Skip to main content

English and Shah's Sham

From X


Amit Shah turned a prophet recently. A day will come when those who speak English in India will feel ashamed, he prophesied. It’s high time his son felt ashamed of his English which is quite hilarious to say the least. But let’s look at more honourable right-wingers and their children. Nirmala Sitharaman, finance minister, speaks chaste English, and her daughter studied in London School of Economics like the mother. Will they have to be ashamed too?

What about Smriti Irani whose communication is heavily English-oriented? Maneka Gandhi is another fan of Amit Shah’s cultural nationalism though she sent her son Varun Gandhi to London School of Economics as well as Oxford. Ravi Shankar Prasad’s daughter, Aditi Prasad, also studied in the UK. The daughters of Subramanian Swamy studied and worked in Harvard and other top US institutions. Shouldn’t they all feel ashamed first?

There’s an excess of hypocrisy about the whole bandwagon of BJP’s cultural nationalism. Mr Modi himself uses a lot of foreign goods while renouncing anything un-Indian in his eloquent speeches to Hindi-speaking rural Indians. Vocal for local is only a local slogan, bhai, coined by one whose personal picks are all global.

Bvlgari (Italian) designer sunglasses, Montblanc (German) pen, Movado & Apple Watches (Swiss/USA), iPhone, footwear from various countries, Boeing Aircraft, premium personal care products, BMW… Well, our local-vocal PM has them all. And more. Even his famous Modi jacket has Chinese tailoring roots. Amit Shah’s advice to Indians to renounce English is not unlike Modi’s advice to go local.

Why do people like Shah and Modi behave like ultimate buffoons with such statements?

Their cultural nationalism, like everything else about them, is a mere political ploy to hoodwink the less enlightened people of India. The kind of statement about the shame of speaking English resonates strongly with BJP’s core voter base: North Indian rural and semi-urban regions, particularly, where English is still seen as elitist, local languages are tied to pride and identity, and there’s resentment toward the English-speaking liberal elite classes.

“The elite succeeded by mastering English; the masses will succeed by reclaiming their roots.” That is the narrative which wins votes for BJP.

There’s more. This sort of statement is a good diversion tactic. Provocative cultural statements are used by various governments in all periods of history for diverting people’s attention from serious issues such as inflation, unemployment, social unrest, and policy failures. Shah is as good as Modi in shifting debates from economics to emotions.

The ulterior motive of promoting Hindi over regional languages is also at play here. In the name of decolonising and de-anglicising the Indian mind, Hindi is being rammed down the throats of the citizens one way or another.

The whole enterprise is absolute sham. Just like Modiji’s grand laughs abroad. 


Comments

  1. Yamini MacLeanJune 21, 2025 at 2:47 PM

    Hari OM
    ...that's a smile? He looks more like one of those fairground clowns used to throw balls into the gaping mouth... Your point is well made. YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJune 21, 2025 at 7:52 PM

      Your comparison of that gaping mouth is hilarious.

      Delete
  2. Pradeep NairJune 21, 2025 at 4:22 PM

    I find the language controversy -- not just this one, there are various local versions playing out in different states (especially in Karnataka and TN) as well -- totally meaningless, and shorn of any sound rationale.
    As you know, this is nothing new. We have been hearing this right from our school days. And I am sure it will go on for another five decades or even more than that.
    We have such controversies because politicians and by extension governments aren't concerned about the welfare of the people. Their way of staying relevant is not by helping people lead successful and comfortable lives but but by stoking people's emotions.
    Sad!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJune 21, 2025 at 7:54 PM

      Language, religion, and any such emotive theme is being misued by our politicians endlessly. I wonder when the citizens will realise the folly of all this. If one percent of citizens start saying NO to such nonsense, India can be saved. But we are a nation of utter fools, I think.

      Delete
  3. magiceyeJune 21, 2025 at 5:43 PM

    They should be ashamed of existing. Period.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
18 comments
Read more

Ram, Anandhi, and Co

Book Review Title: Ram C/o Anandhi Author: Akhil P Dharmajan Translator: Haritha C K Publisher: HarperCollins India, 2025 Pages: 303 T he author tells us in his prefatory note that “this (is) a cinematic novel.” Don’t read it as literary work but imagine it as a movie. That is exactly how this novel feels like: an action-packed thriller. The story revolves around Ram, a young man who lands in Chennai for joining a diploma course in film making, and Anandhi, receptionist of Ram’s college. Then there are their friends: Vetri and his half-sister Reshma, and Malli who is a transgender. An old woman, who is called Paatti (grandmother) by everyone and is the owner of the house where three of the characters live, has an enviably thrilling role in the plot.   In one of the first chapters, Ram and Anandhi lock horns over a trifle. That leads to some farcical action which agitates Paatti’s bees which in turn fly around stinging everyone. Malli, the aruvani (transgender), s...
8 comments
Read more

The Ghost of a Banyan Tree

  Image from here Fiction Jaichander Varma could not sleep. It was past midnight and the world outside Jaichander Varma’s room was fairly quiet because he lived sufficiently far away from the city. Though that entailed a tedious journey to his work and back, Mr Varma was happy with his residence because it afforded him the luxury of peaceful and pure air. The city is good, no doubt. Especially after Mr Modi became the Prime Minister, the city was the best place with so much vikas. ‘Where’s vikas?’ Someone asked Mr Varma once. Mr Varma was offended. ‘You’re a bloody antinational mussalman who should be living in Pakistan ya kabristan,’ Mr Varma told him bluntly. Mr Varma was a proud Indian which means he was a Hindu Brahmin. He believed that all others – that is, non-Brahmins – should go to their respective countries of belonging. All Muslims should go to Pakistan and Christians to Rome (or is it Italy? Whatever. Get out of Bharat Mata, that’s all.) The lower caste Hindus co...
122 comments
Read more

A Game of Fabricated Lies

Courtesy Copilot Designer Fiction At some point in K’s narrative, I became enlightened. He’s telling the truth pretending it to be a lie. No lie can have such emotional underpinning. That realisation was my enlightenment. We were a group of nine men, all sexagenarians like me, gathered at Adithyan’s residence for an alumni get-together. We were meeting together after many years though a few of us met each other once in a while on some occasions like a wedding or a funeral. While the third round of drinks was being poured, Dominic said, “Hey, why don’t we play a small game before dinner?” Each one of us had to speak about himself for three-four minutes continuously and tell only lies. “Telling lies credibly is a political skill and a literary art,” Dominic added. We all took the game with the characteristic enthusiasm of intoxicated nostalgia. Dominic started the game on everyone’s insistence and spoke about his sleeping through a landslide that had brought down to slush almos...
10 comments
Read more