Window on India
August 09, 2006

News Bullets

• A voluntary organization, The National Campaign for Peoples Right to Information (RTI), has decided to protest against the Indian Government's plan to dilute the RTI Act by staging a sit-in at a ground in south Mumbai. A great debate is now on in India on the government's proposal to amend the Act to exclude disclosure of notings on the government files. Annasaheb Hazare, Magasesay Award winner and well-known social workers, has threatened to go on hunger strike in protest.
• Over a hundred Indian companies have started posting earnings as per the US GAAP guidelines and most of them intend to list on the US stock exchanges, industry sources say. Indian companies, particularly the IT sector, are increasingly getting attracted to brand value addition and exposure that listing on US markets provide.
• The speculation that the Government of India might restrict the establishment of special economic zones (SEZ) to 150 has set off a fierce competition among many provincial governments in the country to get approvals to as many SEZs in their states as possible. Some states have pleaded with central government that such a restriction might hamper the industrial growth. So far, the central government has approved 150 SEZ across the country, 45 of which were given green signal on August 8, Tuesday. Over 400 applications are still pending with the centre. Of the approved proposals, 18 have been notified formally and the promoters can start their operations.
• Despite the devastating floods in several parts of the country and a serial bomb attack by terrorists on the life-line suburban train system of Mumbai, the commercial hub of the country, the Bombay Stock Exchange index soared up robustly past the 11,000 mark on Tuesday. The index touched the 11k mark for the first time in the last three months.
• Spicy controversies involving Indian film stars never stop bubbling in the media often helping TV news channels boost their ratings and providing ample material to the print media to fill in columns of gossip. But this time, the spice is political, more potent than personal gossip. Aamir Khan, one of the top Khan triumvirate of Bollywood, is served notice by the Gujarat forest department for having filmed the rare species of bucks, the chinkaras six years ago for the now famous film Lagan. The notice says the filming violates the wildlife protection act as it was mandatory to seek formal permission from forest officials before shooting the particular sequence involving wildlife. Aamir Khan had already been the target of Gujarat authorities for opposing the move to increase height of a dam on Narmada river which is expected to take water to arid regions of Gujarat. However, the Gujarat politicians have a political axe to grind against Aamir for having articulated his anger against Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi's communal policies.

The Indian lingua franca - By Mr. Arun Sadhu

The importance of the Mumbai film industry, fondly labeled 'Bollywood', lies not in its proliferation, nor in its profligacy; not even in its capacity to churn money and create hundreds of super-rich stars. The fact is over the years it has proved to be the most effective integrating force for the Indian sub-continent. It is not for nothing that in recent years it has created new domains of fandom across the seas, in the immediate neighborhoods and in most of West Asia and South-East Asia. Be it war-torn Lebanon or fractious Afghanistan, Indonesia or Sri Lanka, the vivacious melodies of the Hindi film songs are heard there on the lips of people on the street not infrequently.

But that is not the point. The point is these songs are heard even in the southern Indian backwaters of Tamil Nadu and Kerala, the eastern states of Assam or Nagaland or in the hills of Kashmir and violence-prone lanes and by-lanes of Srinagar. Such is the power and charisma of the Hindi film music that the most linguistic sectarian groups too easily fall prey to its charms. And not surprisingly, the Hindi of the films, or one may call it the Bollywood dialect, surfs on the wings of these melodies to every nook and corner of India. A proud Tamilian , who might otherwise resent official Hindi, is comfortable with the Bollywood slang. And a Naga or a Mizo of the sunrise states is equally moved by the lilting notes as an Afghani or a Pakistani is.

The Indian language scenario is only one aspect of the country's diversity. There is a multitude of fully developed languages in India – 22 in fact and over 200 dialects of which more than a score claim established literature and grammar. The Press in India is one of the most robust and plural one in the world. The Registrar of Newspapers of India records in March 2005 that India publishes 60,413 newspapers (periodicals including dailies) in over 100 different languages! India's freedom fighters and Constitution makers were wary of this linguistic plurality and some, including Jawaharlal Nehru and Dr. B.R.Ambedkar, feared the creation of linguistic states might jeopardize the nation's unity. Reorganization of provincial states on linguistic lines did create some turbulence between 1956 and 1960. Linguistic sectarian political parties sprang up all over.

Amid this seething cauldron of conflicting language identities, there arose a soothing lingua franqua easily acceptable to the people of most tongues in the sub-continent – the typical Bollywood Hindi. Nobody manufactured it; no official agency promoted it, not even the film industry was aware of what it was creating. It is not the Hindi of the official kind which the Northern government officials had filled with Sanskrit to the brim so that the Hindi news broadcasts were often difficult to understand even for those living in the Hindi heartland. It is a dialect of Hindi which sprang from the melting pot of all languages that is Mumbai. Mumbai is one of the most cosmopolitan cities of the world and so is the Hindi film industry.

The chief languages spoken by the local people of Mumbai are Marathi and Gujarati. Most people in South Mumbai's corporate offices speak English. So do half the people driving cars, riding buses or suburban trains. People from all corners of India have settled in Mumbai for generations. They speak Tamil, Kannada, Bengali, Urdu, Punkabi, Assaamese.... you name any Indian language and there are people in thousands who speak that tongue in Mumbai. Most of them are represented in the film industry.

As the industry is based in Mumbai and most of its artisans as also the artistes were Marathi speaking in the initial period, Marathi had a great impact on the filmi Hindi. Till late 80's many films had not overcome the impact of V.Shantaram's typical style of delivering Hindi dialogues. Shantaram hailed from the Marathi heartland of Kolhapur. So is Lata Mangeshkar and her sister. The Marathi dialect of Konkan, particularly, the typical Marathi spoken by the Konkani Mussalmans, has also given some flavour to the Bollywood dialect.

And of course the Gujarati slang, since Gujaratis are a leading business community in Mumbai. English? Unquestionably. The early Bengali artistes had difficulty in pronouncing the then Hindi-Urdu mixture of dialogues. They did bestow some spice of Bengali pronunciations. So did the Punjabis who proliferated as producers, actors and music directors. Tamil, Telugu, Kannada groups also made their contribution. The outcome is a Hindi flavored with nuances, usages, idioms, grammatical innovations, pronunciations and lilt and toning of all these languages. It is not the chaste Hindi of Agra or Lucknow or Varanasi. Some deprecate it as the 'tapori boli' of Mumbai streets. But it is the language the Bengali bhadralok can understand, a Tamil scientist can speak and a Marathi academicians can hold forth in. It is the quintessential Indian language.

Aren't languages born like this? Spontaneously, in the bazaars and on the streets, in fish markets and on the docks – and in film studios.