The Navhind Times I Sunday April 30, 2017
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4 Views & Analysis
Political
overview
hhGopalkrishna Gandhi
read English Literature at St
Stephen’s College, Delhi. A
civil servant and diplomat, he
was Governor of West Bengal,
2004-2009. He is currently
Distinguished Professor of
History and Politics at Ashoka
University
The rains are not
in our hands. But
managing what little
water we have is our
responsibility
Kōnkaṇapurāṇa
hhTensing Rodrigues is engaged
in research on Konkani Language
and People
Konkani spoken by the
inhabitants of the now
Marathi territory came
to be an independent
language when Shivaji
began a comprehensive
movement to rid the
language of Farsi
navhindart@gmail.com @navhindtimes facebook.com/navhindtimes ± navhindtimes.
Drought is a reality in Tamil Nadu.
but no one is taking it seriously
„„Gopalkrishna Gandhi
T
he Tamil word panjam
dries you up 10 times
more than its English
equivalent famine. There
is a remorselessness to
panjam, an unrelieved misery. Tiru-
valluvar captures it in his chapter
on rain. ‘When rain clouds go back
on what seemed like their word,
Ploughmen turn still, sullen their
oxen herd’.
The rains have gone back on
‘their word’ over all of the south of
India. Drought is a rock-hard reality
in that part of the country today.
And it has other parts of India in its
grip as well.
Two astonishingly percipient civil
servants, both long retired but tire-
less, brought panjam to a deathly life
for me. The first was P Sabanayag-
am, perhaps the senior most among
all retired and serving IAS officers
in India, and a formidable one-time
chief secretary of Tamil Nadu. He
had dropped by, greatly concerned.
“The failure of rains has brought
us to the doors of a water crisis,
a drought, a very severe drought.
And no one seems to be taking it
seriously.” And then, turning deeply
reflective, said: “The rains are not in
our hands. But managing what little
water we have is our responsibility. Mahadevan used a phrase to vivify many other parts of the country on farming,several NGOs, deeply ter rationing, water cuts? Should
But it is the Supreme Court’s order the drought this year. It is, he said, as well ? committed columnists like P Sainath water be stopped for ‘ornamental’
on liquor along the highways that is a ‘thadu varsha panjam’. The phrase Lord Lytton (1831-1891) was Vice- and social activists like Yogendra and leisure purposes like garden-
preoccupying us.” stuck in my mind. I turned for elu- roy of India during that famine. He is Yadav of Swaraj Abhiyan, we are in a ing, swimming, fountains ? Will
The second was Iravatham Ma- cidation to the widely respected remembered in monarchical studies as collective denial about the serious- industries using water and electric-
hadevan, the ace administrator now scholar of Tamil and historian AR the potentate who organised the Great ness of the crisis. The rest of us are ity in prodigal quantities go in for a
known best for his pioneering work Venkatachalapathy. Delhi Durbar in which Queen Victoria so engrossed in today’s equivalent voluntary cut ?
on the Indus Valley script. I rang He describes it thus: “Thadu refers was proclaimed Empress of India. The of the Great Durbar, namely, the IPL, No one is taking us into what
him on April 14, Tamil New Year’s to the great famine of 1876-78. It is Durbar and the Great Famine cannot as to be totally disconnected with may be called ‘drought data’. To
Day. He acknowledged the new etched in Tamil collective memory.” be bettered for contrast. The Durbar the fact of the drought. And no one alert is not to alarm.
year greeting in one brief sentence Somewhere between 5.5 million and glowed, the Famine glowered. Relief in authority is really telling us about The Sabanayagam-Mahadevan
and that done, said: “This Tamil 10 million people died in that famine was, under Lytton’s watch,handled the gravity of the crisis. warnings given over private con-
year is called Durmukhi, not a reas- which ravaged south, south western unimaginatively, resulting in the stag- No one is telling us exactly how versations, substantiated by the
suring name. and parts of central India over two gering casualties mentioned earlier. much water there is for our needs Venkatachalapathy input, reflect
But that apart, there is no water. years following the failure of rains. This was because Lytton did not see in the affected areas for the com- what experts have been saying for
No rain, no water. This year may One hundred and forty years the panjam that raged all around him ing weeks. No one seems to be the last several months, namely,
well see a repeat of the Great after that landmark famine, are in all its fury. telling Chennai or Bengaluru, for that panjam is not on its way but is
Famine of 1876-1877. It is once we heading towards something There is a Lytton syndrome in all instance, what they should do already here. Panjam in all its dire
again really bad. Chennai may well like that panjam again? And of us, state and society together. Bar- over the immediate or short term heartlessness.
have to go for a partial evacuation.” not just in southern India but in ring anxious experts on the weather, future. Should they go in for wa- (HT Media)
The Brhatkonkan and Konkani Language
„„Tensing Rodrigues
F
or twenty Sundays now we
have been rafting through the
torrent of Konkani history. You
might have often wondered, where
are we heading to? The territory
looks alien and distant – are we on
track? Many of my friends have
been asking me few very pertinent
questions: Is trans-Sahyadri Kon-
kan relevant today? It might have
been so at some point in history;
but does it matter to the Konkani
identity today? Given the trans-
Sahyadri Konkan, what happens to
the Konkani language? The territory
includes parts of three other lan-
guage areas: Marathi, Kannada and
Tulu, and perhaps even Telugu; How
can we appropriate that territory
for just Konkani?
