No one likes the war of words that has re-erupted over Belgaum. The Boundary Commission must have taken into consideration the pros and cons of the language issue before allotting it to Karnataka. There is nothing to stop Maharashtrian children from going to Marathi schools. There is no discrimination against their getting jobs. But mischief-makers will make issues when there is a chance to keep themselves in the news. The Thackerays and their sainiks think little besides making a nuisance of themselves, simply to draw media attention. First, they drove Tamilians in small businesses out of Mumbai. Then, they drove out Biharis, Uttar Pradeshis and Oriyas. Now they plan to target Kannadigas. There seems to be no one to stop their goondagardi.

Allow me to make a few observations on the fate of languages that politicians exploit to ensure their victory in elections. They pretend to love their mother tongue but send their own children to English-medium schools. Better knowledge of English assures jobs and opportunities for higher learning in India and abroad. Language purists are the worst enemies of their own mother tongue.

Among the examples I have often quoted is when train compartments carried warnings in Devanagari saying, Dhoomrapaan nishedh and Yatra mein madira paan karna verjit hai. Few people understood what they meant. This was the reason why Hindi, which is the most widely spoken language in the country, has failed to become the link language. Our link language is English.

Another glaring example of politicians misusing language for their ends is from the Punjab. When the Census was being prepared, the Bharatiya Janata Party exhorted all Punjabi Hindus to declare Hindi as their mother tongue. It was largely due to Prakash Singh Badal’s vigorous campaign that they told the truth and a huge chunk of Ferozepur stayed in the Punjab.

A conclusive example of the damage language purists can inflict is the pre-dominance of English in the world. At one time, its two rivals were French and Spanish. Neither French nor Spanish accepted words from other languages. English, on the other hand, stole words from all languages to enrich itself — it has over 10,000 words of Indian origin — and is today the most widely spoken in the world. We Indians speak it better than any other people whose mother tongue it is not and score over them in securing jobs and in commerce.

The only example I can think of a people changing their mother tongue is that of the Jews. They spoke the language of the country in which they lived. They evolved a common lingo called Yiddish. It has a literature of its own. A novel in Yiddish by an American, Isaac Bashevis Singer, won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Then they decided to revive Hebrew to make it the national language of their own state, Israel. Today, all Jews speak and write Hebrew.

Sage advice

Three nuns were attending a Fifa
match in Africa
Three men were sitting directly
behind
Because their habits were partially
blocking the view,
The men decided to badger the nuns,
hoping that they’d
Get annoyed enough to move to
another area
In a very loud voice, the first guy
said,
“I think I’m going to move to
Sydney
There are only 100 nuns living
there.”
Then the second guy spoke up,
“I want to go to Tasmania
There are only 50 nuns living
there”
There third guy said, “I want to go to
New Zealand
There are only 25 nuns living
there”
One of the nuns turned around,
looked at the men,
And in a very sweet and calm voice
said,
“Why don’t you go to hell?
There aren’t any nuns there!”

(Courtesy: Vipin Buckshey, Delhi)

Like father, like son

A policeman’s son fared badly in his half-yearly examinations. The father was very angry and was about to thrash him when the boy took out a fifty-rupee note from his pocket and said, “Daddy, yeh lo aur mamley ko rafa-dafa kar do. (Take it Daddy and let the matter end here.)”

(Contributed by Kuldip Salil, Delhi)