Us and Them

“I can simply say they were paid back in their own coin. Do you think those who evicted our people were peace loving unarmed people? Our people just retaliated. For 11 months our people who were evicted and could not return home despite several efforts at initiating peace talks with the opposition."

With these words, the Chief Minister of West Bengal finally withdrew his mask of neutrality and emerged as the person he really is. He thus dispersed all doubts regarding his intentions and responsibilities and clarified that his loyalty towards his party comes before anything else. With this revelation, many a heart broke, many a tear fell and many a hope crumbled, for foolishly enough, millions had tried to believe otherwise through all these years. Anyone who has followed Indian politics, even with a passing interest, however, would probably have realized such an eternal truth long ago. The peculiarity of the situation wasn't the revelation itself, but its acceptance from the culprit himself.

Barring a very few exceptions, the fundamental aim of any politician of our society is to secure power and remain in power, power for himself and power for his group. The hunger for power and the thirst to repress have been the chief motivations for most post-Independence Indian politicians. To achieve this goal, politicians usually resort to the age old trick of promises: promises of food, of running water, of roads, of jobs, of electricity... and of everything that India still lacks. And of course, such promises are seldom kept to ensure that there are always plenty of things left to be promised during the subsequent election campaigns. A second element adds variety and strength to the arsenal of the politician. It's that of fear that is to be injected in the minds of people. An able politician uses both his weapons appropriately and skillfully to strengthen and lengthen his hold on the throne. Responsibility to people or humanity never is a priority. But still, most politicians at least officially maintain a neutral face, and the chief minister was noted for the same.

The ruling party of West Bengal has hold on to this doctrine for the past three decades; it has used a perfect mixture of lure and fear to hold its ground. An impeccable organization of the party throughout the state and a conspicuous absence of any political opposition, either strong or respectable, have helped them achieve their goal smoothly. However, there have also been a few hiccups, and the developments at Nandigram would certainly classify as one.

They first started it all by planning to sell a huge piece of land to industrialists, disregarding the fact that this land was inhabited by farmers who would have nowhere to go after the proposed eviction. The villagers united and began anti-government agitations. With a clumsy administration, things quickly went out of control, and at some point the dissenting villagers drove away the machinery of the ruling party along with a horde of their supporters from the disputed territory. The height of the crisis was reached in the middle of the night on March 14, 2007, when the state police shot down several villagers. Clashes between the ruling part and the protesters turned more and more ugly with the passage of time, with regular cases of murder, rape and destruction of property, mostly on the agitators' side, and with anarchy prevailing across the region. Finally, an army of cadres of the ruling party regained control of the area by brute force as they stormed in with firearms and re-installed the evicted villagers, with the police ordered to stay out of the entire operation. The seize of Nandigram finally ended in arson and bloodshed, with several dissenters brutally murdered and severely injured, and many rendered homeless.

Resort to violence and brutality to strengthen position is not a rare phenomenon in post-independence politics of Bengal or India. What made this particular case different was the extensive media coverage of events. Despite repeated half truths, suppression of facts and lies from the government, people this time had the opportunity to see videos that showed firing, armed processions and villagers being interviewed; and videos and images have a much stronger impact on the human mind than newsprint. This lead to a general awareness among people and excited especially those who still had some faith left in the government, as Calcutta subsequently witnessed a protest rally of a 100,000 people, headed by eminent intellectuals of our time. This was something out of the ordinary, for a rally without any political affiliation was something rarely hard of in our city.

The state and the ruling party were not prepared for the same, and the mass criticism from different apolitical sections injected a fear into the minds of the politicians, which readily surfaced as fury. The top leaders resorted to a volley of curses and personal abuse that further tarnished their characters before the civil society. As ministers threatened to literally "throw protesters into the sea", and as apologistic pseudo-intellectuals raised their voices against the protesters and for the government, arranging a counter rally, the party workers, perhaps unintentionally, lost all their camouflage of courtesy and exposed their vicious tooth and nail, and found, to their utter dismay, that they now had the governor, the media, the high court and a large part of the population criticizing them. The demarcation between the oppressors and the oppressed became distinct at this point.

The line that seperates us, the people, from them, the rulers, is now clear for everyone to see. They rule and we are ruled; they order and we obey; they are the repressers and we are the repressed. All this is practiced under the pseudonym of democracy, where they only act as if they work for us. As long as we act the way they want us to, the system gets along smoothly. When we resist, or even criticize, calamity strikes. In the post-Nandigram scenario, politicians find themselves cornered with all the neutral forces against them, and they resort to slandering everyone who voice a single word against their atrocities: be it the law, the media or the most respected poets and movie directors of our time.

