LIBERATING INDIAN MIND-7

PLAINLY SPEAKING

“Can you not be a bit sober and unassuming while discussing anything. It is wasteful to show style and mannerism when talking plain is more rewarding; more communicating.”

“Yaar, you know, I started as a creative writer, not as research scholar or a party worker. We as a lot suffer from gregarious tendency. Only writers after the ladies are fond of ornaments . The one is in gold; the other in a bit of twist of tongue. Being pompous gives us a feeling of being at home. We carefully store vocables and enjoy wasting too many of them to say too little. Only historians surpass us in wasting volumes and saying nothing. That is why, I do not aspire to be a historian even after having written a few books that may pass for history.”

I had already guessed as to where are you going to perch. But my dear, what you have written is not history. That is a creative piece using sundry Information from the past, a something in between fiction and history that is what our historians tell about you and I think it is not an unjust assessment at any rate.”

“I found it somewhat embarrassing to converge the discussion at me, but the same time I felt the accumulated anguish taking possession of me. I fought it, and tried to divert the issue, “I think it is for others to discuss the Worth of my works rather than myself recounting my achievements. To be plain, I am not even eager to be in the company of historians. I have really developed an aversion to them. ”

You are rotten enough yourself to judge them rightly. They have been judged time and again by those who count as historians in the world.

I am poor in Arithmetic; poorer still in counting and discounting. I simply know none of our historians of India who was recruited to write our textbooks knew the language in which the texts are available. None of them has done any work on Indian linguistic scenario or anything closer to linguistics. None of them was a trained archaeologist. None of them had made any serious effort to study the customs and rituals which form a major source of material for writing history. I have not heard of any session of History Congresses, nor any seminar devoted to any topic concerning linguistic or sociocultural moorings of the so-called Munda or Naga people, because they thought all that had to be searched, researched and interpreted has been searched, researched and interpreted by the erstwhile masters and presented crisply in their books and journals. If such specimen of know-nothings who kept mastering the language of the erstwhile masters are elevated by international community as know-all and be-all of Indian history, I doubt both their bonafides and ability to judge the merit, but I do not doubt their cunning to use their shoes left back, as effectively as their own presence in our colonial past. This aptly describes their worth and sums up our destiny. Where could they lead the nation and what seductive role did they play in misguiding the rulers that be is an open secret?”

“You are a bit unreasonable,yaar, in fact, merciless as a butcher to be able to give them their due. Why don’t you see, how resolutely and valiantly have they fought against the communal forces..

I cut him short, “that the genii they fought emerged stronger with every rubbing of the magic lamp and ultimately prepared to gulp the lamp holder.”

He appeared nonplussed. I added, “How much thrashing you need to realize that they were used by communal forces with secular hood, in order to empower those who divided the country to redivide it? Of course the game was so open as to arouse the dormant ones who were constantly being nudged but did not read the intent until they felt they are going to fall off the furniture.”

“Tell me straight, do you think they are less patriotic than you?”

“No one can define what patriotism is in a scenario in which those who once divided can declare their intent to divide the remaining half and are judged by a court to be as patriotic as those who fight to keep it together unless, according to the court, they have not executed the plan.”

“Don’t you see what the court saw and in your own whim appear to be holding even the court to be unpatriotic.”

I did not answer.

He continued, “The court adjudged that they were throwing a warning, that the unity of the country in threatened because of the policies being followed. They were as eager to preserve the unity as their critics who charged them of malafides.”

I found him somewhat disgusting. He read me, “We have drifted into unsavory interludes. We should have been reticent about current happenings.” He repeated repentantly.

I came out of my reserve, “you wanted things to be said simply and straightly, so I wanted to tell you that our history has been written by those who could have been more successful as salesmen staking even their soul and conscience not to miss a good offer. They were vociferous but not competent. They dishonestly wrote racist history with Marxist packaging. They offered their services for a fee and compromised the dignity of historian as a profession.”

“Again on the rampaging march!” He found me as distastefu, “There is a limit. We must respect it.”

“I may appear a bit harsh, but why don’t you see that I am plainely describing those who crossed all the limits, the limit of ideology, the limit of social concern, the limit of epistemological and pedagogic ethos. Don’t you forget that they established monopoly in text book-writing, wrote books worse than notebooks prepared by good students, they forced the candidates preparing for services to learn simplest things and get the maximum marks for repeating stated sentences having serious bearing on the social and administrative fabric.”

