Goddess English II
I had blogged Lord Macauley’s birthday celebration a couple of days ago; An occasion where a portrait of Goddess English was unveiled. As a result of that post, the organizer, Chandrabhan Prasad very kindly e-mailed me an image of this fantastic portrait by Shant Swaroop Baudha.
In his e-mail Prasad said:
Will the future generations of Dalits/Adivasis fit into a world shaped by their own Goddess? The answer is a clear NO. The remedy for that NO is to accept the Goddess in Her entirety – and become English speaking at the earliest.
Goddess English is all about emancipation. Goddess English is a mass movement against the Caste Order, against linguistic evils such as Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Telgu and Bangla for instance. Indian languages as more about prejudices, discrimination and hatred and less about expressions and communications.
I don’t know if I would characterize Hindi and Marathi as linguistic evils, but I couldn’t agree more about the importance of learning an international language.
Anything that will be a step towards stopping another Kherlanji from occurring again is welcome.
November 4th, 2006 at 11:52 pm
I think Dalits must create their own language, their own discourse, be mindful of their own roots and traditions, rather than only depending upon Western values. Why can’t the Dalit revolution be in Hindi? What could be more subversive than to chart a different Dalit trajectory within the ‘language evils’, thus transforming the ‘language evils’ into egalitarian discourses? CBP’s point about modernity, Macualay and the market are well taken, but they also represent the mirror-extreme of “Hindi, Hindu, Hindustan”!
December 28th, 2006 at 9:46 am
Is this the photo of Goddess or you have put a similar looking image? Kindly tell me.
December 28th, 2006 at 10:17 am
Its the real deal Adnan.
May 31st, 2007 at 7:51 am
This picture shows many aspects of dalits, now dalits should come in the field especialy in leterary field, and our countries which are called third world countries should take beneficial steps for equality.in the end i want to say that though i did not know more about this subject but i can feel more after seeing this picture of English the dalit goddes.Thanx