New Delhi, Dec. 29: In Rabindranath Tagore’s 150th year, the Bengali language was the subject of hectic research at the home ministry today.
By evening, some half-a-dozen meanings of “harmad” had been collected by officials, who are perplexed by the angry reactions from Bengal to the use of the word in P. Chidambaram’s letter to Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee.
“It means goons, antisocial elements, armed cadres, etc,” said an official who, like most others in North Block, was not familiar with Bengali. When one more “meaning” — mercenary — was offered, it was promptly noted for reference to the minister.
The ministry will pore over all these “meanings” before Chidambaram writes back to Bhattacharjee, probably tomorrow before he leaves for Arunachal Pradesh.
Why did Chidambaram use the word? Officials said they wouldn’t know because it was a “political issue” — a hint about a political component to the letter’s drafting.
The word has in origins in the Spanish Armada, the fleet of 30,000 that was defeated by the English navy in 1588 and led to the decline of Spain and the rise of Britain as a colonial power, changing the course of world history.
The Portuguese brought the word to Bengal three centuries ago, when its distorted form harmad was used to refer to Portuguese pirates and slave traders, notorious for their brutality. In recent years, it entered Calcutta’s street language when Mamata Banerjee began using it to refer to CPM cadres.
Bhattacharjee’s letter to the home minister takes him to task for using the “nasty word” without knowing its meaning. Chidambaram read a copy of the letter late last night after returning from Maharashtra and is believed to have told aides today that the chief minister sounded angry.
There is a deficit of Bengalis in the ministry, at least in its higher echelons. None of Chidambaram’s personal secretaries is a Bengali, nor his officer on special duty or home secretary G.K. Pillai. What the ministry could have been done, though, is check the word’s meaning — which it began doing only today.
Perhaps Chidambaram, a lawyer, may now point out that in Spanish and Portuguese, armada can be an adjective meaning “armed” and, in Czech and Slovak, refers to the armed forces. And, he might add, he was referring to armed cadres.
Postal delay
The government today blamed the delay in the delivery of Chidambaram’s letter on the post office. After being sent via speed post on December 22, it reached the Calcutta GPO at 6am on December 24 and could have been delivered that morning, a release said. The home ministry leaked the letter later in the day. It reached Bhattacharjee on Monday. “Alok Sharma, General Manager, India Post... has apologised,” the release said.