“This is an old song that has been sung time and again by you to hurt my ear drum.”

“But that does not mitigate their sin nor it can be ignored when we are taking stock of everything.”

“What is sin in such a simple act.”

“Didn’t you see the design and plan that smells of criminal collusion.”

“This is the problem. You can suspect design and crime even if you find a flower grafted on a different variety.”

“Don’t make things look as simple and innocuous as to create doubt in my mind that you all were actually actively in collision with those who were adamant to prove the superiority of the Iranian culture vis-a-vis ancient, that is, Hindu India and were ready to go to any extent to achieve their goal. This ringing complex created a Sir Syed Ahmed, a Muslim League, a rift which was briefly patched When Gandhi stood to support Khilafat movement which even other Muslim countries did not raise with similar vehemence, leading to gore consequences and a trail of riots, carnage, direct declaration of Hindu killing and ultimately division of the country to create new divisions.”

He slammed his fist on his head to show his displeasure without saying a word.

“I know I can not convince you that it was a revival of the same intrigues through pedagogy. But answer me a simple question, why were all the historians picked up for writing the text books Hindus and all those who picked them up and supervised their work were Muslims.” If still you do not read the intent behind all this exercise, you qualify for those whom even the maker of the world can not convince. I deliberately suppressed a few words and rose in agitation uttering जो गुरु मिलहिं विरंचि सम aloud.

LIBERATING INDIAN MIND-6

HISTORIAN PLACE IN SOCIETY

“Can we not Make our gossip more fruitful?” He proposed.

How could I reject such a sensible invitation. I promptly agreed, but with a precondition, “We shall not take ideological position.”
I was wondering how this idea came to his mind. He and his likes had all along been surviving on taunts and sarcasm on those who did not fall in line. I was always reminded of the wayward youths meeting in the evening on the culvert at the turn of our colony and passing witty remarks on passersby in mumbled voices normally audible to their own group. just to fight their vacancy and frustration. Behavior of Communist party and its offshoots in India had a similitude from its very inception. He, being a cardholder of the party, hardly be receptive to anything serious unless recommended so by the party bosses. When I shared my mind he lashed back, “I know through what phase you people are passing and in what dire need you are to cover your own blankness, otherwise you would not have brought politics when I silently agreed to refrain from it.”

We laughed in union to celebrate the tit for tat.

“I really want to know what you meant by non-toxic knowledge? What you meant by toxicity and who were you targeting to. No, I am not ignorant either, but if my guess is correct, you meant the Marxist historians. Am I right?”

“Not Marxist historians alone, although they are not spared, and for our purposes they are more debased than those whom they followed.”

He waited for further elaboration.

“Before I proceed further, I want to ask you a question. Do you know who is the most powerful person in a society?”

“The ruler, no doubt.” He said emphatically.

“That is what I thought myself, but on a hindsight, I found the rulers are ruled themselves and those who rule the rulers enjoy the advantage.

He felt a bit elated, “Oh! that is true of the democracy, I agree. The ruling class, that is bourgeois, is the actual ruler and the ruling parties, whichever they be, take their line from them and that is the reason why parties claiming polar differences behave much like the same once they are in power. The parties change but the ruling class remains the same.”

But even the ruling classes are guided and invisibly governed by their adulators, those who fuel their desire to reach the zenith surpassing their likes, those who change the minds even of mighty kings to desert the power and throne acquired with pain and patience to become a recluse, who coaxed millionaires having so miserly amassed their riches to donate it all for the cause that could earn them fame, who incited through admiration the emperors symbolically retaining their crowns and throne but spend their personal life like sanyasis. It is the adulators, specialing in the art of laudatory who rule the rulers, control the society and in that lied the secret of power enjoyed by the Brahmans as a class.

“But why did you bring this nonsense at the center of our discussion? Had we not proposed to discuss toxicity of epistemology”

“Just to remind you that of all the adulators the historians have been the cleverest and poisonous to their nails.”

“What about the poets who glorified the rulers?”

