Latest news with #Marwari
NDTV
6 days ago
- Politics
- NDTV
Raj Thackeray's Men Do It Again. Rajasthan Man Assaulted Over WhatsApp Status
Mumbai: Raj Thackeray's men have done it again. A shopkeeper in Mumbai's Vikhroli was assaulted by workers of the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) over a WhatsApp status deemed offensive to the Marathi-speaking community. The video shows the shopkeeper being forced to apologise publicly while being threatened and physically attacked. This marks the latest in a series of confrontations involving MNS workers over Marathi identity. The assault took place in the Tagore Nagar area of Vikhroli, a bustling suburb in Mumbai. The victim, a Rajasthani shopkeeper, had posted a WhatsApp status that read: "Dekh liya Rajasthani ka power. Hum Marwari hamare saamne kisi ki nahi chalti (Witnessed the power of a Rajasthani. No one can stand before us Marwaris)." The provocative message, which boasted of Marwari dominance over Marathi people, sparked outrage among local MNS workers. According to eyewitnesses and the viral video, a group of MNS workers confronted the shopkeeper outside his store. The video shows the man being slapped and verbally berated. The workers demanded he apologise to the Marathi community for his remarks. In the footage, the shopkeeper is seen holding his ears, and pleading, "I will not repeat such a mistake." The MNS workers continued to threaten him, warning that any further posts against Marathi people, whether by him, his family, or his employees, would result in more severe video, which the MNS workers themselves recorded, edited, and circulated, includes a Marathi song in the background and a caption that reads: "This is how people will be treated if they say or write or speak anything against the Marathi people." The MNS logo is prominently displayed, a move that directly contradicts Raj Thackeray's public directive to his workers to avoid recording such incidents. During a recent address, Mr Thackeray had instructed party members to refrain from filming their actions to avoid legal repercussions. After the assault, the shopkeeper was dragged out of the market and taken to a local police station, where a complaint was filed. Vishwajit Dholam, the local MNS leader, called for a boycott of the shopkeeper's business, urging residents not to purchase goods from "such traders." This incident is not an isolated one. Just weeks earlier, on July 1, MNS workers in Thane assaulted a street food vendor for refusing to speak in Marathi, an altercation that led to the arrest of seven party workers. The episode prompted a counter-protest by traders in Bhayander, who accused the MNS of moral policing and targeting non-Marathi communities. In response, the MNS, alongside allies like the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena (UBT) and the NCP (Sharad Pawar faction), organised a protest march on July 8 in Mira-Bhayander to defend Marathi "asmita" (pride). In another incident, a migrant auto-rickshaw driver from Uttar Pradesh was assaulted by supporters of both the MNS and Shiv Sena (UBT) near Virar railway station. The confrontation stemmed from a prior argument captured on video, where the driver, when questioned about his refusal to speak Marathi, defiantly declared, "Main Hindi bolunga" ("I will speak in Hindi"). The video went viral, prompting a group of MNS and Shiv Sena (UBT) supporters, including women, to confront the driver. He was slapped multiple times and forced to apologise publicly to Bhavesh Padolia, the man who had questioned him, as well as to Mr Padolia's sister and the state of Maharashtra for "insulting" the Marathi language. Uday Jadhav, the Virar city chief of Shiv Sena (UBT), was present at the scene and later defended the assault, stating, "If anyone dares to insult the Marathi language, Maharashtra, or Marathi people, they will get a reply in the true Shiv Sena style."
Indian Express
6 days ago
- Politics
- Indian Express
MNS workers assault Mumbai shopkeeper for WhatsApp status ‘insulting' Marathi language
A group of Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) workers Wednesday allegedly assaulted a shopkeeper in Mumbai's Vikhroli area for posting a WhatsApp status that they claimed insulted the Marathi community and language. A video of the incident went viral on social media Thursday and sparked outrage. According to sources, the shopkeeper, who hails from the Marwari community, had put up a status that some MNS workers interpreted as offensive towards Marathi-speaking people. The workers allegedly went to his shop, questioned him about the post, and beat him up after being dissatisfied with his response. Video of the incident circulating on social media shows MNS functionaries, including party office-bearer Vishwajeet Dholam, confronting the man and later parading him through the locality. The party workers have claimed that the man made 'disrespectful remarks' about Marathi people through his status. Speaking to the media, MNS leader Avinash Jadhav said, 'We do not want to show our strength. But if someone comes to Maharashtra, earns their livelihood here, and then insults the Marathi language, the Marathi person will definitely react.' No police complaint has been filed so far. This was not the first instance when MNS workers allegedly targeted a man over the Marathi language. On June 29, a shopowner was allegedly assaulted by a group of MNS workers in Mumbai's Mira Road. Baboolal Khimaji Choudhary, a resident of Bhayander (East), told the police that seven unidentified men entered his shop and claimed that a proposal had been passed in the Maharashtra Assembly requiring all businesses to hire Marathi-speaking staff and operate in Marathi. He claimed that when he responded that all languages are spoken in the state, they became aggressive and started assaulting him. The incident sparked nationwide outrage among non-Marathi speakers, as well as MNS and Shiv Sena (UBT) workers, who protested in the area. The police registered an FIR against seven people on the complaint of the shop owner.
