On May 16, newspapers reported on a speech by a very important person — the Honourable Home Minister Shri Amit Shah (hereafter HHM). The speech dealt with the subject of the language in which laws were drafted. Basically, he opined, if the laws were drafted carefully enough, judges (and presumably lawyers) would be rendered superfluous because such carefully drafted laws would leave them no room “to overstep” the laws. I am not sure what it means “to overstep” a law — though I can think of some recent acts of governance that could be so described, such as the punitive use of bulldozers. But my sense is that what the HHM meant by “overstepping” was something different, that what he meant might more accurately be described as “interpretation”. If the drafters used “simple and clear words”, there would be little room for ambiguity — and consequently, little need for interpretation and judicial discretion. Apparently, “grey areas left scope for encroachment”. This “encroachment” is again, somewhat puzzling, but one gets the general idea. The report ended with this gnomic utterance: “Words should be expanded to sentence” — i.e. more words.
These remarks by the HHM are indeed well-taken. They alert us to the slippages that are attendant on using language — on the activity of translating ideas into words (and sentences) and then (further slippage!), being forced to use more words to clarify “difficult” words. All this is indeed part of the common sense of all those who work with language.
The HHM’s anxiety to circumvent this “slipperiness”, this irreducible polysemy of words, has deep and ancient roots. The perpetually collapsing tower of Babel, the vaunted stairway to heaven that crumbled because of the excess and unreliability of language, is an eloquent and enduring myth. It is an inescapable fact that words don’t translate accurately from one speaker to another, let alone from one language to another. The fiasco of the Tower of Babel has survived as a counterpoint to the recurrent desire for a perfect, well-ordered and universally-available language in which all words have singular meanings — one word, one meaning. Once achieved, it would leave no room for misunderstanding. And we would attain that fervently desired heaven of perfect clarity — no “grey areas” there — where there would be no room for interpretation, for lawyers, or for judges. Amen.
Students of linguistics could very well play a game, identifying the different mutations of this dream of a final, perfect language. It is an underlying theme in Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. The language of the horse-like Houyhnhnms, which sounds like neighing to human ears, is simple, but it has the great virtue that one can only utter the “truth” in it — one word, one meaning, one truth. Esperanto was sought to be propagated in the early 20th century as an international language which, being designedly simple and universally available, would eliminate all possibility of misunderstanding. Therefore, it would inaugurate an era of international harmony and peace on earth. I need hardly point out that this was happening at the threshold of some of the bloodiest decades in the blood-soaked history of the human race.
“Basic English” made a brief, idealistic appearance in the 1930s, but soon died, unmourned. However, it made a recent reappearance as McCrum’s “Globish”: The stripped-down English of the “anti-social” media where, instead of universal harmony, one finds an alarming cacophony. George Steiner has written about the violence that was visited upon the rich and resonant polysemy of his beloved language in Nazi Germany, where it was pressed into the uniformed — one word, one meaning, one uniform, one leader — parade-ground drills beloved of the fascist imagination.
Clearly, language was neither the problem, nor the solution. Not then, not now. But it is just possible that the longing for such a perfect language — one word, one meaning, one nation, one language, one god — might well be a big part of the problem. What saves us is multiplicity, and plurality. And, necessarily, tolerance. The inevitable slippages of understanding help to soften the edges.
However, it appears to be the case that despite the assiduous efforts of the idealistic “simplifiers”, and the authoritarian policing of the dictators, language will not be tamed. Words migrate, mutate, adopt recondite and ironic disguises, so that new meanings appear in deceptively simple old clothes — and dictators are hard pressed to devise adequate strategies — academics, censors — who can bind and sterilise this proliferating, pullulating living thing. It isn’t as if this intrinsic instability of language is not a cause of considerable difficulty. On the one hand, there is the entire academic apparatus — grammarians, teachers, lexicographers — who conspire in their different ways to stabilise language. On the other hand, there are whole other classes of people who must confront and deal with this “instability” in their daily practice.
Thus, lawyers seek to smother this polysemy in more and more words — though even they must be aware of the philosophical contradiction implied in seeking to eliminate the polysemy of words by employing even more words. Philosophers and poets seek to deal with the promiscuous polysemy of language in precisely opposite ways. Thus philosophers, like lawyers, are troubled by the ambiguity of language — but, unlike lawyers, who revel in linguistic profusion, philosophers seek a spare clarity, moving carefully as they seek to corral the unruly linguistic creatures that they are forced to deploy. Poets, on the other hand, employ the dynamic multivalence of words — and grammatical structures — in order to approximate better to the complex texture of human experience. They seek to represent that complexity, instead of reducing it in the hope of achieving a deceptive clarity. All this could make for a fascinating multi-disciplinary exercise. In another world, another time.
There is a strange unitary urge that seems to grip regimes from time to time: One Nation, One People, One Leader. There has been a recurrent bewilderment here about the possible nature of an Indian fascism — should such a calamity come to pass. Thus, it was suggested, fascism is an alien “western” thing, or that we will be saved by our inefficiency, or our diversity, or that the roots of democracy have penetrated deep into our soil, et cetera, et cetera. (It is worth pointing out that democracy too was once alleged to be a “western” thing, although it later attained a mysteriously Immaculate Maternity in India.) But should an Indian fascism arise, I suggest that it might be described as a kind of Advaitic Fascism — a refusal of plurality, driven by a lust for Oneness in all spheres. The longing for “one word, one meaning”, is only a symptom of that pathology.
Meanwhile, however, my anarchic self derives some small consolation from the fact that despite these unitary urges, language — the indomitable guerilla of radical fantasy — is something that eludes control, evades capture. I would go further — language not only will not, but also can not and must not be tamed. I say this even as I acknowledge that poets and philosophers and the helpless drudges of the Law Ministry must, and should, struggle to do so. But I derive hope from the fact of their inevitable failure. The fantasy of a perfect language is undying, the multi-dimensional struggle to reach “perfection” is enriching. But it is the inevitable failure of that struggle that keeps us human, allows us to remain human; and, incidentally, lets language live, and keep growing.
The writer taught at the department of English, Delhi University
© The Indian Express (P) Ltd
First published on: 01-06-2023 at 07:00 IST
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