“They lacked the art, were non assertive, were caught by their misplaced exaggerations, and as such were rated just above the Shudras by the Brahmins despite their claim to Brahmanical order. But those among them who wrote Puranas, the legal codes, the epics intermixing distorted history with simulated history enjoyed the power even over Brahmanas. Mind it toxic accounts of the past in whatever name, be it history, myth or story, are stronger weapons than objective presentation and analysis of the actual happenings and deeds. But they, like pestilence, damage the entire society. Mind it, all fabrication and suppression and exaltation is toxic in nature.”

“You have such a clever way of cursing those you dislike that you shoul,in our age of intellectual property, get it patented in your name.”

“Herein lies the ploy. My dear either you either you failed to understand what I told so plainly or you lack the courage to bear the truth. Have you heard the adage, अप्रियस्य च सत्यस्य वक्ता श्रोता च दुर्लभः. Mind it, not only speaker is the rarest of the rare, but also one who listened it. Truth is the most caustic and corrosive of all the chemicals. Carelessly handled, it puts at risk the life, well being and even prestige of its votary and yet strange is the make of the spine of such freaks that they can not think and do otherwise. And as I told you this singularly makes them so formidable that even autocrats quake and shake at their very name.”

“Stop it! he shouted laughing. There is an end to self-adulation. Living cozily as an egg under a sitting hen you talk in phrases borrowed from martyrs. Is’t it ridiculous.” He rose to leave me. I was left with no alternative but to follow his footsteps.

कल की चर्चा में एक कमी रह गई। ऐसी ही कमियों को दूर करने के लिए मैं आप लोगों को निमंत्रित करता रहता हूं। यह है कर्ष का समनादी (होमोफोनिक) जिसकी उत्पत्ति पत्थर पर नुकीले पत्थर से लकीर खींचने से उत्पन्न ध्वनि से हुई है, जिसे देववाणी में कर, किर, खर, खिर के रूप में सुना और उच्चरित किया गया। इसे संस्कृत में कृष. क्लिश, क्षर, कर्ष आदि रूप दिए गए। इसी मे आ, वि, आदि उपसर्गों के आकर्ष, आकर्षण, विकर्ष, विकर्षण सहित जौताई, लेखन, क्षीणता – कृश. जलाकर क्षीण करने वाले अग्नि कृशानु, क्लेश, क्लिष्ट, क्लोश (क्रोश, आक्रोश, कोसना), यहां तक कि क्षेत्र, क्षिति, क्षिप (ऋ, उंगली), क्षेप, क्षेपक आदि की एक विशाल शब्दावली का विकास हुआ जिसकी पूरी पड़ताल के लिए लंबा समय चाहिए। इनमें से कुछ बाद की छानबीन में खारिज भी हो सकते है।ध्यान देने की दो बाते हैं। एक यह कि देववाणी मे इसका स्वतंत्र विकास भी चलता रहा- किरोवल, छिनगावल, किरकिराइल जिसे हिन्दी में किरिकरी के रूप में अपनाया गया, कीरा, आदि ऐसे ही हैं। संस्कृत के क्षेत्र में कृषिजीवी देव समाज जब अपने मनस्वी होने पर गर्व करने लगा और देवों के प्रति अपने विनम्र आदर भाव के बाद भी अपने को मानव कहने लगा और नगर सभ्यता, उद्योग व्यापार की अपनी तकनीकी सीमा में संभव शिखर बिन्दु तक पहुंचा तो इस क्रम में उन्नत और सूक्ष्म संकल्पनाओं के लिए इसी मूल से जिस विशाल शब्दावली का विकास किया उसका अंशमात्र ही तद्भव रूप में देववाणी या भोजपुरी में पहुंचा। यहां तक कि आकर्षण, विकर्षण, संकर्षण जैसे शब्द तक तद्भव रूप में भी इसमें न पहुंचे।

दूसरी बात यह कि समनादी शब्दों में स्रोत विषयक भ्रम के कारण एक की अर्थछाया दूसरे पर पड़ने लगती है और हम शिथिलतावश सभी को एकमूलीय मान लेते हैं। उदाहरण के लिए आकर्ष, विकर्ष, के साथ हम निष्कर्ष और उत्कर्ष को भी रखने की भूल कर सकते हैं परन्तु इनमें जल के निर (नीर) और उत (उद) की साझी भूमिका है।

