Language ‘pollution’, court orders and that thing called freedom of expression

Afsan Chowdhury
Published : 20 Feb 2012, 08:36 PM
Updated : 20 Feb 2012, 08:36 PM

Few Op-eds have been as successful as Prof. Manzurul Islam's recent one in which he said that 'language pollution' was as destructive as "river pollution." The High Court took cognizance of the post and has now described a series of legal actions against those 'polluting the purity of the language'. Cultural practices have now become a legal matter which calls for a group of guardians to prescribe what appropriate language is and decide on the level of its purity. Such instances are rare in pluralistic societies but of course given our cultural construction — we are not particularly plural — this was inevitable.

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The said post has described language as a river and then argued that it is being polluted and provided several examples of that. Personally, I think using the river as a metaphor for a social product as language is problematic as it emphasizes on mostly the notions of the sacred and the profane. It echoes what is one of the most potent symbols in our mind of purity, the river Ganga whose pollution is a constant source of angst and agony in many minds. Ganga is both sacred but also religious and in so many ways, that is what language has begun to mean to us.

The purity and pollution concepts are deeply rooted in our agro-fertility based religious culture leading to many imaginings of holiness and impurity. Instead of being principally a functional tool, it becomes more about the contest between the sacred and the profane. In such narratives, it is not a socio-human vehicle but a ritually classified representation.

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The three examples that are provided by Prof. Islam are illustrative of the situation. A gentleman on TV mixes his Bengali with many English words. A young student uses a language that is culturally inappropriate and again mixes her sentence with English words. Finally, FM radio lingo is critiqued — the fused, mixed and stirred and shaken language that is identified with the 'hip' and 'cool' people.

With all due apologies, I don't have a problem with any of them. I don't have to like them but I accept them as natural products of time and space. In their own space they have a right to exist along with pure language expressions.

Using several languages to make a point is universally accepted if the language is understood by the recipients of the words. It is not clear how one can call it 'pollution' when that is what is done everywhere else in the world except official China where Mandarin/Han imperialism has been documented extensively by many sources.

This language purity argument has also been characterized as 'racist' in many quarters because it often militates against the poor and the marginalized. The 'pidgin' – mixed language – English was an invention of the colonial world as new cultures encountered the White Man's language and it was considered a language of the lesser people. While South Asians raced to learn better and purer English, the pidgin learners everywhere were marginalized and became the less socially accepted part of the hierarchic framework of colonial privileges.

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During the London riots of 2011, many people criticizing the looters and rioters who were mostly poor blacks described them as "Jamaican patois speaking lumpens". People seemed as much offended by the language of the black underclass as their crimes and most people said that the language of black/ rap music largely distributed by FM radio community was responsible for much of the disturbances.

Using 'non mainstream' English language in the West is the biggest argument used against employing new immigrants. "They don't speak like us" is common to hear and has developed a new study of exclusion called "accentism".

Where does purity end and exclusion begin? And that thing called freedom of expression?

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What really has made the issue troubling for some/many/few/me is the suo moto recognition of the post and the court's acting on it. This is very disturbing and more so is the rule issued on the Government. It says the court asked the government to explain why it should not be ordered to take legal action against those responsible for distorting the mother language and to cancel the licenses of the radio and TV channels airing such programmes.

Vague as it is, it is still fear producing because once the courts decide that even the way of speaking is a distortion of the mother language and actions can be taken, the potential for such actions are endless. What will happen to dialects now because they as 'accents/ pronunciation deviants' may well be considered to have corrupted the mainstream Bengali one day.

A committee now will decide how the rest of the people will speak which to me is very similar to 'cultural totalitarianism'.

When there is a single narrative of cultural process and thought or language, it's appropriate to ask how far will it go let alone why. What shall be considered 'polluting' tomorrow if how people speak is considered so today? When law and order have been invoked and set in motion to protect a language's purity, we must consider if certain thoughts will be considered impure tomorrow are they were in the collapsed socialist world and still is in most totalitarian regimes such as the Arab Middle East.

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There is no substitute for democratic pluralism and a society that doesn't practice that becomes less and less robust. Our democratic failures have resulted in enhancement of the intolerant space and this process in action in the cultural space will add to that unfortunately.

It is impossible to comprehend with comfort how a group of eminent people backed by the court can decide who will speak where and how. In its own way, it's clamping down on the language of another. The court has no business being where it wants to be in this matter but has been given a chance or an opportunity and we foresee troubled times ahead.

The language of the court, literature, interviews, chat shows, FM radio all are different but should and can exist together.

Language is generally left everywhere to build itself but out here, the stepping in by the court probably indicates that form is more important than substance in our society.

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A committee now decides what is an acceptable social and media language and bureaucrats will soon become busy putting legal order into action deciding whether the right language is being spoken or not. It will be divisive and as the Pakistanis once tried to make Bengalis speak a proper acceptable Islamic Bengali, we shall now have the same process in a secular form.

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Afsan Chowdhury is the Executive Editor of bdnews24.com.