Scroll.in
7 days ago
- General
- Scroll.in
How Hindi emerged as the lingua franca of the ‘Hindi Heartland' at the cost of other languages
Ironically, Hindi, the language that gives the region its name, is its least unifying factor. After all, it was not the first, and certainly not the only language, of the people who are colloquially referred to as Hindi-bhashi or Hindi-speakers. Sadanand Shahi, who taught Hindi literature at the Banaras Hindu University, minces no words in describing this unique linguistic phenomenon: 'Hindi is nobody's mother tongue. We gave up our own languages to create a national language.' Adds Apoorvanand, who teaches Hindi literature at the University of Delhi, 'Once the British linked Hindi with employment, people surrendered their languages.' Hence, just as the evolution of Hindi as the main language of this region was a political movement, the people's identification with it as their principal language is also a political statement, as we shall see. But first, let's look at the languages of the Hindi belt. In Rajasthan, the traditional languages used to be Marwari and Rajasthani, both of which had a rich oral tradition. The well-known Rajasthani writer Vijaydan Detha, recipient of the Padma Shri and the Sahitya Akademi Award, insisted that even though his script may have been Devanagari, in which present-day Hindi is written (more on this later), his language was Rajasthani. Weighing in on this, Manvendra Singh says, 'The classical name for the Rajasthani language was Dingal, and within this, there were several dialects, spoken in different parts of the state.' According to him, Dingal, like Marwari, used to be written in the Mahajani script (not Devanagari), though writing was not so widespread. Madhya Pradesh also had several languages spread across its expanse, from Bundelkhandi to Gondi, with Bagheli, Malvi, Katli, and so on. In Uttar Pradesh, the spoken languages ranged from Braj, Awadhi, Banarasi, Khari Boli, and Bhojpuri to Bundelkhandi, Garhwali, and Kumaoni. Further east, in Bihar, Bhojpuri was complemented by Magadhi, Magahi, Maithili, Kuduk, and Santhali. Yet, to an outsider, they all sounded rather alike. Travelling from Allahabad (now Prayagraj) in 1869, Syed Ahmad Khan, founder of Aligarh Muslim University, observed, 'All the way from Allahabad to Bombay, in villages and marketplaces and trains, with government officials and peons of all departments and coolies everywhere, I conversed in Urdu – and everywhere people understood and replied in Urdu itself. With some words there was a need to explain the meaning or sometimes to state one's meaning more simply. But there is no doubt that everywhere in Hindustan the Urdu language is understood and spoken…' A similar observation was made by British linguist GA Grierson after a 30-year survey of the Indian languages, which was published in 1928. He wrote, 'It is thus commonly said, and believed, that throughout the Gangetic Valley, between Bengal and Punjab, there is one and only one language – Hindi, with its numerous dialects.' In 1937, author Rahul Sankrityayan added a nuance to what he referred to as a common language which, he wrote, 'incorporates all the languages which emerged after the eighth century AD in 'Suba Hindustan'' – the region that is bounded by the Himalayas, and by all the regions associated with the Punjabi, Sindhi, Gujarati, Marathi, Telugu, Oriya and Bangla languages. Its older form is called Magahi, Maithili, Braj Bhasha, etc. Its modern form may be considered under two aspects: a widely disseminated form called Khari Boli (which when written in Persian characters and with an excess of Arabic and Persian words is called Urdu), and the various local languages which are spoken in different places: Magahi, Maithili, Bhojpuri, Banarasi, Avadhi, Kannauji, Brajmandali, etc… Hence, the emergence of Hindi was the consequence of three factors. One, a desire to find unity in diversity, and a historic uninterrupted tradition of a 'national' language which could be a worthy alternative to English. Therefore, nationalist Indians converged on Hindi as a mother language with multiple 'dialects'. After all, Grierson had also validated this position. Two, a broad intelligibility among all north Indian languages, as seen above; and three, the growing Hindu–Muslim divide after 1857, which led to religious ownership of the language – Hindi for Hindus and Urdu for Muslims. These perspectives were partly correct, only because by the time these people experienced the commonality of the language, there existed linguistic syncretism in the Hindi heartland. But this was a consequence of several centuries of coexisting and collaborating. Says Apoorvanand, 'All languages spoken in the wider region of the Indo-Gangetic plains have a degree of intelligibility, but to say that they are sub-languages, or subsects of Hindi is wrong. All these languages had their own vocabulary and grammar.' In fact, 'Some of these languages – Maithili, Avadhi, Braj Bhasha and Khari Boli – have literary traditions of several centuries while others – Bhojpuri and Magahi – have rich oral folk literatures… Villagers use these to talk with merchants