Rahul Jayaram teaches at the School of Film, Media and Creative Arts, R V University, Bengaluru @rahjayaram
It’s a truth universally acknowledged that mainstream Hindi TV media has abysmal standards now. Yet what its chosen anchors dished out last month post-Pahalgam, further impaired not just the reputation of journalism but also the perception of the identity of the speakers of that language. In my view, as they kept plumbing new depths via their verbal dyspepsia and propagandistic drivel, Hindi TV media mainstreamers managed to dent journalism and the collective identity of north Indians and Hindi speakers (even if large majorities of Hindi speakers may feel otherwise).
Language and identities associated through that language take a hammering when the said language is weaponised. Its latest instalment was what we saw last month. As identity shapers, all forms of mainstream media are potent propellers for language-based identity creation and destruction (especially the latter). History provides ample proof. The rise of Nazism a century ago is a wounding reminder of the wreckage wrought on the German tongue and its reverberations continue to haunt the German sense of the self.
After the Partition, through promoting Urdu as its national language, Pakistan spewed immense ill-will among Muslim co-religionists in East Pakistan, provoking them to fight for independent Bangladesh. So often imagined as symbolising elegance, poetry, and grace, Urdu was perceived as the tongue of the oppressor there. Even cursory readings of the Rwandan genocide of 1994 will point you to the bilious role of the radio and the press there. The disparate states of the Soviet Union away from the Russian heartland didn’t lose any time going their own ways once the collapse happened in 1991. They were far from happy having to become Russian.
Hindi, especially over the last 10 years, has expanded so exponentially that now its mainstream television media have nationwide and international traction – that its mainstream voices represent the identity of North Indians is almost synonymous. Much of their rhetoric is so polarising they overlook the fact that India includes non-Hindi speakers as well. The mainstream media have several backers: They are so powerful that they can brainwash, break commonly shared codes of language, and freeze the identity of a diverse number of its speakers who may not always align with what’s popularised and current.
It’s a perplexing moment. Never in the history of independent India has Hindi been so commonly evident and used; it has absorbed many words from other languages, making it far easier for non-native people to follow it at least nominally. This is helping broaden its reach, if not legitimacy, easily. As we saw last month, the Hindi mainstream TV media are leveraging this power, and eroding any pushbacks or critiques. Worse, they’d test the patriotism of young Indian Muslim children on camera. So Hindi is widely popular, and staggeringly hollowed out by disallowing mainstream platforming of questioners. Hindi is physically growing and yet intellectually stunting simultaneously. And what’s happening to Hindi TV media, is not inapplicable to other major Indian languages too.
Hindi media anchors’ antics now pass as the representative view of a linguistically diverse country. To a much lesser degree, the buffoonery on Hindi TV last month mirrored what happened on Pakistan’s mainstream Urdu media. Urdu has had a chequered past and still-tense present there. Sindhis, Balochis, Pashto, and of course Punjabi speakers have squabbled over the national status of Urdu, yet it’s the glue keeping the ever-fraying fibre of a febrile land together. Under routine and ritualised duress from its borders on all sides, language identity helps hardening any country into one identity. In more ways than one, India and Pakistan keep mimicking one another, and their most empowered languages continue to suffer through the chicaneries of their mainstream media.