Why it's important to understand Karunanidhi's fight against Hindi imperialism
It is only because of the politics of Karunanidhi that English TV channels, English textbooks, a whole employment ecology with English as currency, exists in India.
A few days have passed since the demise of the Tamil national hero, Muthuvel Karunanidhi, and the plethora of reactions, solidarities and posturings are out there for all of us to see.
In the English media, I have seen various obituaries of the Kalaignar, mostly copy-pasted from Wikipedia, synonyms then replaced for “originality”. In the Hindi media across the political spectrum, especially in TV media, there was hardly any mention of the fact that this giant of a man, who rests on the Marina Beach now, fought against Hindi imperialism. But no amount of silence from the Hindi media can suppress that truth.
(M Karunanidhi addressing the third meet of the International Conference of Tamil Studies, inaugurated at the College de France in Paris on July 15, 1970. (Credit: UNESCO))
And I, a Brahmin Bengali, whose first language in school was Bangla and medium of instruction in school was English, owe my career and worldview largely to the import and legacy of what CN Annadurai and his crucial lieutenant M Karunanidhi did for years, peaking in 1965.
They protested the imposition of Hindi on non-Hindi people.
They saved all non-Hindi people, especially non-Hindi people of the upwardly mobile class, from complete oblivion. The Indian Union's service industry economy of the present, with its backbone being English articulation and comprehension, and its lifeblood being a large IT-literate youthful class, is a product of that great generation of Tamil leaders, Muthuvel Karunanidhi being among the foremost.
Let me explain.
The Indian Union was not formed on the basis of any single language. India had always been conceived of — as the peerless giant of Bengali nationalism and Indian unity, Deshbandhu Chittaranjan Das, stated — as a federation of nations, an example for the world community.
However, from the very start, and if I may say, even before the start, chauvinist and imperialist tendencies arose from what is the Hindi belt that demanded Hindi, their language of ease, become the language of communication of all citizens. So much so that even in the Constituent Assembly of India that was discussing the future Constitution of India, member of that Assembly from the United Provinces, RV Dhulekar actually said aloud that those in India who do not know Hindustani have no right to be in the Assembly which was making the Constitution of India (Hindi and Urdu were widely referred to by the common term 'Hindustani' before Hindi and Urdu became contentious and ideologically opposite concepts).
This sentiment was voiced and expressed by various members of the Constituent Assembly from the 'Hindustan region' or the Hindi belt. They ranged in ideology from being progressives to secular democrats to Hindu communalists — a wide range that the Congress could hold at that point of time. But they were united on the point of Hindi supremacy. This represented a fundamental, as evidenced by the nature of the debate that followed, between non-Hindi members who resisted Hindi imperialism and Hindi members who insisted on Hindi imposition on a non-Hindi speaking population.
(The front page of EV Ramasamy's periodical Kudiyarasu (September 3,1939). The headline reads 'Veezhga Indhi' (Down with Hindi). (Credit: Wikimedia Commons))
A compromise formula was reached. This retained English for the time being as an official language of the Union, while Hindi was the other official language of the Union.
English was to lapse after a certain period, when Hindi was to become the sole official language of the Indian Union.
This compromise was a ticking time bomb because of the lapse clause.
This arrangement was really a deal between non-Hindi elites (where only an English-educated class would have access to officialdom in the form of jobs and opportunities) and the whole of the Hindi national polity (where all the people would have access to officialdom). The big loser were the great masses of non-Hindi citizens of the Indian Union, who were then, and are still now, the majority of the citizens of the Indian Union.
This wasn’t surprising as the Constituent Assembly itself was not elected on the basis of universal adult franchise with about 12 per cent of the people based on education, tax-paying and property status getting the right to vote. This ensured that the 1946 equivalents of Cho Ramaswamy and Subramaniam Swamy got to represent the Tamils. And even they were miffed by the Hindi supremacist attitude.
The rise of the DMK under CN Annadurai’s leadership, with M Karunanidhi being among his brightest lieutenants, ensured that the imposition of Hindi would be resisted in the land of the Tamils. When English was to lapse and Hindi was to become the sole official language due to Delhi’s imperial whim, Tamils resisted.
(Tamil talk: CN Annadurai and EV Ramasamy. (Credit: Wikimedia Commons))
Kannadigas, Telugus and Bengalis resisted too, but in the Tamil land, it became a huge cultural resistance.
Tamils could see how all opportunities would be closed off to their youths. This would be true for all non-Hindi youths, but Tamils, with a history and tradition of a sophisticated understanding of political dynamics in a multi-national, multi-lingual polity, reacted both with reason and passion.
So intense was the resistance that the plan of making Hindi the sole official language was postponed to a time when non-Hindi people would agree to it.
In short, never.
