Lewis Carroll’s Humpty Dumpty – who declared that when he used a phrase it meant precisely what he wished it to imply, nothing extra and nothing much less – would have felt comfy in right now’s poll-bound India, the place language has achieved the elasticity of an Olympic gymnast.
One of essentially the most steadily used, and in addition essentially the most supple of that means, is the time period ‘communal’. Elsewhere, communal refers to one thing inclusive, pertaining to the group as a complete. However, in India the phrase has develop into a substitute for divisive phrases like ‘sectarian’ or ‘partisan’.
In the present rhetoric of electioneering, the phrase has acquired the Humpty Dumptyesque means to imply no matter its person needs it to imply. Which is okay, in that such linguistic laissez-faire is a democratisation of language, displaying that one is free to decide on no matter that means one elects to present a phrase, freed from the dictatorship of standard utilization. So, when one speaker makes use of the phrase ‘communal’, the adjective is descriptive of a mindset or coverage primarily based on an appeasement of minorities. However, when one other makes use of the identical time period, it means one thing very completely different, which is fomenting a local weather of majority rule on the expense of multi-culturalism.
Even the phrases ‘minority’ and ‘majority’ have adopted a Humpty Dumpty free-for-all changeability. The phrase ‘minority’ doesn’t merely discuss with a value-neutral numeric pertaining to a section of the general inhabitants, however is a stand-in for a sinister stratagem referred to as vote financial institution politics. The phrase ‘majority’ too has develop into an ambidextrous verbal assemble, which may both additionally imply vote financial institution politics, or nationalism, relying on one’s view or ideological hue.
Indeed, the Humpty Dumptyism of language consists of the act of talking itself, with the verb ‘to say’ having develop into a matter of competition, as in did an individual say or not say, one thing or the opposite, about some folks, at a while or one other.
Humpty Dumptyism turns language right into a selective sieve which filters out all that means from phrases, turning truth into fiction and fiction into truth.
The interchange of truth and fiction turns every little thing into faction: the faction of Humpty, or that of Dumpty. Take your decide.
Disclaimer
This article is meant to convey a smile to your face. Any connection to occasions and characters in actual life is coincidental.
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