The Right Perspective

(This article first appeared in  Swarajya ) “Still I remember how her body lay Exhausted by our love, her pale cheeks lined With tumbled lock of hair, and round my neck The tendrils of her arms she tightly twined; Held me so close as if she bore within Her heart concealed some secret deed of sin.” The poem is not from an English erotica. Nor it is a translation of French, Spanish, Italian, or Farsi love poetry. It is a translation of the eleventh century Kashmiri Sanskrit poet Bilhana’s  Chaurpanchashika  (The Love Thief) by Richard Gombrich (Love Lyrics). If you are surprised by the fact that this sensuous poem was originally written in Sanskrit, you are not alone as we seldom envision Sanskrit a language of romance. Despite being the language of such masterpiece as  Abhigyanshakuntalam ,  Kamasutra , etc, we rarely hear of Sanskrit being claimed as a ‘romantic’ language. Such accolades, around our dinner table and in friendly conversations in WhatsApp...

 (This article originally appeared on MyIndMakers.) Hindi- walas are probably one of the most, if not the most, hated linguistic groups in India.  From the often violent anti-Hindi movement of the south to recent social media trolling about ‘Hindi imperialism’ ever since Narendra Modi-led BJP government riding a huge parliamentary mandate romped to power in Delhi, the Hindi speakers have seen it all.  Hardly a day goes by when you don’t encounter someone ranting and outraging on the mainstream and/or the social media about the evil Hindi- walas , the votaries of Hindi, Hindu, and Hindustan, who are out to ‘impose’ Hindi and their culture on the rest of India.  Such feeling is prevalent probably more in south India than in the other parts of the country.  So, why does Hindi invoke such feeling, one may wonder? Well, on the surface the root cause of this antagonism may seem to stem from the constitutional status of Hindi.  After independ...

(This article appeared first on MyIndMakers ) India is a multilingual society.   According to the 1961 census, there were 1,652 languages in India.   For these many languages to exist and to survive the test of time, there needs to be a cohesively conducive environment.   And there isn’t a better ingredient of such an environment than a prolonged era of relative peace and tranquility.   Believe it or not, despite the epic Mahabharata war, the brutal Islamic invasion, and an encumbering and destabilizing partition, India has been fortunate to have a history of relative peace and tranquility compared to many other parts of the world.   This is evident in many facets of the Indian civilization, none better than in its languages.   Through the process known as ‘contact’ and ‘convergence’, the languages of India that happen to belong to distinct linguistic families have created something of a linguistic melting pot – a melting pot where divergent linguistic ...

The role of media in Kashmir is suspect to say the least.  The left wing media (remember, this is गड्ढा से गधा media) that relies heavily on 'my taxi driver' account has its own compulsions in creating a narrative which is not necessarily a reality. So we take whatever a heavily com promised and an entirely demoralized (they have lost all its recent battles) media says with a pinch of salt.   Keep in mind that only a small pocket of the state where Muslims have majority has issues. Jammu and Ladakh are not affected. Only small but loud fraction of Muslim population that is radicalized in Islamism, Jihadism, Wahhabism is the trouble-maker. Then of course you have media, the secular-left-liberal groups, the Abdullahs and the Yechury's of the world, and not to mention the Congress and the Nehruvadis.  Those who think Kashmir is a political issue are either naive or dishonest to the core because it is not. BJP is wrong in putting the 370 on the back burner. Demographic reeng...

A LINGUISTIC, CULTURAL OUTLOOK TO ENGLISH As a student, I took a summer job in the US, where one of my responsibilities was to answer incoming telephone calls. In midst of a telephonic conversation, the voice on the other side asked me if there was someone else in the office who could speak better English. I paused for a second and replied ‘no’. The person on the other end decided to hang up. English is not my first language. Nor is it second, third, or even fourth. Before I was exposed to any formal English language instructions, I learnt Hindi, Magahi, Bhojpuri, and Maithili. I learned English as a foreign language in public schools of Bihar. Then used it as a medium of instruction at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, but never developed a habit of using it on a daily basis until one day I landed up in a remote sleepy campus town called Champaign-Urbana, home to the University of Illinois. For me, learning English was not a pain-free exercise. Understanding the grammar, memori...

Yaska’s Nirukta and his reflections on language. -Avatans Kumar (@avatans) “The person who is able to recite the Vedas but does not understand its meaning is like a post ( sthaanu ), or a mere load-bearer ( bhaarahaara ); but he who understands the meaning will attain to all good here and hereafter, being purged from sins by knowledge.” ~ Yaska Introduction: The history of the science of linguistics in India can be traced back to the age of the Vedas, some 3,500 (or more) years ago.   The necessity of ensuring that no corruption or modification should creep into the Vedic texts (and language itself) led Indian scholars to discuss, debate, and put forward theories of language, and discourse.   Some of the prominent among those early scholars were Panini, Yaska, Katyayana, Patanjali, Bhartrihari, Shaktayana, Gargya, Audambarayna, etc.   Yaska is known for his pioneering work in the science of etymology, the Nirukta.   The exact date of Yaska’s existen...