David Ogilvy:
When Aeschines spoke, they said, “How well he speaks.” But when Demosthenes spoke, they said, “Let us march against Philip.”..."
In 1991, there were three candidates in fray to become the 9th Prime Minister of India: P. V. Narasimha Rao, Sharad Pawar, and Madhavrao Scindia.
I remember 'India Today' quoting a Congress source saying that the best Marathi speaking among them would become the Prime Minister! (All three of them spoke fluent Marathi.)
Mr. Rao won the race.
Just for the record: the late Mr. Rao has translated Marathi classic H N Apte's (ह. ना. आपटे) 'Pan Lakshat Kon Gheto' (पण लक्षात कोण घेतो) into Telugu.
People admire Anna Hazare for various things. I admire him first for speaking Hindi so effectively. The last Marathi person speaking Hindi so effectively on national stage was probably the late Pramod Mahajan.
This is not unprecedented. Read 'exploits' of another 'simpleton' Marathi, Saint Namdev (CE 1270-1350), who has been hailed by Vinoba Bhave as the first great classical writer in Hindi ('पहिला अभिजात उत्तम लेखक') here.
I wonder how effective Hindi B G Tilak and Dr B R Ambedkar, two of the most popular Marathi speaking national leaders, spoke.
The other day Mr. Hazare said: "the Prime Minister is just echoing Kapil Sibbal" in Hindi something like this: "प्राइम मिनिस्टर कपिल सिब्बल की री ओढ़ रहे है." Oh, it was so delightful!
Sharad Yadav once said in Lok Sabha that the President of India Pratibha Patil should have made her address in Hindi instead of English.
His rationale: Not some jingoism but "When Marathi people speak Hindi, it is so sweet." (My son says Mr. Yadav won't say this if he hears my Hindi!)
Read Shivaji-maharaj's likely expertise of Farsi language here. Had he got the opportunity to speak at the court of Mughal, would he have moved them with his command of Persian?
On this blog, I have already quoted Ramachandra Guha reviewing "The Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian History, Culture and Identity" by Amartya Sen for 'The Economic and Political Weekly':
"...All works of history must necessarily be selective; still, reading Sen’s book, a younger reader may come away thinking that, apart from the splendid aberration of Rabindranath Tagore, there were no Indian intellectuals or arguers between the age of Akbar and the age of Hindutva.
I wonder – is Sen’s neglect of what I have called the proximate argumentative tradition linked somewhat to the characteristic insularity of the Bengali intellectual? The typical “bhadralok” scholar travels a straight line between Kolkata and some point to the west: this might be London or, by way of variation, Paris or Moscow or Havana or New York.
But his interest in other parts of India is pretty nearly non-existent. In this respect his Bengali cosmopolitanism is also a Bengali parochialism.
Thus one member of the species has written that “Bengal was the site of the most profound response to the colonial encounter”, and that the province’s capital city, Calcutta, “was the crucible of Indian nationalist politics, and the home…of modern Indian liberal consciousness itself”.
Writing from neutral Bangalore, I would instead award the honour to the state of Maharashtra (as is now is).
Consider a few names: Ranade, Gokhale, Phule, Agarkar, Ambedkar.
Now consider a few more: Tarabai Shinde, V R Shinde, D D Karve, Shahu Maharaj.
If one sees “liberal consciousness” as being composed of individual rights, caste reform, and gender equality, then I think the contributions of these Marathi-speakers rate rather higher than those of their (admittedly more loquacious) Bengali counterparts..."
An 'ordinary' Marathi person, like many of the names quoted above, is once again likely to make it big on the national stage. He has begun well. He has proven that language is no barrier. Whether he succeeds or not, we shall find out in good time.
Launched on Nov 29 2006, now 2,100+ posts...This bilingual blog - 'आन्याची फाटकी पासोडी' in Marathi- is largely a celebration of visual and/or comic ...तुकाराम: "ढेकणासी बाज गड,उतरचढ केवढी"...George Santayana: " Everything in nature is lyrical in its ideal essence, tragic in its fate, and comic in its existence"...William Hazlitt: "Pictures are scattered like stray gifts through the world; and while they remain, earth has yet a little gilding."
मेघदूत: "नीचैर्गच्छत्युपरि च दशा चक्रनेमिक्रमेण"
समर्थ शिष्या अक्का : "स्वामीच्या कृपाप्रसादे हे सर्व नश्वर आहे असे समजले. पण या नश्वरात तमाशा बहुत आहे."