इस रहस्य को धातु-प्रत्यय-उपसर्ग और अन्तःसर्ग पर निर्भर रहने वाले वैयाकरण नहीं समझ सकते थे इसलिए यह न समझ पाए कि उपसर्ग से धातुओं का अर्थ क्यों इतना बदल जाता है मानो वह अर्थ जबरदस्ती लादा जा रहो है। रहस्य यह है कि जिन्हें हम धातु और उपसर्ग मान लेते हैं वे स्वतंत्र समनादी शब्द या उनके बदले हुए रूप हैं।

किसी भी विषय पर विचार करते समय लोक पर ध्यान देना उपयोगी रहता है। संस्कृत की तुलना में उसकी जड़ें अधिक गहरी हैं। यदि कोई शब्द विशेषतः भोजपुरी में हो और वह संस्कृत का तदभव प्रतीत हो तो सबसे पहले इस संभावना पर विचार किया जाना चाहिए कि कहीं ऐसा तो नहीं कि मूल भो. में बचा रह गया हो, यह देववाणी का हो जिसका संस्कृतीकरण हुआ हो।
आज दो शब्दों ने ध्यान खींचा। एक कर्ष दूसरा काढ़ना। गिरिजेश जी ने दूसरे को पहले से निकला माना। तब समय का अभाव था इसलिए तफसील में न गया, अब मेरे कंप्यूटर ने समस्या पैदा कर दी। आइकन और लिपि का विकल्प ही आरहा इसलिए इस पर चर्चा जरूरी लगा।
मेरी तर्क शृंखला निम्न प्रकार हैः
1. सं. कर्ष के लिए भो. रूप कसना और खींचना है। देवसमाज को इन क्रियाओं के लिए संज्ञा की जरूरत रही होगी। इसलिए कर्ष देववाणी से सारस्वत क्षेत्र में पहुंचा शब्द हुआ।
2. पर देववाणी में न असवर्ण संयोग होता था, न इसमें ष की ध्वनि थी, इसलिए इसका रूप कस रहा होगा। सं. करण की प्रक्रिया में हम कह आए हैं कि अजन्त ध्वनियों में अन्तस्थ (य, र, ल, व) सें से किसी के योग से असवर्ण संयोग किया गया अब कर्स बना। रकार के सान्निध्य में स का ष हुआ और इस तरह कस कर्ष बना। पर हरयाणवी की तरह यह उसी क्षेत्र की विवशता थी जो आगे चली अतः ईरानी में कशिश, कोशिश, काश, मिलता है जो देववाणी के निकट। एक मानी में सं. से भी दूर नहीं है।
3. पर खींचना (खींचल) के कर्ष का अपभ्रंश होने की अधिक संभावना है।
4. कस का मूल स्रोत या कहेो इसका मूल अर्थ जल होना चाहिए। यह कषाय – स्वाद विशेष, कोसा – जलपात्र या प्याला(पानपात्र) और ई. कश्ती मे और निषेधार्थी कष्ट – पिपासा जन्य पीड़ा (तु. करें त्रास, पाहि, तड़प, दर्द से)।

काढ़ना पुनः जल और उसकी गति से संबद्ध है। त. कडर – समुद्र, 0कड -जल, कुडि- पी, सं. कुंड, भाे. कूंड़ि- पानी निकालने का पात्र, कूंड़ा- जल भंडारण का पात्र, काढ़ा, कढ़ी, स्वाद सूचक कड़वा, अतः इसका कर्ष से संबन्ध दिखाई नहीं देता। इसका सं.करण काष्ठा में हूआ है, प्रक्रिया कर्ष वाली ही है। इसका प्रयों ऋग्वेद में हुआ है इसलिए यह भी देववाणी से पहुंचा शब्द है।

LIBERATING INDIAN MIND- 5
NON-TOXIC KNOWLEDGE

“When you are angry you lose your head and start slinging mud on those who enjoy International repute. It doesn’t help, my dear! instead, it show you in worse light than you are in sober moments. Do you know who you were dubbing irresponsible to defend the rowdy ones who know not what to say, and how to say, and when to say anything, because they apply their mind only after they have created a chaos by their outcry. Idiocy pays them because they are in the news just for that.”

I rejoined, “You have more aptly described what I meant. Only idiocy suites the news channels. They make researches to find out and highlight the idiots to paint an entire society in that light. You may easily judge for who they are working and for what and against whom. That is the outcome of the hard work of those historians whose side you take and resent when they are appropriately named and described. This is what I was a lamenting, when talking of the vacuum created by loss of sense of history. and that shows how important writing of scientific history is.”

