by Manjula Lal

Semantics is centrestage again, thanks to George Bush's use of the expression 'collateral damage' to refer to civilian casualties in the war against Afghanistan. But while many of us in the media have expressed outrage about this insidious, shameful euphemism for death, the one word which really cannot have shades of meaning, there has been no serious questioning of other instances of homicide -- not amounting to murder -- of the English language.

That old words are being put to new uses in this millennium was forcefully brought home to us after the events of September 11 2001 with the American use of loaded terms like 'war on terrorism'. It became clear later that what the Americans were waging was a war on Afghanisation, not even a guerilla operation against the Taliban. As the smoke clears, the media must ask itself why it succumbed without a fight to these manipulations of the English language. As an American academic, no less, has pointed out, "New ties to Israel notwithstanding, how many Indians view Palestinian suicide bombers as terrorists? What about Iraq or Somalia? We have already seen questions along these lines begin to arise."

Back home, as the Indian Left loses its grip over public discourse, and the public swallows Americanisms as easily as it does Big Macs and Coke, we forget that the US worldview is so much at odds with that of the rest of the world that accepting their semantics means accepting an entire worldview, entirely Made in America. (Even the numerics are at odds: they call it 9/11, but we cannot, as we are not so illogical as to put the date before the month.) They can dig up pre-World War II terms like 'axis of evil' while we are still committed to post-Cold War terminology, less aggressive and much more diplomatic.

Ronald Wright's book Stolen Continents says in the context of the American Indians, "An entire vocabulary is tainted with prejudice and condescension: whites are soldiers, the Indians are warriors; whites live in towns, the Indians in villages; whites have kings and generals, Indians have chiefs; whites have states, Indians have tribes. Indians have ghost dances, whites have eschatology." One could also point out that Red Indians were so called because Christopher Columbus, thinking he had arrived in India, was surprised to find that the native tribe was more red than brown. While political correctness has substituted the Red for American, the 'Indian' survives for no good reason that we can think of, adding to our problems in defining Americans of Indian origin. Moreover, why did the colonising British call the natives of Australia 'aborigines' while in India they used the term criminal tribes? If anybody knows, do enlighten us.

Now, after the Gujarat violence, (and also Mumbai 1993) it's perhaps time to put expressions like 'communal riot' under the microscope. Both are words which have long carried a meaning peculiar only to the subcontinent. Why should the word 'community' be used to describe a religious group? A community, says the dictionary, consists of "the people who reside in one locality and are subject to the same laws, have the same interests." Such people may not love each other, but they just don't one fine day pick up hatchets and kill each other. Religious groups NOT staying together do, it seems.

Which brings us to that other word, 'riot'. More than a decade ago, a riot would typically erupt in a congested area where poorer people lived. A Muslim's vendor's cart might be upset by a lumpen Hindu, sparking off a confrontation of the two religious groups. Or a rape by a member of one group would enrage the other. We used to say that it's always the poor people who get killed in a riot, while those of us living in newer parts of the city continued with our normal lives.

Delhi 1984 changed all that. The poshest colonies in Delhi were where it all began. After that the violence spread to less prosperous areas like Trilokpuri. Members of a particular religion were the target, and the perpetrators were members of the ruling party. There was class hatred too, as those living in urban villages next to posh colonies took out their suppressed anger on people in cars. It was organised crime, not a riot, which is defined as "as violent or tumultuous public disturbance by a large number of persons." Weren't the Mumbai killings also organised crime? What about Godhra, and later Ahmedabad? Where did hatchets and swords come from? These were no communal riots of the type Gandhi spent so much energy trying to prevent. Could we call a spade a spade and call these religious pogroms? (A pogrom is defined as an officially instigated massacre.)

Meanwhile, the Left does make attempts to stem the tide of the Indian media's surrender to American terms. Subhasini Ali, the Kanpur-based trade unionist, said at a workshop in Delhi recently that we should look at the semantics of words like globalisation and market economy, which have become a substitute for neo-imperialism, and hide the transfer of wealth from South to North that is taking place in its guise.

'Emancipation' and 'liberation', in the context of women's rights, she says, have been replaced by "empowerment". 'Emancipation' implied struggle, whereas 'empowerment' has a mai-baap connotation. So-called empowerment, she says, is a way of psyching women into filling the vacuum caused by the withdrawal of the state from the social sector. Ideologies subjugating women, including religion, (which reinforces patriarchy) are gaining currency, she said. "We are using such words in an unthinking way. Thus we hide harsh realities. We have been conned by the propaganda offensive into forgetting the kind of inequalities created in the last 10 years."

Worth thinking about. Also worth thinking about is how politically loaded names have to be used carefully, as the BJP is discovering in Uttaranchal, where the recently triumphant Congress says its first move will be to give the state its proper name Uttarakhand.

One word which is clearly losing all meaning is 'secularism'. Individuals are being accused of not being secular, whereas this amounts to misuse of the word. In the Constitution, 'secularism' meant that the state would be impartial between various religions. Today's government clearly is not. But the term has become so loaded that a secularist is clearly understood to mean one who is anti-BJP. It allows no shade of meaning, no place for those who may not be pro-BJP but who still think there has been appeasement of Muslims, or that personal law should be common to all. Being secular is regarded, even by the Left parties, as a defining tag, the rhetoric being that all secular parties have something in common, and can enter into electoral alliances without diluting their ideologies. But, as UP has shown, a party which is self-confessedly secular may still find secular parties untouchable. It is in fact a concept which has lost all meaning.

And the culprit is the media, which is protesting too much about secularism, despite knowing that it is practised only by the intelligentsia.

Meanwhile, the NGO world has a completely different vocabulary, which is creating a gap between it and the mainstream media. 'Voluntarism' is the term they use to describe themselves, in spite of the fact that nobody does free social service any more, you join a corporate body and get a fat salary, unless you are a field worker. Terms like 'advocacy', 'social mobilisation', and yes, 'women's empowerment' are a complete mystery to us. But the really puzzling expression is 'civil society', which I have not understood even after attending an international seminar on the subject at Kodaikanal five years ago. It excludes, I am sure, tribes, anti-social elements, jhuggi-dwellers, and perhaps the military establishment. It perhaps means all those who have accepted the liberal democratic ideology. So, does it mean just educated people? Does it mean the middle class? If anybody has a clue, do write in.

Manjula Lal is a freelance journalist who has worked in the Economic Times and Hindustan Times among other newspapers.

Courtesy www.thehoot.org

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