In all probability, the events of Nandigram that unfolded through 2007 would not have a major impact in the politics of West Bengal. However, they would still be remembered for their role in bringing into light the often-unseen line of separation that exists eternally between the chair and the ground. A line that is based on fear: on one side of which dwell the fearsome, and on the other dwell the fearful. The two can never be united, for the prosperity and growth of them depend on the suppression of us. The chief minister should be thanked heartily for making this as clear as daylight.

Disappearing Languages

The LORD said, "If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other."

The Bible tells us of the Tower of Babel, which was built to reach the heavens by a united humanity, all speaking a single language. When God saw that humans would be able to do whatever they set their minds to, so he confused their unified language and scattered them.

Fascinating as the myth is, it is unlikely that at one point of time all human beings communicated in a universal language. From the dawn of history, variety has been the characteristic of a culture, and different languages have acted as the backbones of different civilizations. Long term geographical isolation has facilitated the development of new languages, while increasing interaction among groups at a later stage in history has helped enrich these languages. Media that emerged from the necessity of communication and an urge for expression of the wandering food gatherer have gone on to grow into rich languages and dialects, and have nourished different cultures to grow upon them. All that has played a significant role in the journey of humanity from the ice age caves to to the skyscraper --- literature, history, philosophy, religion, and science --- all need language for support.

Languages are not constant. Neither are they eternal. They are born, they grow and they die as well. With interaction among cultures and with decline and growth of different civilizations, languages of the past have altered significantly. New languages have often flourished and old dialects have faded away into oblivion. In many cases, driven by hatred and prejudice, man has often deliberately eradicated certain cultures, along with the languages spoken by those people. Several South and Central American languages are worthy of mention in this context, the dooms of which were brought about by the Spanish and Portugese invaders. Those which had stood through the winds of change have modified and reshaped themselves with time, refreshing their vocabularies and restructuring their grammars often incorporating elements from other languages. Such variations occur at a very slow rate and are only observable after a considerable time has elapsed.

At present however, languages of the world face a new challenge. With the tides of Westernisation flowing stronger than ever (which we often confuse as Globalsation), less well represented languages are disappearing at a rate faster than ever. According to a recent study, the rate of extinction of language far exceeds those of the most endangered species of birds and animals. Dialects spoken by indigenous people, tribal languages in particular face the greatest danger, for they usually have very few speakers, they seldom have a script and rarely do they have any use as a means of official or academic communication. There are certain aboriginal languages in Australia that are literally left with but a handful of speakers. Many tribal languages in India, too, face a similar threat. Judging by the trends one may sadly conclude that within a few hundred years, all such languages would cease to exist.

Many of the mainstream regional languages in India, too, are facing threats of a similar kind, though not of the same intensity. English has found its way deep into the tongue of the city-dweller, much deeper than it ever did when India was under the British Crown. This spread of English, which is commendable, has been unfortunately accompanied by an apathy towards the vernacular, and comunication in English between native speakers of a regional language has become a common phenomenon in India. Unlike the Far East, South Asia has not been able to find a way to incorporate regional languages as modes of expressing scienctific ideas, and the existance of 22 'national languages' (apart from more than a hundred tribal languages) have rendered impossible the use of regional languages in administration. The bulk of the younger generation of today, especially those hailing from the major cities communicate in a confused conglomerate of languages that consist of elements from English, Hindi and the regional language. Vernacular literature of the last century, despite their great literary value are being neglected. This situation is further exacerbated by a draught in quality literature in regional languages in more recent times. More and more able writers from the subcontinent are finding it easier to express their imagination and ideas in English compared to Bengali or Malayalam. An analogous trend is also reflected in popular entertainment. Bollywood movie songs these days have chunks of lyrics in Desi English, something almost unimaginable a decade or two ago, when a fiery 'Shut Up!' from the heroine or a shy 'I love you' from the hero would suffize to bring out the 'Bilayti' aura required for the movie, coupled with settings in a European landscape.

The current trends depict a very grim picture of an urban society in the not so distant future, where everyone belongs to a grossly homogeneous 'global' culture and speaks a single language, and where all other languages are studied only by linguists and historians. Some of the local languages may still exist as dialect of the poor and the rural masses, but deprived of their previous glory and in a state of severe negligence. Such a linguistic rift would add up to other socio-economic and cultural factors and magnify the gaping divide of mankind which appears to be imminent some time in the future. One can only hope that such a nightmare would not become reality.