“You are master of self-contradictions. The other day you were boasting we had developed sense of history right at the gathering stage and in that we were unique, and now you say we have no sense of history. Isn’t it funny?”

“Occasionally I call you an idiot, but I am wrong. You surpass them all as you you have not even the ability to ask right question at the right time. Had you asked me why, I should have explained how eagerly the numerous bands entering India as refugees at the time of last glaciation, were trying to preserve their identity, and what symbolic languages had they evolved and how to decode it. your internationally known historians have not even the remotest idea of that Age and fall foul on anyone trying to reach that remote age.

“Mind it, they are internationally known and pampered just for that. They are in league with the forces that destroyed our sense of belonging, our sense of individual and collective dignity. They have been commissioned and are being paid in invisible coins, for creating fissures and fragments in our society in order to create space for unchecked expansion of anything opposed to our national solidarity. And mind it, it was all done and is being done on the pretext of national solidarity.”

He had stronger dose than he expected, “don’t you get tired cursing and castigating all the while?”

“That is why I call you what I call you. I am explaining, and even explanations touch your raw nerves and smart you quick. How else could you ignore the obvious and instead of improving your understanding, come out with the spit accumulated in your head. You must know exactly what you know. You must discard what is doubtful, till something concrete emerges to invite a second look. You must know what you do not know, and must have courtesy enough not to interfere in those areas. You must respectfully learn from those who claim to know those areas. Your revered historians have been doing just the contrary and they enjoy benediction just for that from those who use them.”

He looked vacantly at me, his lips twitched, and fist getting tighter. I noted it and took a long breath in absence of anything better.

“You annoy me, yarr! You know them from a distance, I have been their student. I have seen them from closest quarter.”

“You should not have done it. you appear to have violated their privacy.” I intervened mischievously, and he raised his hand and gave me a first hand taste of his might on my shoulder.

“You shall have to bear the cost if there was a fracture, mind it.” I said rubbing my shoulder with the opposite hand.

“I didn’t intend to hurt you dear, but you deserved a payment for all your labour. Now you can not complain that I am a miser.”

“You shall be paid handsomely if you make a news out of this misadventure, for simultaneously my verdict on these chair-and-power-grabbing bigwigs shall also be made public. Not a bad bargain I think. But try to understand what payment in what coins you and your historians deserve for deliberately and constantly humiliating the most tolerant section of our society. The slightest provocation to any other community, you encouraged by design, could have sent you packed in your coffin to the place you over-deserve.”

“We are sick of this rhetoric, yarr! We taught you what we thought best as a potion for your maladies. Instead of feeling grateful you thanklessly blame us.”

“If that be so, allow them to humiliate you to give you a taste of your potion. Will you.”

“Simply, that lies in store for us if they get another round. The ugly face of Fascism covered under benevolent hoods shall come naked, and mind it you as well are not going to be spared, fight as much on their side as you can.”

“Those who know of only two colours, refuse to see the prism. I need no defense to prove me apart from my published words and deeds. Read me thoroughly to know me thoroughly. I am as honest as a pathologist, as cruel as a surgeon and as kind as a nurse. That is what makes me formidable to those who love their sickness. I consider all of you to be my patients irrespective of the sides. The problem is, they have no historian nor they need one. They are better with the vacuums and storms. You have no need of history, that is a finished job for you, not to be disturbed anymore but you have international market for your historians where they are in ready demand.”

He did not take me for my words, I did not expect it either. “The only cure of social maladies lies in a scientific approach to history. Non-toxic knowledge is a cure by another name.” I got up and left him brooding.

निडर, निर्मम, अमर, अभिमानी स्वर काया के बन्धन से मुक्त

LIBERATING INDIAN MIND -4
VCUUMS IN TIME

It was just a sheet of paper, neatly folded of course. He was swaying it left to right and back to forth alternatively as if it were a dagger. I enjoyed this funny gesture forewarning me of a possible attack. It was something new even to me.

“Be comfortable”, I said jeering at him, as he sat giving me a deliberate rub.

“I am going to deflate you.” He blurted out, unfolded the paper and placed it before me. “Read it to know why I invite you to come out of the cocoon of the past in the open sunshine of the present.”

