking imperialists. 'Impose and rule' is being seen as their strategy. Seize reins via Trojan Horse of 'logical' three-language formula, their tactic.
Paranoia? Really?! There's no such thing as surrogate mother tongue. Those not born to Hindi will suffer growing disability nationally. Globally too thanks to parallel lowering of English. Language is so emotive a tie that it unknotted Pakistan in 1971. Why, in the linguistic reorganisation of 1956, our own old state boundaries came to naught.
Let non-BJP states reject a double engine, in schools as in sarkar. Fine. But if, next, each wants to drive only its own track, cross-border communication will get totally derailed. Already in alienating tower blocks, neighbours of different stripes don't speak to one another. Imagine if people from different states can't speak to one another. We'd end up like that verse about Boston 'Land of the bean and the cod/Where the Lowells talk (only) to the Cabots/And the Cabots talk only to God.'
The possibility should leave you speechless.
***
Alec Smart said: 'Paradise lost. 'Normalcy' gunned down. Who will Rest in Peace?'
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