The Lighter Side of Linguistic Chauvinism

Oh, this is hilarious. A couple of months ago, when I first landed up in Bangalore, some bugger had been putting up Tamil nationalist graffiti all over Bangalore. The two main graffiti were ‘Read sacred Thirukural first and then Da Vinci Code’ and ‘India recognise Tamil Eelam – an Hindu country’. Nobody knew who the hell was doing it, and the local Tamil Sabha or suchlike said that they wern’t behind it, but that they were in full agreement and sympathy with the mysterious graffitist. Actually when it comes to reading the Thirukural before ‘The Da Vinci Code’ even I am in agreement with the chap. But I digress.

The twist in the tale came today when I went for lunch. One of the graffitos was actually right opposite the Adigas I go to. And some enterprising KT1 had altered it to his own purposes- by scraping off ‘Tamil’ and writing ‘Kannada’ in its place.

Meme Hack!

I’m still trying to decide whether this is unmitigated brilliance or unmitigated cheapness. On the one hand, making your regional and linguistic rivals2 do all the dirty work, and then making only the bare minimum changes so that your pet political cause is advertised instead should be applauded for its audacity. On the other hand, if you’re serious about your own nation state, resorting to such half measures is not the done thing. You should be whitewashing the first offending graffito and then writing your own. Especially because in this case the scraping hasn’t been done perfectly, and the ‘L’ of ‘Tamil’ is still visible, making the whole thing look like ‘Kannal Nation’. Which actually puts me in mind of ‘Kannalanae‘.

1‘Kannada Types’, for the uninitiated.
2The KT-Tam conflict is over too many issues to mention, but the most prominent ones are the distribution of Cauvery river water, the proper size of a coffee tumbler, whether Bangalore or Chennai is the quizzing capital of India3, and whether Rajnikanth is KT or Tam.
3
In their hearts, the Tams know that it is Bangalore. Which is why they want to annex it.

0 Responses to The Lighter Side of Linguistic Chauvinism

  1. Dibyo says:

    Check out this for the other picture you were referring to… http://quietlyamused.blogspot.com/2006/12/wisdom-yet-again.html

  2. Udupa says:

    We also fight over the right way to make a Masala Dosa, and invariably Bangalore Darshinis keep getting it right…

  3. Ravages says:

    What Bangalore never gets right is the right kind of Sambar for the right kind of dosai. Never. We really need to annex you folks soon.

  4. Or the right size of a tumbler. I await the reestablishment of the Chozha empire. Of course once it is reestablished Bangalore can become the capital and continue to get the Cauvery water. That will solve everything neatly. Bangalore will get Cauvery water, the right dosai, the right sambar, the right sized tumblers, and the quizzes. Chennai can go back to being a quanit little provincial capital and port town.

  5. Ravages says:

    Funny. While not called Chennai, or Madras, this place was never a provincial town.

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