The grammar of Mulayam’s Hindi

At one level Yadav’s outburst exemplifies once again his divisive politics. This has characterised his style of functioning in Uttar Pradesh. In the case of the UP Muslims he has invariably raised emotive issues while the community’s real problems of poverty, unemployment, education have remained on the backburner. The vote-bank politics of the so-called `Maulana Mulayam’ has done irreparable damage to Muslims. Muslims have been left with the baseless charge of being “appeased”. This was abundantly evident in the Muslim Places of Worship Bill that was passed in the UP Assembly recently. The Samajwadi Party issued inflammatory statements once the Bill was passed in the House.

By raising the language issue in Parliament Yadav bas brought his irresponsible politics to the national arena. For Hindi may be the national language of the country but the historical process that provided it this exalted status also meant the subordination and marginalisation of many castes, sects, communities, and also many literary languages. It was not the question of one language achieving a dominant status but the domination of one culture the north Indian Brahminical culture. Hindi, its official sanctity notwithstanding, does have the potential of re-opening old wounds.

The identification of Hindi as the language of caste Hindus was the first exclusivist stance the language acquired. Hindu writers, thinkers and nationalists of the 19th century as well as the British contributed to this idea. The former created myths and geneologies about its origin. They insisted that Hindi was the direct descendant of Sanskrit the language of Aryans. Thus it predated the arrival of Muslims and was also the language in which Hindu texts were compiled. While the British orientalist mindset happily agreed that Hindi was exclusively a language of Hindus they were not too sure about its roots in antiquity. Indeed, they argued that they had created the language by, as Vasuda Dalmia’s study has shown, “retrieving it from the Muslim debris which had collected around it.”

The linkage with Hindu identity made Hindi very vulnerable to politicisation. If at one level its later standardisation and homogenisation created internal cohesion cementing the idea of `nation’ and `national language’, the projection of the standardised language as arya (the language of Hindus) made it stand apart from the language of non-Hindus, particularly Muslims. Dalmia’s study showed that the evolution of modern standardised Hindi went parallel to the making of modern Hinduism. The former absorbed literary languages only to reduce them to the status of dialects, and the latter accommodated in peripheral positions sects and groups that had remained beyond its Brahminical purview.

It is this historical context that makes Hindi to some extent an exemplar of an aggressive brand of north Indian Brahminical chauvinism. Given this inherently explosive character of the Hindi language, demands like those of Mulayam Singh Yadav will never be taken too kindly across the country. They are not only irresponsible but mischievous.

The writer is associate professor of history at Jamia Millia, New DelhiSir: Your edit “Setback to Sonia” (IE, March 31) puts the finger on the pulse of the problem when it states that “the problem of leadership in the Congress is not one of personality but of an alternative political package”. Clearly, there is a lack of logical, coherent and rational strategy to deal with tricky political situations as they crop up.

Witness first the stunning reverses in the Lok Sabha elections, and then the fiasco in Bihar by extending support to the RJD of Laloo Prasad Yadav and now the debacle in the Rajya Sabha elections. A series of such setbacks can snowball into a major, nay serious loss.

There are, as of now, no serious contenders to the Congress president’s gaddi, as no one would like to don the crown studded with thousands of thorns. Poor Mrs Sonia Gandhi has to perforce carry on with the job but surely she has only the wheel in her hands. The ship has already become rudderless, with all machinery controls gone haywire!

VILAS HAWALDAR Mumbai