Maaen Hazaar-chaurasi!
Morning has broken
the home minister has spoken
"No more English in the North-East, or the West
East or South, Hindi is the best!!"
"Macaulay left but his grandchildren still linger."
Venkaiah shouts: "Why let the English tongue malinger??"
Did Venkaiah say this in Hindi? We do not know.
The English newspapers recorded the show.
Ajay Devgan fired his volley
and such a Drishyam it was.
Out came Kangana with a rally,
This Hindi Queen, she made Sanskrit the cause.
These are our principal stakeholders,
who without perusing files or folders,
Think they measure the national pulse
And issue decrees on impulse!
Ours is a nation of believers in the mother tongue
who have ostensibly of tongues and mothers sung
Look at the lesser Minister of State.
who declares without debate
the expulsion of sons and daughters,
into the stagnant cess of non Hindi waters.
Meanwhile the Don from the Planning Commission,
with a partner in crime from the D O Science Mission
In smooth English enunciates the New Education Program
Which makes it clear why all of this is such a sham!
Every policy, strategy, every rule and bit of learning
is framed in English from the previous century's turning.
Each mother tongue has been snipped and curbed and tied
For masculine men can do unto mother tongues little beside,
what continues to be done to mothers and daughters worldwide??
Mother tongues were treated very badly,
Shredded , pierced, ripped, snipped and now, sadly,
Our mother tongues are starkly bereft.
for their literatures have been ravaged and left,
Our macho leaders know not this
and a unisize mother, seek amiss.
Blinkered, patriarchal, atrophied and brutal.
Such men rule that a myraid tongues, fetal,
Add up in their math to one mother in total.
They forget , these myopic males
about mothers, the multi-form females.
In our subcontinent, a thousand tongues bloom
carefully nurtured by loving mothers,
Away from the hostile paternal fume
they gently lilt and sway like feathers.
Ratna Raman