The sheet contained a quote from Will Durant. It read,
“Reconstruction of the whole from a part is hazardous in history and the writing of history is the reconstruction of the whole from a part.”

“Did you understand what he said?” I asked him innocently.

“Is there any doubt?”

“Didn’t you feel annoyed that he took you for a fool and told you a halftruth?” i maintained my innocence.
“What is the complete truth in your reckoning?” He taunted as expected.

“Reconstruction of the whole from a part is hazardous not only in history but in the present as well. It shall be the same in future as well. This is a truism applicable universally, irrespective of clime and place. But what your historians did was that they reconstructed past even without a part. They created a history out of figments and produced a figmentary narrative not to pass even for a good fiction.”

He appeared to be unnerved and went into coma. Emerging from coma after a brief pause he shot back, “Isn’t your charge a self-projection. Yaar, This is exactly what you people are doing. This is what you plan to do. The history as we read and teach in our schools these days is an obstacle in your free flight of imagination which produce an aircraft made of flower, provides proof of use of nuclear weapon to cap the story of Mahabharat, and lo! what was that Dadhiichi story, I am forgetting at the moment?.”

I was not unnerved by his sudden assault. Managing my cool somehow, I asked, “Do you know who is responsible for this absurdity?

Instead of replying he waited for my answer.

“Do you you know you are keeping professional historians at par with the practicing politicians who specialize in absurdity because it pays them even when they are found to be ridiculous. Do you understand the reason? No, you are two plane headed to understand complexities. It Is, because these commissioned historians destroyed their history, their magnificent store of mythologies, their sense of history, sense of purpose and the sense right and wrong. A people who cared so much for their past that they like a somnambulant swam through the past to catch the horizon of their future and the skies intertwined, were left to be drowned at the alarm raised by them because it destroyed their sense of primacy and the sense of direction. They could not meet the demand of a prolonged learning in woken hours and forgot to exercise their limbs. You obliterated the fine lines separating myth and history on the one hand and on the other between past and present. It is you who came with beef plate at a time when a sizable number among them resented even the sight of garlic and onion in veg-market.”

He was not impressed, “My friend, I regret, you were too poetic to be reasonable.”

I was taken aback. I was swayed by emotion no doubt. But that was the core of the problem. Demanding unflinching rationality and eroding sentiments and emotions, which amounted to robotization of related section of society on the one hand and permitting free flood of emotion and total disregard of rationality in the section making it impossible for the two to live together with human dignity.

He felt uncomfortable when I explained him how I viewed it. Enthused by his reaction I went ahead. “Do you know who got Nobel in 1955 in physics?”

How could he know it. I myself recalled it as I found it curious. I told him, “It was a scientist who had proved, there are bubbles in the air. A nano-metric vacuum that could cause devastating storm.” I added from on my own without knowing or recalling if it really was the case. Call it my habit.

He listened patiently. I summed up, “There are bubbles in time as well. The vacuums caused by dismissive explanation by irresponsible historians.

A PLEA FOR INDIC

How books take shape, how other works half done, and even drafts completed just to be perused finally before passing them over to publisher, are kept in abeyance and a new idea makes claim to all the fire and fury in your reserve, is not known even to the author in advance.

I was going to edit and brush up six volumes that were almost complete, and all of a sudden my attention was drawn to an article published in OUTLOOK and it changed the entire game. Now I am writing a book on Liberating Indian Mind in a language which mocks my competence.

We call English to be one of the national languages of India but unlike many other countries that evolved an English of their own, we could not evolve an Indian English in which linguistic indulgences common among Indians could be accepted as normal and we could be spared the embarrassment caused by not adhering to British grammatical rules.

If English has to be here, it should, like American, be Indic rather than English

Liberating Indian Mind

3

He did not leave as promised. I had myself no such misgiving. We are friends for decades and know each other not to be easily deceived. He had been sort of Gambler, and gamblers may leave the table if they have won but not if they are losing till they have lost everything. Nay, even then, they try to beg or borrow in the hope that luck may turn the wheel down side up.
“Don’t you feel ashamed of eulogizing yourself?” he shot with pretentious empathy after a brief pause.

“An academic environment wherein those required to assess you and show your worth conspire either to ignore in order to silence you or compose and sing elegies to celebrate your imagined demise, it is redeeming to declare your dominant presence vide someone who has even obliviously rated you above par.” I punched him on the face.

