You will be linguistically annihilated OFFBEAT

This is an exclusive which the editor will not buy, so I am having to put it in this column. I have it on the best of authority that Ram-bhakts across Aryavarta feel that they have had enough and must undertake a maha yudh to right a wrong that has gone on for maybe as long as the Bengali language has been around.

The Bengali speaking people, ever since they have been speaking to each other, have been the most irreverential about matters which the Ram-bhakts hold sacred. Now, it is not as if a certain amount of ceremonial irreverence is not practiced sportingly in Aryavarta itself. In Varanasi, for example, masses go around chanting Har Har Mahadev along with local abuses, fit into a poetic meter. But that is only on ceremonial occasions. In Bengali, irreverence is a matter of everyday usage.

Take the case of the cow or gai, referred to as goru in Bengali. Nothing wrong with the term but goru has both a literal meaning (cow) and a metaphorical one. When one Bengali calls another a goru, which is only in derision, he is actually branding the other fellow an idiot and moron. All of north India will call an ignoramus a gadha (ass) but Bengalis will cast the severest aspersion on the intellectual credential of the go mata by likening her to one who should be made to wear the dunce’s cap.

This is not all. What is the term Bengalis use to refer to the hoi polio, the absolute riff raff, those who will be lost in a crowd and in fact make up the indistinguishable mass of the aam aadmi who are devoid of any kind of uplifting characteristics? They are referred to as goru chhagal (cows and goats). To say, for example, that something is meant for only goru chhagal or will please only the likes of them is to say it corresponds to the tastes of those who can lay claim to nothing of any class.

There is more. Ask any exasperated Bengali mother who is at her wits end trying to tame her totally wayward young son whose pranks and naughtiness know no bounds, and she will say her son has become a hanuman (monkey). Now Hanuman, with a capital H, as you know, was the humblest soul who turned out to be the greatest ally at the time of the greatest need of Ramchandraji during his vanvas. It is because of this that he has been elevated to the level of a god so powerful that it prompted Salman Khan to make the great film Bajrangi Bhaijaan. In it he, as a Hanuman-bhakt, seemed for a brief period to promote so much of India-Pakistan amity that for a moment it threatened to put two powerful fighting machines, the Indian and Pakistani armed forces, out of business.

We do not know the etymology of the use of hanuman as a derogatory term but one school of thought has it that it is of fairly recent origin. The Bengalis, who love to ape the British, took to heart the English expression “monkey tricks” to describe what someone with the mental age of a frivolous prankster can be up to and fashioned their own usage of hanuman to describe such an incorrigible youngster.

Now, how is it that those who speak a particular language can become so irreverential so compulsively to so much of what is considered so sacred by so many? One explanation is that the creator has put a streak of irreverence in them and so the fault lies in him. But that absolves Bengalis of all the blame. There is a more likely explanation rooted in prehistory and legend. The people who inhabited what eventually came to be known as Bengal were nonVedic, non-Aryan tribes of mlecchas who lived beyond the domain of Aryavarta and were severely lacking in the right social mores.

Ever ingenious in shirking blame and responsibility, some Bengalis say that not all their usage of religious names are derogatory. Take the case of lakkhichara to describe someone who is utterly useless. The term means someone who has been deserted by goddess Lakshmi, the repository of all wealth and sublime beauty. I am particularly familiar with the term because it was used by my late maternal grandfather, a man of much learning who could never utter a swear word or something truly derogatory, to admonish my mama who as a youngster showed no signs of getting anywhere in life. My grandfather, instead of calling my mama a goru, would call him lakkhichara.

But this is really an exception that proves the rule, that the irreligiousness in Bengalis is rooted in their language which does not know where to stop. So an army of Ram-bhakts from Aryavarta will sooner or later descend on Bengal to teach a lesson to those who speak in that irreverential tongue. The procession in Kolkata on Ram Navami day by Ram-bhakts with unsheathed swords was a dress rehearsal. Bengalis have been put on notice. Change your irreverent speech or else you will be linguistically slaughtered and made to speak the language of Aryavarta in which piety and not irreverence has the pride of place.