Skip to main content

Language and Culture



There is an umbilical relationship between language and culture.  Language is one of the most visible or tangible expressions of culture.  That’s why the language of the dominant culture gains ascendancy in the world. 

English is the world’s lingua franca today because of two reasons primarily.  One, it was the language of the dominant coloniser.  Wherever the coloniser went, his language too went.  If the French had more colonies than Great Britain, French would have been today’s global language.  Two, the dominance of Western culture, particularly science and technology which revolutionised the 20th century world.

In 21st century, people seem to be getting sated with technology.  Science was never a common man’s cup of tea, let alone a more invigorating drink.  The 21st century is facing a vacuum because of the lack of that invigorating drink, the kind that spiritual gurus spoke about time and again.  India has a chance to fill the vacuum. 

If India can fill the vacuum, its language will become a dominant language of the world. 

But does India have anything wonderful to offer to the world?  Our Prime Minister tried to highlight yoga.  But yoga is nothing new.  Perhaps we should learn to introduce it in a new bottle. We have multi-talented gurus like Baba Ramdev who excel in spirituality, business and politics simultaneously.  Maybe, these New Age gurus are the future of India.

Are they?  One simple truth is that nobody can fool too many people for a very long period.  There are already dozens of cases of mala fide practices against Ramdev.  Nothing about him seems to be genuine.  In politics, he sought to survive by breeding hatred among people.  Thus he was no better than the ordinary run of politicians.  He is no better than the ordinary businessman either, it seems, as far as ethics is concerned.  What’s left is his spirituality.  Will anyone trust it once his fraudulence looms so large in the other areas?

I think why India fails to make any mark in the global arena is precisely because of the fraudulence that runs deep in our veins.  Fraudulence seems to be an integral part of our culture.  Even if God comes personally and grants us everything we want, we will still find ways of swindling others. 

This is the reason why India lags behind in spite of the infinite potential it has.  Hence its predominant language, Hindi, is not likely to make any mark in the global amphitheatre. 

The rise in the number of religious cults and practices is an indication of what the world is questing after.  There are a lot of Indian gurus raking in the moolah too marketing spirituality.  But like the Chinese products which flooded the markets by virtue of being cheap, Indian spirituality too floundered.  Cheap things are destined to die soon.


PS. Written for Indiblogger Edition 159: #culturetradition

Comments

  1. 'एकलव्य'March 3, 2017 at 3:59 PM

    आपके विचार अत्यंत रोचक एवं विचारणीय हैं , आपका आभार व्यक्त करता हूँ। "एकलव्य"

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownApril 8, 2017 at 9:30 PM

    Sir,
    Agreed, there are "dozens of cases of mala fide practices against Ramdev", but most of them are yet to be proven true. They seem to be highlighted by an Indian, foreign funded political party which is rapidly losing its public base, and hence the desperation to malign Ramdev.

    I agree that "Fraudulence" runs deep in our veins and we must take some action to correct it. It seems the future is not that grim. A lot of people's mentality has changed recently, and people are trying to inculcate integrity in their daily lives. That’s a good sign.

    Thank you for sharing.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Pranita a perverted genius

Bulldozer begins its work at Sawan Pranita was a perverted genius. She had Machiavelli’s brain, Octavian’s relentlessness, and Levin’s intellectual calibre. She could have worked wonders if she wanted. She could have created a beautiful world around her. She had the potential. Yet she chose to be a ruthless exterminator. She came to Sawan Public School just to kill it. A religious cult called Radha Soami Satsang Beas [RSSB] had taken over the school from its owner who had never visited the school for over 20 years. This owner, a prominent entrepreneur with a gargantuan ego, had come to the conclusion that the morality of the school’s staff was deviating from the wavelengths determined by him. Moreover, his one foot was inching towards the grave. I was also told that there were some domestic noises which were grating against his patriarchal sensibilities. One holy solution for all these was to hand over the school and its enormous campus (nearly 20 acres of land on the outskirts
9 comments
Read more

Machiavelli the Reverend

Let us go today , you and I, through certain miasmic streets. Nothing will be quite clear along our way because this journey is through some delusions and illusions. You will meet people wearing holy robes and talking about morality and virtues. Some of them will claim to be god’s men and some will make taller claims. Some of them are just amorphous. Invisible. But omnipotent. You can feel their power around you. On you. Oppressing you. Stifling you. Reverend Machiavelli is one such oppressive power. You will meet Franz Kafka somewhere along the way. Joseph K’s ghost will pass by. Remember Joseph K who was arrested one fine morning for a crime that nobody knew anything about? Neither Joseph nor the men who arrest him know why Joseph K is arrested. The power that keeps Joseph K under arrest is invisible. He cannot get answers to his valid questions from the visible agents of that power. He cannot explain himself to that power. Finally, he is taken to a quarry outside the town wher
19 comments
Read more

Levin the good shepherd

AI-generated image The lost sheep and its redeemer form a pet motif in Christianity. Jesus portrayed himself as a good shepherd many times. He said that the good shepherd will leave his 99 sheep in order to bring the lost sheep back to the fold. When he finds the lost sheep, the shepherd is happier about that one sheep than about the 99, Jesus claimed. He was speaking metaphorically. The lost sheep is the sinner in Jesus’ parable. Sin is a departure from the ‘right’ way. Angels raise a toast in heaven whenever a sinner returns to the ‘right’ path [Luke 15:10]. A lot of Catholic priests I know carry some sort of a Redeemer complex in their souls. They love the sinner so much that they cannot rest until they make the angels of God run for their cups of joy. I have also been fortunate to have one such priest-friend whom I shall call Levin in this post. He has befriended me right from the year 1976 when I was a blundering adolescent and he was just one year older than me. He possesse
8 comments
Read more

Kailasnath the Paradox

AI-generated illustration It wasn’t easy to discern whether he was a friend or merely an amused onlooker. He was my colleague at the college, though from another department. When my life had entered a slippery slope because of certain unresolved psychological problems, he didn’t choose to shun me as most others did. However, when he did condescend to join me in the college canteen sipping tea and smoking a cigarette, I wasn’t ever sure whether he was befriending me or mocking me. Kailasnath was a bundle of paradoxes. He appeared to be an alpha male, so self-assured and lord of all that he surveyed. Yet if you cared to observe deeply, you would find too many chinks in his armour. Beneath all those domineering words and gestures lay ample signs of frailty. The tall, elegantly slim and precisely erect stature would draw anyone’s attention quickly. Kailasnath was always attractively dressed though never unduly stylish. Everything about him exuded an air of chic confidence. But the wa
9 comments
Read more

Nakulan the Outcast

Nakulan was one of the many tenants of Hevendrea . A professor in the botany department of the North Eastern Hill University, he was a very lovable person. Some sense of inferiority complex that came from his caste status made him scoff the very idea of his lovability. He lived with his wife and three children in one of Heavendrea’s many cottages. When he wanted to have a drink, he would walk over to my hut. We sipped our whiskies and discussed Shillong’s intriguing politics or something of the sort while my cassette player crooned gently in the background. Nakulan was more than ten years my senior by age. He taught a subject which had never aroused my interest at any stage of my life. It made no difference to me whether a leaf was pinnately compound or palmately compound. You don’t need to know about anther and stigma in order to understand a flower. My friend Levin would have ascribed my lack of interest in Nakulan’s subject to my egomania. I always thought that Nakulan lived
16 comments
Read more