Medium shift

But,while the Shiv Sena makes a desperate effort to create anxiety within its constituency,there is anecdotal indication that its idea of the besieged Marathi Manoos may be unhinged from reality. As this newspaper reported on Thursday,the Sena-run BMC has shut 27 Marathi-medium schools for lack of the requisite number of students as children opt for English- or Hindi-medium education. In other words,as businesses are being bullied to put up Marathi signage,as residents are being randomly told to hush their cosmopolitanism or ship out of Mumbai,within the Senas oldest empire its language plank is being hollowed by growing aspirations aspirations that signal a remove from the Senas constructed anxieties.

Also,even as the Sena has inflicted its language chauvinism on the streets of Maharashtras cities,great damage has been wrought to Marathi literature. The idiom of writing out Maharashtra has traditionally reflected a questioning of orthodoxies. Admittedly,other parties have been complicit in imposing a censorship on local scholarship recall the attack on Punes Bhandarkar Institute. But its politics certainly puts the Shiv Sena at odds with the great traditions of Marathi-language literature.