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Kerala Forum

An Internet based forum on Kerala - Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow!

Changes

How do we look at the changes in a country? One can look at various statistics, one can visit the country and look at the changes, or one get an impression from reading the newspapers or watching TV. In a simple way, the changes are reflected in every walk of life. Any topic will give an idea about the way a people are living and thinking. Here we take a casual look at Malayala Manorma Yearbook! We look not so much on statistics, but on presentation and some simple details on Kerala. Manorama has been doing wonderful job in the publication arena, not just in Kerala but on a national level.

I bought an Yearbook in 1987 (left below) and one now after 13 years.

But the new book has bad binding, already within a month pages are falling off! The print is very small and for anyone above 45 need to use glasses! (May be alright for a reference book?) But the 1987 Yearbook is in tact even after 13 years and bad handling by my school boys! Not a single page is ripped off.

The price has gone up from Rs 25 to Rs 75. The contents are updated and are of good quality. But I'm afraid the production quality has gone to hell. Is this a reflection of the country today? Production of low quality stuff?

One major complaint about Indian goods is the low quality and bad finish. If it's a readymade shirt with 37cm tag, it will easily shrink to 36 or below after washing. The sleeves are always small (not long enough). We have spoiled many world markets by exporting low quality stuff.

Well,though important, it was not our intention to take up this issue here. Manorama itself may not be responsible for this, but simply inherited a national trend. Let's move on to the main issue here:

The Names Change!

The left one is the map from Yearbook 2000. The right one from 1987. As you can see the contents have shrunk in details. The districts are no longer shown. Another big difference is the names of some towns. Trivandrum has become Thiruvanathapuram! 18 charcters, making it probably the longest name of any capital in the world.

Alleppy has become Alappuzha, Quilon is Kollam and so on. Wait what about Trichur? Why is Trichur not shown as Trissur? And where is Kannur, Palakkad...? This is inconsistent! Above all, following the same pattern, why is Kerala not changed to Keralam? Whatever name we use, consistency is very important. Today after the name change places are listed in all kinds of ways. The airlines still use Trivandrum, but changed to Chennai and Mumbai. But very many displays and books still use Bombay and Madras. If one looks at Encyclopædia Britannica for example, we see that very many Indian places are listed there (proportionally higher than some other countries). Do we expect them to change all these names? What about the cross reference? If we cannot keep consistency within a map of our own state how we do expect the foreigners to use everything the 'right' way?

In Kerala and the rest of India the names have been 'nationalized'. Why did this revelation come only after 50 years of independence? The founding fathers of the nation were not less nationalists than today's polititians. Why didn't they think about the names? Gandhi even wrote his autobiography in Gujarati in spite of well versed in English. Tagore wrote Gitanjali in Bengali (tranled into English by Tagor and C.F.Andrews) but Swami Vivekanada who rose from the cradle of Indian Reformation, wrote everything in English! Language is only a medium. We respect the language, not worhip any (not even the mother tongue).

Pseudo nationalism or Modern Tuglaks

What is happening is not nationalism, but a pseudo version of it. These are Tuglak level changes. It is surprising that no one, not even the French Teachers in Mahee opposed such a foolishness. [We will see why French Teachers, shortly..]. I've heard some people vehemently opposing the 'colonial rule' and 'colonial names'! Behind the scene the same people are sending their children to the new 'English Medium' Schools, where neither English nor the medium subjects are properly taught!

Evolution of Languages

The fact is that the names have nothing to colonialism. The evolution of language may have been affected by the Colonial Rule, but that happened in either ways. So English borrowed copra ('koppara'), cashew ('kasu'), calico (Calicut), coir ('kayaru'), ginger ('Ingi')and many words from Malayalam and other Indian languages. This are modern acquistions as compared to the linguistic link between Sanskrit and Latin. For example, if we go further back, according to Websters International Dictionary even the most common English word 'man' comes from Sanskrit 'Manu'! Bind is bandha, 'september' comes from 'Saptha', Desember from 'Dasa' and so on.

Place Names

You may say the above examples have nothing to with the 'distortion' of our place names by the 'British'! Well, let's see the place names are distorted or not. First let's see what is happening in the rest of the World. Let's tke Europe, because there are many other languages there other than English.

The following table shows how a country / town is called in other languages and English.

As we see here, the countries and cities are called differently in different languages. In all European languages the place names are spelled and pronounced very differently. This is quite natural.This has nothing to do with colonialism, but has to do with the way pronuciation has evolved in different places. French or German cannot pronounce some English words as it is. The names are in a way translated or 'naturalized'.

Norwegians do not insist that the English or French use the name as 'Norge'! Swedish do not insist the rest use 'Sverige'! But our 'natioanlists' or modern illiterates insist that all Indian names should be spelled as it is in English. This is transliteration, not translation, often used in dictionaries to show the pronunciation.

Non Trivial Issue

Many of you may say: What the heck, I don't care how you call these places. Afterall it is a trivial issue. But it is not! As such the changes are linguistically wrong and it also is a reflection of what silly activities we are indulged in, 50 years after independence! Within a language, the names should be consistent except for exceptions like Calicut and Kozhikode, Holland and The Netherlands etc; across languages such consistency is not to be expected.

It's astonishing that no one said a word against such changes. All were unanimous in 'getting rid of' the British (little do they realize that the Brits had left India in 1947, there is no need to evict them again! Who are running the English medium schools: Sahibs or pseudo Sahibs?) and gaining cheap popularity. Where were our College teachers? If not the English, at least the French teachers should have known such differences in pronunciation!

In Kerala, like the rest of India, language policy is totally mixed up. Languages are not taught the right way - neither English nor Hindi. Learning a language and using a language as the medium of instruction are two different things. Humans learn the language in the following order : listen, speak, read and write. In Indian schools including the so called CBSE English Medium schools it is done in the opposite order - write, read, speak and listen. One does not learn any better English by studying Mathematicas, Physics or Chemistry in English. A 2000 words English vocabulary (+ technical words) are good enough to express any scientific ideas. If anyone wants to learn the language, it should be taught in the language class, not in the science class.

[This is the first version of this article. The language issue will be taken in detail later, depending upon your response and time]