G C Lichtenberg: “It is as if our languages were confounded: when we want a thought, they bring us a word; when we ask for a word, they give us a dash; and when we expect a dash, there comes a piece of bawdy.”
C. P. Cavafy: "I’d rather look at things than speak about them."
Martin Amis: “Gogol is funny, Tolstoy in his merciless clarity is funny, and Dostoyevsky, funnily enough, is very funny indeed; moreover, the final generation of Russian literature, before it was destroyed by Lenin and Stalin, remained emphatically comic — Bunin, Bely, Bulgakov, Zamyatin. The novel is comic because life is comic (until the inevitable tragedy of the fifth act);...”
सदानंद रेगे: "... पण तुकारामाची गाथा ज्या धुंदीनं आजपर्यंत वाचली जात होती ती धुंदी माझ्याकडे नाहीय. ती मला येऊच शकत नाही याचं कारण स्वभावतःच मी नास्तिक आहे."
".. त्यामुळं आपण त्या दारिद्र्याच्या अनुभवापलीकडे जाऊच शकत नाही. तुम्ही जर अलीकडची सगळी पुस्तके पाहिलीत...तर त्यांच्यामध्ये त्याच्याखेरीज दुसरं काही नाहीच आहे. म्हणजे माणसांच्या नात्यानात्यांतील जी सूक्ष्मता आहे ती क्वचित चितारलेली तुम्हाला दिसेल. कारण हा जो अनुभव आहे... आपले जे अनुभव आहेत ते ढोबळ प्रकारचे आहेत....."
Kenneth Goldsmith: "In 1969 the conceptual artist Douglas Huebler wrote, “The world is full of objects, more or less interesting; I do not wish to add any more.”1 I’ve come to embrace Huebler’s ideas, though it might be retooled as “The world is full of texts, more or less interesting; I do not wish to add any more.” It seems an appropriate response to a new condition in writing today: faced with an unprecedented amount of available text, the problem is not needing to write more of it; instead, we must learn to negotiate the vast quantity that exists. How I make my way through this thicket of information—how I manage it, how I parse it, how I organize and distribute it—is what distinguishes my writing from yours."
Tom Wolfe: "The first line of the doctors’ Hippocratic oath is ‘First, do no harm.’ And I think for the writers it would be: ‘First, entertain.’"
विलास सारंग: "… इ. स. 1000 नंतर ज्या प्रकारची संस्कृती रुढ झाली , त्यामध्ये साधारणत्व व विश्वात्मकता हे गुण प्राय: लुप्त झाले...आपली संस्कृती अकाली विश्वात्मक साधारणतेला मुकली आहे."
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2 comments:
Dear Aniruddha,
I give below the comments from Shri.Yeshavant Karnik:
Anna was in the Army for some years albeit on a very junior post of sepoy driver and served on the Indo-Pak border. Naturally he must have mixed among his Punjabi and Hindi-speaking colleagues and learnt the nuances of their language. Marathi people can learn Hindi easily because of similarity in script and words. Hindi movies have also made a lot of impact. " री ओढणे" is a peculiar Marathi verb which Hindi language should adopt as Marathi language has adopted many Hindi verbs. It is interesting to hear how our villagers speak Hindi.
We must feel proud that an unassuming Marathi villager has caught the attention of the people of India of all castes, religions, and languages. This is also a lesson to Raj and Uddhav Thackeray who tried to throw poor Hindi speaking labourers out of Maharashtra State not long ago. That the North Indians have forgotten that and given great love to a Marathi man shows two things. Their big heart and the integrity of Anna Hazare. On the 13th August one foolish and arrogant Congress spoeksperson named Manish Tiwari abused Anna in most vile terms. He has now run away and hidden somewhere. Media persons are trying to trace him but he is not being found. Though the people are non-violent, Manish Tiwari seems to be terribly scared to come out. He should remain hidden as the youths of Delhi may do him harm one day or the other.
I only wish the movement continues to be non-violent and vibrant as hitherto. If Anna's health deteriorates or he dies ( he is a very obstinate man as villagers usually are ) the movement will go out of control and people will start burning, looting, even murdering. Such a thing had happened at Chauri Chaura where policemen were burnt alive. Mahatma Gandhi could not control the movement any further and he withdrew the agitation. That was in the thirtees. In the second decade of the 21st century, people have become more aggressive. The Congress Party has mismanaged the country and people's wrath hasa gone to its peak. I only hope that good sense will prevail and the problem of an effective omdusman to tackle the issue is solved early.
Yeshwant Karnik.
Thanks.
I particularly like Mr. Karnik's comment on lesson for other Mararthi leaders, how Anna has received love in North etc
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