ABSTRACT
Deepa Mehta’s 1999 film Earth has a telling scene that characterizes the sharp disconnect between English and vernacular languages in India. Set amidst the horrific violence that characterized Punjab during Partition, it depicts the three protagonists – a Sikh, a Hindu and a Muslim, all friends – sitting and discussing the political situation casually in Hindi when they are suddenly interrupted by Nehru’s regal voice delivering his famous ‘tryst with destiny’ independence day speech on radio. Suddenly, there is pin drop silence. As Nehru intones about the ‘soul of a nation’awaking to ‘life and freedom’ in his aristocratic English, for a brief, poignant moment, the helpless expressions on the faces of the silenced protagonists say it all: they do not understand a word of what is being said but realize it must be important from its tone and gravitas. Yet they do not seem to want to admit their ignorance and the camera lingers on their stupefied expressions with powerful effect for a brief moment until they decide that there is no point in listening further, resuming their banter as Nehru’s voice recedes into the background. It is a cinematic scene that captures in its entirety the broad disconnect between the broadcast media and popular cultures in India until the arrival of satellite television well into the early 1990s. It is a disconnect that social scientists have long written about and one that I have personally confronted on numerous occasions as a broadcast journalist, most recently in February 2008 on the day when Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (Maharashtra Reconstruction Army) Chief Raj Thackeray was arrested in Mumbai for threatening to throw nonMaharashtrians out of the city.As I waited in Congress MPSanjay Nirupam’s office to catch his reaction to the arrest, the office filled up with policemen and political workers, all crowding around the lone television set to watch the live coverage of the arrest on a Marathi satellite news channel. Everyone had an opinion on the political implications of the arrest. As I waited, someone politely asked me if I wanted to watch the coverage on Times Now, the English news channel I was then representing. I nodded happily but within minutes of the channel being switched I realized to my own embarrassment that all conversation in the room had stopped. The same men – and they were all men – who had been talking animatedly about the political implications of Raj Thackeray’s brinkmanship were now suddenly
silent and it was then that I realized that I had seen the same looks before – on the faces of the three protagonists in Earth. I immediately switched the television set back to the Marathi private news channel that had been on previously and the mood changed instantly. It was like someone had switched on a light in the dark. The animated political discussions began again and it was difficult to imagine that even five years ago these Marathi men did not have a news channel in their native language to stimulate such debates.
