India as a republic in 1950 was an audacious step for a country which had its two arms severed off and had been independent for three years and only one fifth of its population literate with the princelings still holding on to their privy purses and zamindaris. It was unprecedented democratic experiment at its time with Ambedkar Saheb rightly critical of the underlying feudalism and casteist structures once one has stretched its structurally democratic veneer. Communities have been relegated to the margins as the tropes of participatory democracy in the five year celebration called the election, where illicit funding, dynasty, corporate media and elitist intellectual elites obscures the discourse. The power resides in corporate money and the political classes, and policy is curated in Lutyens rather than Jantar Mantar. The people’s democracy is really a caste based, corporate centered system where few oasis of driven excellence drive the system. India is held together by centrifugal forces of survival and status quo where transparency is only demanded of citizens rather than the power classes. The Republic as nomenclature is hijacked by a media channel, rather than a sacred democratic sentiment. May the real democracy stays relevant in terms of public service delivery to Bastar, Kohima, Viruthanagar, Anantnag and Gadchiroli. Bharat Mata Ki Jai. Jai Hind.

The Language Day in the south Asian context is a pivotal, watershed event which changed post colonial politics for ever. The blood spilled and lives lost by the language activist martyrs set the wagon rolling towards the eventual self determination of the Bengali people in 1971, after a genocide perpetrated by the Pakistani Army. The events of Language Day were a consciousness shifting moment for Language centred identity building across the post colonial and non aligned world.

As an Indian Bengali, growing up in the Persian Gulf, the Bengali Language was an anchor in a world of plural identities and the memory of the Language Day played a monumental role in emphatically placing the Bengali Language at the heart of the tapestry of identities in a post globalisation era. As the world is heading back to a time where national borders matter again, language is a crucial shared cultural resource for a wider humanity. I pay my heartfelt respect to the martyrdoms of the Language movement in Bangladesh