The attempt up to now has
been to reconstruct the social and
cultural history of this Brhatkon-
kan or greater Konkan. We are still
not done with it. But let us take a
break and reassert what we are
looking for. Let us first deal with
the language; it is in no way go-
ing to be easy to present a logical
and convincing picture of how that
historical Konkan can be the home and Dakshin Kannada districts. palities’. Perhaps that describes its the north spoke a language more which connects the three/four
to the three languages, and yet be Note that leaving out Goa, all other essential characteristic of not being weighted by the influence of the languages of Deccan.
Konkan. We have not completed districts listed above, include the ruled by a single monarch; but it group of languages spoken in the You may be shocked to find Mar-
our story, and are not yet ready to trans-Sahyadri territories; you may distorts its economic and cultural vi- Indo-Gangetic plain. This would be athi missing in this account. And
come to some well-founded con- call them, if you wish, the vestiges brancy. In spite of the distances and natural given the fact that the trade thereby hangs a tale. Marathi came
clusion; so this is just by way of a of the Brhatkonkan! the disparities, it is surprising to find and cultural exchange between the on the scene much later, more or
working hypothesis. But a note of Let us now throw back to some- an unusual cultural unity across the vadukar country and the Indo- less at the time of the consolida-
caution: let it not arouse passions, where around the beginning of the land. Most of the people here must Gangetic plain on the north and the tion of the Marathi identity under
only an urge to sift the grain from Common Era, a few centuries before, have been farmers and herders, Tamilakam in the south was pro- the Marathas; prior to that it was
the chaff. You do not have to accept or a few centuries after. Between nomadic to start with probably, but fuse. The vadukar country shared one single language – Konkani. No,
all that I say; in fact you should not. Aryavarta to the north and Tami- eventually settled. an undefined boundary with the Marathi did not arise as a dialect
My purpose is to trigger a discus- lakam to the south, lay a land broken What we are interested in at the latter; and the Vindhya had two big of Konkani. The Konkani spoken by
sion and a search for the truth; by hills and valleys. For a large part moment is the language they spoke. gateways at its extremities – on the the inhabitants of the now Marathi
whether your findings reinforce my of the pre-historic times and at the It would be absurd to suppose that east through Kalinga (Orissa) and territory came to be an independ-
hypothesis or prove me wrong, my beginning of the historic times, that a single language was spoken from on the west via Bharuch. ent language when Shivaji began
purpose would be served. land was covered by a vast savannah Narmada to Krishna, from Sahyadri That gives us a grand mosaic a comprehensive movement to
The contemporary Konkan – by intergraded into a deciduous forest, to Bay of Bengal. Probably they of three linguistic homelands: the rid the language of Farsi (Persian)
contemporary I mean as in the last with a tropical evergreen fringe on spoke closely associated languages Konkani, the Kannada-Tulu and influence, and ‘return’ it to the
half a millennium - may be defined the west; some have called it an all- – for they seem to have had strong the Telugu. To put it very sim- Samskrta purity, to make it follow
as the territory where Konkani embracing forest. We do not know trade and cultural interaction plistically, without any technical strictly the Paninian rule book –
is spoken as the native language. for certain, for we also have reports among themselves. These languag- jargon of linguistics, Kannada-Tulu what has often been called the
That would include some districts, of recurrent and long droughts. Cer- es must have been blends of a local was the result of the effect of the sanskritisation of Marathi. In the
wholly or partly, of Maharashtra tainly the land turned dry towards substratum – that we have called Tamila on the vadukar substra- process the language was purged
and Karnataka, besides the whole the east; and towards the west, the the vadukar– and the languages of tum; Konkani was the result of the of vadukar influence as well. In
of Goa. From Maharashtra it would Sahyadri crowned it with a tropical the north (I am deliberately avoid- effect of the northern languages simple words, Konkani purged of its
include the Sindhudurga and Ratna- rainforest. Beyond the Sahyadri was ing the cliché term Indo-Aryan at on the vadukar substratum, and, vadukar influence became Marathi.
giri districts, and may be a part of a newly developed coastal plain, long this point) and of the Tamila south. Telugu was the result of the effect This is more than evident from the
the Alibag district; from Karnataka uninhabited but eventually colonised It may not be unreasonable to sup- of both the Tamila and the north- comparison of older Marathi texts
it would include Uttar Kannada and by the inhabitants from the savan- pose that those closer to the latter, ern languages on the vadukar with not only the 16th century
Udupi districts and may be parts nah. Many historians consider this spoke a language more weighted substratum. It is needless to say Konkani texts, but even contempo-
of the Belgaum, Dharwad, Shimoga land a collection of ‘tribal princi- by its influence, and those towards that it is this vadukar substratum rary Salcete Konkani speech.