He mellowed his tone, “agreed! But is it good to be so engrossed with the past when there is so much to be done in the present?”

I preferred to tease him, “Past is present and the present is past, you know?”

He looked at me with blank eyes, trying to believe I really meant what I said.

I relished it, “You know why?” I continued in the same vein, “because there is only one time, that is past. Present and future are grammatical constructs, to be taught to school children for essay writing. In life all that we have is past; all that is present is either past or future in the making whose outcome is uncertain. Future is hope and dream brewed in equal measure to keep frantically busy.”

He had recomposed himself by now, “You are fiddling. Aren’t you?”

“I know the size of your mind, year! It cannot accommodate lofty ideas.” I patted him on his back, “believe me or not, I was not joking. Those who are cut off from their past cannot handle their present correctly. If present shows your muscle power, past runs your nerves. A balanced combination of both is necessary to keep you moving with gust.”

He could not appreciate me and did not do, “You people are going to create mass frenzy which is disastrous for the country.” he spit his venom in one sentence.

I enjoyed it as normally I do, “Can we admit patient with me and listen me attentively?” I asked him softly.

He didn’t answer, but got benumbed and curious.

Do you know why despite the fact that English is an awesome language for me, despite the fact that I have to use too many words to say small things in a strange language, I have to use pompous words to express simple ideas, because words of equal measure often fail to occur at the right moment, and yet I chose to write this piece in English against my wish?

This shift from subject to medium of expression was something he did not expect. He felt a bit uneasy and could not decide what to say.

I did not pause for his answer, “Because you have lost yourself respect. Because, you do not listen to your people. Because you are cultural orphans of India looking for an orphanage disowning your own ancestral home. Because you have always respected distant ideas, distant things and distant voices, even distant vices. You form the class of intellectual elites who with their colonial mindset owe the responsibility of guiding the nation grinding the nation, grooming the nation, and dooming the nation without taking responsibility for anything done by you. Because I want to be heard by you, I want to be heard by those in other languages like you, and through you to be heard by my own people, but for that, I want to rub the nose of those on whose feet you fall flat and rub your nose to get recognition, forgetting the fact that Masters recognized their dogs more Intimately than their votaries and that they safely distance themselves from those who pose a threat to their Supremacy.”

He was eager to interrupt, but I ignored him, “the measures adopted by me may appear to be coarse but I want to liberate you from the Western incantation, and feel sad when you refuse the course to cure you. You need my help and I am there to help you bearing all the curses and appellatives thrown on me. You enjoy your bondage, because you have lost even the will to earn your freedom. The slavery you is rewarding but your slavery what the country is a curse.”

He found my reprimands too unsavory to take any note. All that passed to his head was a shrill note repulsive enough to be accepted and heard. He was disturbed of course, but even disturbance is a proof that the subconscious is not going to miss the thrust.

Liberating Indian Mind

2

“Have you read my book published as far back as 1973 (Arya Dravid Bhashon ki Moolbhoot Ekata, Lipi, New Delhi-2)?”

He did not answer. His eyes glistened in curiosity.

“I was not understood when I told, there is nothing Aryan radically different from Dravidian. There are groups of languages partly different from others but sharing enough in common, but differing in details among themselves.”

“You do not except Dravidian as a distinct family from the Aryan one?”

“Neither there are language families, nor linguistic prototypes generating the languages grouped together. There were numerous dialects independent from each other which in the process of building larger social formations intermingled to reshape the most acceptable one to become their common language. This was my evident claim, defying all the authorities on Historical and comparative linguists, but it was ignored despite its proven authenticity, and now the geneticists are conforming me, oblivious of this consonance although they are. Look at this sentence underlined by me.” I placed the copy of OUTLOOK before him.
‘the ‘Ancestral South Indian’, is better read as everyone’s ancestor in South Asia—whether Punjabi, Bengali or ‘Madrasi’.’
“Do you know what does it mean to me?” I asked him without giving him any respite.”

He kept musing.

“It is the greatest award of my life…” I declared boastfully.

He checked his laughter with some effort.

I ignored him, “because it has dwarfed all the linguists right from Jones to Krishnamury, who made big noise celebrating their ‘achievements’ one after the other, and has raised my stature high enough to overshadow them all in one go.”

“Should I leave?” He was visibly perturbed.

It was my turn to laugh him out.Liberating Indian Mind