By Kumar Shakti Shekhar
NEW DELHI: Besides renaming cities and roads, the governments are also on a spree to ban the use of words. About 10 days ago, the Madhya Pradesh (MP) assembly banned the use of 1,161 words inside the house, terming them “unparliamentary”. On Wednesday, the Haryana government put a stop on the usage of the expression “Gorakh dhandha” in official communication.
Incidentally, both MP and Haryana are ruled by the BJP.
Just the previous day, in another BJP-ruled state Uttar Pradesh (UP), the Aligarh district panchayat passed a resolution to rename the city to Harigarh. On the same day, the state’s Mainpuri district panchayat also passed a resolution to rename the city to Mayan Nagar after sage Mayan who founded the city.
Earlier this month, the Firozabad district panchayat in chief minister Yogi Adityanath-ruled UP did the same and passed a resolution recommending to rename the city to Chandra Nagar after King Chandrasen who lived in the city. It was later changed to Firozabad by Mughal ruler Akbar’s representative Firoz Shah.
On August 8, the MP assembly came out with a 38-page booklet which contained as many as 1,161 “unparliamentary words, phrases and idioms” since 1954. The booklets have been distributed to the MLAs and they have been asked not to use these in the House lest they would get expunged from the records.
These banished words include ‘Pappu’ (used for Congress leader Rahul Gandhi), ‘tanashah’ (dictator, used for Prime Minister Narendra Modi), ‘Bantadhar’ (used for former chief minister Digvijaya Singh), sasur (father-in-law), ‘gunde’ (goons), ‘bhrasht’ (corrupt), ‘chor’ (thief), ‘nikamma’ (worthless) and ‘dhongi’ (hypocrite). The phrases include ‘vyabhichar karna’ (to indulge in adultery) and ‘jhooth bolna’ (to lie).
The Hindi proverbs and idioms consist of ‘chullu bhar pani mein doob jana’, ‘gobar ganesh’ and ‘Ali Baba chalis chor’. The last one was used by the BJP in the 2003 assembly election against the then chief minister Digvijaya Singh and his council of ministers. It was originally used by a Lokayukta against the Congress government.
Some other words to be banned include mad thief, sycophant, sin, black-marketing, traitor and curse.
One word whose ban has not found favour with the opposition MLAs in particular is ‘ventilator’ which is used by them to allege that the ruling government was on a ventilator and that it would not survive long.
However, ventilators were much sought after during the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The MLAs now do not know how to explain the apparatus while speaking about their shortage.
The release of the booklet was accorded high importance as it was released by MP chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, state Congress president Kamal Nath, parliamentary affairs minister Narottam Mishra and assembly speaker Girish Gautam.
After MP, it was the turn of Haryana to follow the suit. The ML Khattar government has banned the use of the expression ‘Gorakh dhanda’ in official communication. It is generally used to describe unethical practices.
Khattar took the decision after a delegation of the Gorakhnath community called on him. The delegation requested the CM to ban the use of the expression as it hurts the sentiments of followers of saint Gorakhnath.
Gorakhnath was a saint and a temple dedicated to him is located at Gord village, 20 km from Sonepat.
This story first appeared on timesofindia.indiatimes.com