Because English was retained, at least the elites among the non-Hindi citizens of the Indian Union could eke out a path of upward mobility. I count myself among those fortunate ones. It is because of the generation of Tamil leaders that counted M Karunanidhi among its leading lights that I am able to write this article today and an editor at Daily O is able to check it for grammar, and something like DailyOexists in English.
It is because of the politics of Karunanidhi that English TV channels, English language textbooks, a whole employment ecology with English as currency, exists in the Indian Union. Under Karunanidhi and MGR, Tamil Nadu took the lead for the mass production of engineering graduates, creating a technology-literate workforce which changed the face of Tamil Nadu, in ways that should be understood as a test case for the success of linguistic identity politics.
Other Dravidian states also followed suit. English is the most sought-after language commodity in the Hindi belt — this is in spite of the advantage that Hindi citizens receive in all Union government jobs, tenders, information and service access, etc., compared to non-Hindi citizens. The majority of non-Hindi people are still excluded from spheres where all Hindi people and English-educated non-Hindi people compete. Eighty-three per cent Bengalis of "Bangla" do not know any other language other than Bangla, according to the 2001 Linguistic Census of India. That is the reality Muthuvel Karunanidhi was very well aware of.
He was a fighter for the people, of inalienable rights of a linguistic nation. He remained a life-long warrior against the usurpation of power by Delhi. And his generation of fighters from the Tamil land showed that if an economic powerhouse decides to stand up, the Delhi imperium has to negotiate.
Karunanidhi’s dream was of an Indian Union based on equality. Thus, he called for giving equal Constitutional rights and status to all 8thSchedule languages. He called for equality. Who opposes equality but imperialists? Pakistan’s Urdu imposition on Bengalis cost it very dearly.
All over the world, the imposition of someone’s language over someone else is a way to create various classes of citizens. When there are first, second and third class citizens, it is a method of breakage. In a multi-lingual polity, one can either have unity — or uniformity.
One cannot have both.
courtesy : dailyo.in
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Trump administration says its war in Iran has been 'terminated' before 60-day deadline
Washington (AP): The Trump administration is arguing that the war in Iran has already ended because of the ceasefire that began in early April, an interpretation that would allow the White House to avoid the need to seek congressional approval.
The statement furthers an argument laid out by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth during testimony in the Senate earlier Thursday, when he said the ceasefire effectively paused the war. Under that rationale, the administration has not yet met the requirement mandated by a 1973 law to seek formal approval from Congress for military action that extends beyond 60 days.
A senior administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the administration's position, said for purposes of that law, “the hostilities that began on Saturday, Feb 28 have terminated.” The official said the US military and Iran have not exchanged fire since the two-week ceasefire that began April 7.
While the ceasefire has since been extended, Iran maintains its chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz, and the US Navy is maintaining a blockade to prevent Iran's oil tankers from getting out to sea.
Under the War Powers Resolution, the law that sought to constrain a president's military powers, President Donald Trump had until Friday to seek congressional authorisation or cease fighting. The law also allows an administration to extend that deadline by 30 days.
Democrats have pushed the administration for formal approval of the Iran war, and the 60-day mark would likely have been a turning point for a swath of Republican lawmakers who backed temporary action against Tehran but insisted on congressional input for something longer.
“That deadline is not a suggestion; it is a requirement,” said Sen Susan Collins, R-Maine, who voted Thursday in favour of a measure that would end military action in Iran since Congress hadn't given its approval. She added that “further military action against Iran must have a clear mission, achievable goals, and a defined strategy for bringing the conflict to a close."
Richard Goldberg, who served as director for countering Iranian weapons of mass destruction for the National Security Council during Trump's first term, said he has recommended to administration officials to simply transition to a new operation, which he suggested could be called “Epic Passage,” a sequel to Operation Epic Fury.
That new mission, he said, “would inherently be a mission of self-defence focused on reopening the strait while reserving the right to offensive action in support of restoring freedom of navigation.”
“That to me solves it all,” added Goldberg, who is now a senior adviser at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a hawkish Washington think tank.
During testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday, Hegseth said it was the administration's “understanding” that the 60-day clock was on pause while the two countries were in a ceasefire.
Katherine Yon Ebright, counsel at the Brennan Center's Liberty and National Security Program and an expert on war powers, said that interpretation would be a “sizeable extension of previous legal gamesmanship” related to the 1973 law.
“To be very, very clear and unambiguous, nothing in the text or design of the War Powers Resolution suggests that the 60-day clock can be paused or terminated,” she said.
Other presidents have argued that the military action they've taken was not intense enough or was too intermittent to qualify under the War Powers Resolution. But Trump's war in Iran would certainly not be such a case, Ebright said, adding that lawmakers need to push back against the administration on that kind of argument.
