Sudip Banerjee- Valedictory Address

Prof. Singh, distinguished delegates to this just concluded workshop and ladies and gentlemen. I indeed must be some of those persons, unique persons who have the ability to get into very, very awkward situations and my wife would have been very happy to see my plight here this afternoon. In a weak moment, and there are many weak moments that I go through, I told Prof. Singh, I'll come and try and attend it and then he had to figure out that what I could possibly do here and probably then I had to come in this valedictory session. And honestly enough I hardly have any [ localstandii ] to be able to bring to a close what appears, by all these comments and by whatever papers have seem to have been a very rich harvest by this and experiences that you've had during these last couple of days of deliberations. Nevertheless I have to perform and what I would do is that in my own awkward way share a few concerns, share few problems which have a bearing on linguistics. I don't know how narrowly the word is defined or how generous enough; broad enough it is to contain what I'm going to say but certainly something to do with language if not with linguistics as such. To begin with I'm very, very intrigued with the way the words change their meanings and the last few years have been extraordinarily bothered about this happening a very, very fast pace and so one really giving us a clue to the understanding of this, what is to be done how it happens. Now there are words for which centuries have gone in to have a particular meaning; there have been struggles behind those words, they have been won by people's movements, by civilizations over long period or history and they have come to acquire particular meaning. And overnight we find that that word is hijacked and used in altogether a different context. And it acquires a meaning, to me atleast, it appears is totally opposite to what this struggle about this word was about. One such word is “liberalization”. Whatever I understood by this word, ‘liberal', whatever went into the definition of this liberal, and all these centuries of struggle have really helped people all over the world to understand the meaning of this word ‘liberal'. And suddenly this used just to propagate ideas which atleast to me appears to have no remote connection with liberal things, liberal ideas. They are, this liberalization, and I', beginning with this word basically because I think within this framework lot many things are happening in the world. This is another kind of Tsunami which has been imperceptibly taking over whatever we are doing, we are aware of this tsunami which was devastating enough and we are all concerned about that, but this other tsunami that has been blowing across imperceptibly into everything, including the languages that we use, the relationships we form that is changing the meaning of things, that is changing the meaning of our conduct, meaning of one idea of ourselves as human beings. And in the absence of a better theoretical framework, I'm not a theoretician or in the absence of any coach in thinking, regarding this I clearly see one central feature of this and one main constituent of this is the sweep of the finance capital around the world. And there are more transactions of this finance capital in the world then perhaps I will give a brief account the transactions in word that most common do trillions of dollars every day change hands. And that is what is changing the meaning of words, meaning of variety of things, meaning of relationships. And I think the linguists, apart from other social scientists, writers, artists and others should give us some understanding, some idea about how that is happening. I give you a couple of more examples. Till the other day whenever we talked about changing the nature of property relations in society in favour of the poor. This is what; globally it was used like the structural reforms and other things. Today it is used for just the opposite. This has happened in my career as a civil servant. That I find that just the word is used just for its opposite purpose or words like ‘collateral damage' in a war-like situation. What is this collateral? How much is this collateral? Well, I mean, you have to see this last issue of ‘Lancet” magazine, the British medical journal which gives an epidermological study of this collateral damage in Iraq , which is more that 100, 000 people who died part of this collateral damage. They are civilians; there are more than 100,000 civilian deaths in Iraq in last few months. Its not noticed, it does not come on global radar screen, they have been excluded from the linguistic discourse of what ever nature and these 100,000 people just perish away. There are 150,000 or god knows what, I hope its restricted to that figure, this tsunami, this literal tsunami that has, 150,000 people died, perished these things and one worthy assures us but economy of these places would not be affected. As if, people have nothing to do with, their lives have been ravished. So this kind of violence that is taking place all the time in the world and about the language that we use, the words that we use and we are not sensitive to this atleast I'm sure some places, some linguists, some theoretician must be pondering over this. But atleast it is not universally accessible to all of us. It must be in their private registers that they must be pondering over some of these problems. But this is becoming a critical area of concern and I do wish that the linguists and social scientists would come up with some kind of an answer or provide us with tools to understand and if possible to resist this kind of thing that is taking place. I have a list of many mere words from many more areas, of this thing, which I've been reflecting over. But I was not going to detail about that. One theme, which has repeated by or basically occurred during this workshop, also as I see during this summing up presentations is about