Karunanidhi’s counter

It may not have received the instant applause his orations and even ordinary speeches have always drawn. But M. Karunanidhi has reason to ...

It may not have received the instant applause his orations and even ordinary speeches have always drawn. But M. Karunanidhi has reason to be satisfied with his presidential address in English at the function the other day to lay the foundation stone of a Bench of the Madras High Court in Madurai. It may have been less than an essay in lyrical eloquence, no patch on any of the past instances of his often alliterative prose with a place for passion as well as pun-laced humour. Yet, the point had been made. Belated plaudits were bound to come as the true import of the address began to dawn on the `Dravidian’ audience. The medium had ostensibly been chosen for the sake of the non-Tamil participants in the function, but the message was clearly meant for Atal Behari Vajpayee. And, even more, for Mulayam Singh Yadav.

This was the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister’s answer to the Prime Minister who, unmoved by the Kalaignar’s appeal, had preferred to speak to Parliament in Hindi on the historic occasion of the AmericanPresident’s address in the Central Hall of Parliament. And a trenchant reply to the Samajwadi strongman who treated Vajpayee’s second best-known Hindi speech (the first, of course, being the famous one at the United Nations General Assembly in the late seventies) as his own victory. In a reassertion of loyalty to Lohiaism, Yadav had threatened an SP boycott of the address, if the Prime Minister did not stick to `rashtrabhasha’. To prove that his was only a patriotic aversion to un-Indian languages, he even sent Karunanidhi a `patra’ in presumably chaste Tamil entirely ghost-written unlike, possibly, the English composition delivered by the self-educated southern leader.

The ball is now in Yadav’s court or, more acceptably, whatever the indigenously kabaddi version of the idiom is. The only logical counter (if that adjective has any legitimate place in our language controversies) will be for him to lecture some audience or the other in Tamil. There is no excuse for using any easier lingo, as it would appear to be only Tamil Nadu that has to be so appeased for the sacred cause of Hindi. If the plight of Mulayam faced with this prospect is not plain, just ask any of our Hindi television news-readers. The ones who begin to quiver and quaver as they approach lines in their scripts with names like Nedunchezhian and Thirumavalavan though, after years of painful practice, they can now handle select place-names like Sriperumbudur with a certain degree of equanimity, if not exactly expertise.

The idea of the ordeal may not deter someone so determined as the Samajwadi chief. His Tamil discourse may, however, far from winning hearts beyond the Vindhyas, only provoke tit-for-tat attempts at Hindi `bhashan’ that may make a Mythilisharan Gupta and a Sumitranandan Pant turn in their graves and even many a living Lohiaite livid about the liberties taken with the language of their love and political life. The Mulayams of the land may do well and wisely, perhaps, not to stretch the matter any further. After all, there is no real cause for concern that a foreign language is being promoted by those who prefer to make English speeches. Look carefully, while the speeches are being delivered in stentorian tones, at the foreigners whose language it is supposed to be. Don’t they appear as uncomprehending as the non-English- speaking members of the national audience?