in nearby trading centres and with villagers from other areas. Small town residents use them as their mother tongue, while both educated and uneducated city dwellers use them at home or among friends,' writes Christopher R King. The intelligibility among the languages was the consequence of two factors. One, they all belonged to the Indo-Aryan group of languages with some commonality of vocabulary and grammar, points out author and linguist Peggy Mohan. The only exceptions here were the few tribal languages such as Gondi, Santhali, and Kuduk which were preserved by the itinerant tribes, though they did not belong to this region. Most of them traced their origin to the Dravidian lingual traditions. For instance, Neetisha Khalko, who belongs to the Kudukhar sub-tribe within the Oraon family, says her language Kuduk belongs to the Dravidian tradition. She says, 'Kuduk is similar to the language spoken in parts of the central Konkan region.' Two, as Mrinal Pande points out, 'The Hindi belt has been India's most mobile and colonised area with countless horizontal layers of linguistic cultures that the latest migrants/invaders brought. [Hence], there has been much linguistic give and take mostly through oral sources, among adjacent states.' Talking about the evolution of languages, she says, 'Language normally doesn't flood large areas it flows through. Like a slow-moving river, it keeps depositing new sediments over the old constantly along its path.' Getting into the nuances of the traditional north Indian languages, Mohan says that contrary to popular belief, the modern (regional) languages are 'not like Sanskrit and the Prakrits, though they adopted words from local Prakrits.' Consequently, she writes, 'Is it a step down for our language to be a mixed language, not really different from a creole? Shouldn't highly evolved people like us be speaking a language that is … pure?' Creole languages emerge over time by the assimilation of two or more languages. Answering her own question, Mohan further writes, 'Languages are living things, and they live in ecosystems; they are highly responsive to signals from the environment… Languages that refuse to adapt, languages that hide from the light, tend to go extinct… Finding these mixed languages blooming around us, then, is a cause for celebration.'
Pink Villa
15-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Pink Villa
Who is Yogita Bihani? Meet Archana Puran Singh's son Aaryamann's GF who started as sales manager, acted in The Kerala Story and…
Archana Puran Singh and her entire family, including her 2 sons and husband Parmeet Sethi, have been entertaining us through her vlogs. Well, her son Aaryamann too started his own channel a while back and recently made it to the headlines for his latest vlog. In the video, he soft-launched his girlfriend, Yogita Bihani, who is well-known for her role in The Kerala Story. Let us take you through the life of the actress who is currently ruling the hearts of Archana and Parmeet's son Aaryamann. Yogita Bihani's education and corporate career Yogita Bihani was born on August 7, 1995, in Bikaner, Rajasthan. She was brought up in Delhi in a Marwari family. She completed her schooling in 2012 and later went on to earn a degree in Computer Science. After this started her career, which was nowhere close to acting. The actress began working at a Delhi startup, Redfoodie. She then worked at Pratham Education Foundation and later shifted to Trilyo as Sales and Operations Manager until 2018. Yogita Bihani's entry in modelling In 2018 itself Yogita Bihani contested in Femina Miss India Rajasthan and finished in the top 3. She then featured in ads for several big brands and became a known face in the modelling world. Yogita Bihani's television debut Her biggest career break came her way in 2018 when she was approached to play the lead in Ekta Kapoor's Dil Hi Toh Hai opposite Karan Kundrra. It was a hit and ran for 3 seasons. Yogita Bihani's transition to Bollywood She started her movie career with a supporting role in Netflix's AK vs AK. Then came her big screen debut with Vikram Vedha in 2022 alongside Hrithik Roshan and Saif Ali Khan. In 2023 came a film that made her a star, The Kerala Story. Yogita Bihani's relationship with Aaryamann Sethi Aaryamann Sethi, in his latest vlog, reached Hyderabad to surprise his girlfriend Yogita, who was shooting there. Confirming the status, Yogita stated, 'Yes, we are dating. I wasn't expecting it to come out in the open so soon.' It is quite early to talk about their relationship now, but we only hope the best for these two.
Time of India
14-07-2025
- Business
- Time of India
How Safexpress bootstrapped its way to build India's largest PTL Express business
For Delhi-based Rubal Jain and his family, who run India's largest Express Part Truck Load (PTL) business, the roadmap to success has always been simple: don't bite off more than you can chew — or as they put it, 'Utna karo jitna kar sakte ho.' Stay frugal, focus on profits, and let cash flows call the shots. 'We are a conservative Marwari family and hence the concept of profit and positive cash flows was very high. So, there were years where we
