Of late, language or rather the mechanisms and machinations of language have become an incessant obsession. From time immemorial, all tools of language and expression – be it the hieroglyphics of old, Lutheran Pamphlets, censored blank spaces in Pakistani dailies in the 80s, Mahsa Amini’s image, Mahmud Darwish’s lilting poems to dissemination of mal, mis & dis-info through media, these have been means of societal integration, alienation, subversion and oppression.
Language as a manifestation of culture, heritage and legacy also plays a systemically structural role when it comes to both oppression and subversion. Indeed physical wars disproportionately garner human suffering, but it is the combatant, unrelenting siege of language that in effect produces the genocidal repression of existence – of a way of life… of living.
Language is explosive, it is powerful!
Language has, more often than not, been a potent tool leveraged by the powerful; those who are armed with access, availability and the machinery to exploit its full potential. Colonial languages have always taken precedence over native ones of those conquered, subjugated or oppressed. And as time goes by, language of those who rule, is enforced on nations and communities who have no choice but to adopt it. The process of assimilation by design becomes organic with the passage of time. Thus the dominant, colonial language, which has gradually localized, executes a linguistic hegemony based on its positionality, symbolic status and structure.
Linguistic coercion comes in many different forms. Terms and expressions used both in language and literature are open to wide interpretation. Othello, the Moorish military man who eventually kills his loving Caucasian wife is one example. Needless to say, the text is pioneering on many levels including the start of a dialogue on even issues like gender-based violence, intimate partner violence and more. That said, for an eighth grader especially belonging to a Global South country, studying the brilliance of the old bard, the term moor can be more than merely ambiguous. For many an expert, the term may not exactly be derogatory but it can – subliminally and otherwise – communicate a different story altogether at the intersection of color, race, religion, ethnicity, geo-political positionality etc!
Structurally, the education system has also played a contentious role when it comes to colonizing language and culture. In his book, Decolonising the Mind, Ngugi Wa Thiongo writes: “The colonial system of education in addition to its apartheid racial demarcation had the structure of the pyramid: a broad primary base, a narrowing secondary middle, and an even narrower university apex. Selections from primary into secondary were through an examination in my time called the Kenya African Preliminary Examination, in which one had to pass six subjects ranging from Maths to Nature Study and Kiswahili. All the papers were written in English. Nobody could pass the exam who failed the English Language paper no matter how brilliantly he had done in the other subjects.”
More recently, the Arabic language specifically has also borne the brunt of strategically devised propaganda by megalomaniacal states whose media machinery have deftly leveraged various methods of messaging that are fear-mongering and geo-politically charged in essence to produce the impact and effect they so desire: Us versus Themunder the shroud of trust and safety – again at the intersection of caste, location, color, race and of course religion.
Political correctness, fueled with either hate, bigotry, fear or privilege, has been instrumental when it comes to cancel culture as well as self-censorship. With the ushering of a new era of technology, new media has but amplified racialized, linguistic bigotry.
On the flipside, globalization of the English language for example has also played a catalyzing role when it comes to subversion and resistance. Poets like Palestinian Mosab Abu Toha have said time and time again about using the English language to communicate lived experiences of colossal human suffering, pain and devastation.
Globalization of language has also created pathways to resistance and resilience with the use of translations. Translations of Dalit literature in South Asia for instance or the African continent’s Gikuyu and Kiswahili have shed light not just on the dominant, imperial language; but also bringing to limelight regional languages, their legacy and even their suffering and endurance.
The question then arises – can language be truly decolonized? It is an internecine war generationally fought from eons of time. It is a war fought against those who are “more equal than others” by revolutionaries who are able to use language as a ‘jagged knife’ – as journalist, author Tathagatha Bhattacharya writes in the Acknowledgements page in his debut novel General Firebrand and his Red Atlas: “Some words are like guerrillas, they are always going to escape. They will go here and there. You cannot gauge their trajectory of travel, and they will always return fire.”“Words are crazy – they are cruel, they are unpredictable. In my short life, I have known many such words. These words move me. Words of safety never interested me. But words are also forever. Manuscripts don’t burn, no matter how much fuel you put into the fire. Even words forged in fear today can become the words of someone’s courage tomorrow.”
Image by 愚木混株 Cdd20 from Pixabay