the hegemony of particular languages, the majority languages, the minority languages, the dialects who makes dialects, the question of this, and I'm sure all of you have brought many interesting and useful ideas which will enrich the discourse. The other day, I had the unique privilege of being a part of a tête-à-tête with one of our most distinguished theatre person, Habib Tanwir. Prithvi Theater in Bombay had organized a retro of Habib's plays and done a very impressive exhibition. And also once again in a weak moment, Habib saab, I agreed to Sanjana Kapoor, the Prithvi Theater, that I will also be part of that tête-à-tête. Prof. Yashpal, the scientist, G. P. Deshpande, the signologist, playwright, linguist in his own right and yours truly, we three of us were in conversation with Habib Tanwir. And as you know Habib Tanwir's principle work is in Chattisgaari language. And one of the issues that came up for discussion was the issue of the use of this language. And Prof. Deshpande called these, I mean, I don't know whether these are used generally or not, but he called this depressed languages. And he said that Habib Saab has given articulation and through that all his plays have given voice to this depressed polygon, fore-grounded them and given them more importance. The depressed language what I would say, that Habib Saab has in addition given them the ability to confront the contemporary challenges just as he has been true to the traditional folklore or the classical literature that he has very often drawn on in rooting up his plays. Habib Tanwir has shown how the so-called ordinary depressed language or a dialect can be a very, very effective and important tool of language. But what I was going to refer to something different, its not only is the question of these depressed languages. When you depress languages, you don't bring them on you radar screen. Or if they do at all come, they come as academic subjects when you don't know what is being taught in those languages and what is happening in those languages. But people don't stop thinking just because you ignore them. I don't think any human-being stops thinking. Many thoughts are being thoughts. I've worked in some of these areas particularly in Madhya Pradesh where I was commissioner 10-15 years ago. And there are many thoughts being that and they are going to confront whatever we are about. It's the same kind of an inability globally to understand what is being thought, say in, Arabic. Because of hegemony of languages in Arabic, other language of Muslims has led to this enormous disaster in the world, which is being talked about as a clash of civilians. It is just that people have ignored these languages and millions of people. What they are thinking are not issues at all. Similarly in India , whether in the North-East or in many parts of the country, there are many thoughts being thought. That is one of the main reasons that you have problems in the North-East. You've problems in Naxalism. Because people are thinking there is Varawa Rao, there is Gadar, there are many, less famous people who are continuously thinking, giving artifacts and they are communicating much more than your hegemonic languages are to millions of people. And you are ignoring them at your own peril. So it is not only a linguistic issue, it's a much larger question. And I'm certainly uncomfortable about the state of affairs because our Constitution on which our Republic is founded is one of the more unique Constitution, perhaps the only one, which has apart from other kinds of rights, permits us to build a linguistic federalism and recognizes languages and fore-grounds the linguistic minority rights in such impressive words in the Constitution but those guarantees have remained, to a considerable extent, performa guarantees, they are there, they are being respected; nobody is violating them in a performa kind of way, but we have not enabled the language to cope with the developments in the larger civil society, larger market area and in the influence of the media and other things. Therefore what is the basis of this country is, one of the fundamental basis of this country, is the linguistic plurality in this country. And if we are undermining the language in this country whether spoken by a few scores of people or millions of people, if we are doing that we are undermining the Republic of this country in a major way. Last, before I conclude, I once again come back to a few words of our Constitution, which are central to our Constitution, which have also been, once again, been under seize, under attack, people do not understand but those foreword on which our 100 years of freedom struggle, if you begin with 1857, are embedded in the freedom struggle, our republican enterprises on the democratic, sovereign, socialist, secular republic, our preamble. Many new meanings are being introduced in this, people are trying to wish away these forewords, these words will not go away from the Constitutions, you wish them away, you will pay very heavy cost in terms of the republican enterprise that we have. And you are all, I think all of us are, in our own shall or big way custodians of languages. We inherit anything else or not, we inherit the earth; we inherit each word that we speak. And we have, all of us and more the linguists who associate themselves with any kind of work relating to languages have the particular responsibility to see to it that this sacred trust in which words have been given to us words are given to each generation and each generation adds to that vocabulary, adds to that language, that is, that sacred trust is maintained its not willfully taken away by arbitrary exercise of power or by global forces of a nature which are not particularly friendly to human enterprise as such. These are the few words I made bold to say. I do not think I have the authority to speak about these concerns. I have few more points but I think I've taken my time. Thank you very much indeed.