India Shining, as a matter of fact

On behalf of the Plain English Campaign, John Updike announced at its annual meeting at Princeton earlier this year the Foot in Mouth Award ...

On behalf of the Plain English Campaign, John Updike announced at its annual meeting at Princeton earlier this year the Foot in Mouth Award for 2004. It went to the US Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld. To show how richly Rumsfeld deserved the award Updike read an excerpt from a speech Rumsfeld made to the editorial staff of ‘Texas Shining’ three months ago. Here’s a piece of Rumspeak: “There are known knows, there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not unknow…but there are also unknowable unknowns…”

In presenting the Award to Rumsfeld, Updike said that not since Ezra Pound wrote his Cantos has anyone used English so philosophically. However, Rabri Devi, president of the Bihar Academy of Arts and Letters, strongly dissented from the Award Committee’s decision. She charged the Committee of being biased in favour of white Anglo-Saxons. “There’re many Indians who speak better English with foot in mouth than Rumsfeld,” she asserted.

“Who better deserves the Foot in Mouth Award, Donald Rumsfeld or K. Bihari Kumar?” Ms Devi angrily asked the members of the Award Committee. She pointed out that Bihari Kumar is a Lower Division Officer, grade 5/III, in the Ministry of Peaceful Nuclear Warfare, and has just finished a four-volume study on India’s Middle Path to Nuclear Nirvana. She cited a piece of Bihari Kumar on the occasion of Pokharan-II nuclear explosions of 1998: “While these blasts give us a nuclear deterrent, it is a non-deterrence with deterrent capability based on the Gandhian philosophy of violent peaceful defence and the principle of certainty of uncertainty and uncertainty of certainty.”

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When John Updike and Margaret Atwood heard Rabri Devi’s quotes from the work of Bihari Kumar, they at once conceded that he was as strong a candidate, if not stronger, than Rumsfeld for this year’s Foot in Mouth Award. Over a cup of chai, Ms Devi confided to Atwood that while the foot-in-mouth mode of speaking English was rapidly catching on among academics, journalists and politicians in India, there was another mode of speaking English that’s most threatening the development of Indian English. Paraphesia dementia as this mode is called by the Bihar Academy of Arts and Letters, is spreading rapidly in India, Rabri Devi told Atwood.

In this mode of speaking a person speaks volubly and using only vowels. An English writer, Robert Conquest, first detected this mode of speech among English MPs in the sixties. But this was promptly stamped out in Britain by the Plain English Campaign. Devi asked Atwood whether this campaign would come to India to fight this epidemic of Paraphesia dementia. Out of question, ruled the information and broadcasting ministry. It says that the Plain English campaign would thoroughly destroy the India Shining Campaign.

The police said the trio from Chandigarh — Rohan (21), Sumit (22), and Mohit (19) — were dhol players by profession and had procured the weapons due to an old rivalry with local residents.

Suspecting affair, Odisha lecturer assaults wife and her friend, parades them on street

India4 hr ago

A lecturer of Commerce and his associate were arrested for assaulting his wife, garlanding her with slippers and parading her on the road with her male friend. The woman, who has been living separately from her husband, was assaulted and humiliated in public. The incident was recorded and shared on social media. Police have seized evidence and are investigating the matter.

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