Why bother about gobbledygook?

Published on September 23

Rajat showed us the booklet. Karmachari Bhavishya Nidhi, its title read. “I read and write Hindi all the while,” he told us. “But I’m damned if I can make sense of this. It’s partly Hindi, partly Sanskrit, and wholly gobbledygook.”

Rajat is a teacher in Chhattisgarh, and none of us doubt his knowledge of Hindi. “What’s it mean?” Anjum asked scornfully.

“Supposedly, an employees’ provident fund guide book,” said Rajat. “Only, I don’t know which employee will ever decipher it.”

“You’re assuming it’s meant to be deciphered,” Anjum said.

Deepak, who works for the Central Government, said: “Could give useful tips.”

“That’s an assumption too, you know,” Anjum said. “The idea may’ve been only to get thousands of copies printed. Profit for the printer; kickbacks for the bureaucrat that ordered the print job. And a cut for the Minister of State for Labour.”

“Why don’t you read out some of it,” said Deepak.

“Alright,” said Rajat, opening the book. “It’s published by the Shrama Mantralaya of Bharat Sarkar (the Ministry of Labour). Claims to cite the Prakirna upabandhan adhiniyam (some kind of by-laws, perhaps? I don’t get those terms.) And it extends the Karmachari Kutumba Yojana tatha nikshep shahabaddha Bima Yojana ke bibhinna upabandh ke anupalan ke liye amantran. Anyone digest that?”

“No,” Anjum snapped. “Nobody’s meant to. It’s the sarkari khichri of hideous Sanskrit coinage that gave Indians dyspepsia long ago.”

“For what I suppose is a ledger,” Rajat read on, “it uses prapatra, and warns defaulters that apki viruddh abhiyojan ki karyawahi ki jayegi and emphasises this with kripaya is baat ki note kiya jaye. I guess note/noted is so essential to Indian officialese that they didn’t want it Sanskritised.”

“Let’s go no further,” said Anjum. “It’s the Indian plague.”

Chhanda reacted to this: “Bet you’ll now burp something irreverent.”

Anjum chewed each word: “I mean the mantra plague.”

“What’s that mean?” Chhanda challenged him.

Anjum became impatient: “This: we Indians been muttering mantras for centuries. And long ago - dunno when - people lost track of their meaning. When a people mutter mantras without meaning for centuries, they no longer associate words with meaning - only with sound. That’s why such booklets can be written and circulated.”

“You’re impossibly cynical,” Chhanda said.

“I think he’s on the dot,” Deepak said emphatically. “Indians have this fixation with pompous language. Half the time, they talk nonsense.”

“And all of the time,” added Anjum, “they sound ludicrous. Gobbledygook’s all-pervasive. In textbooks dumped on our kids. In all official writing. In speeches our politicos rant. In the cant our godmen mumble. In lectures our academics blather. In the bullshit Ministers gab. In the mumbo-jumbo our administrators invent . . .”

“But if it’s all-pervasive, what’s the remedy?” Chhanda asked naively.

“The only remedy’s a people’s movement for plain language,” said Deb. “Nothing will change unless the people force a change. What Rajat read out is sarkari miscommunication. Generated by petty, feudal – minded officials deciding they’ll use exclusive language - NOT to communicate, but to deny information to most citizens.”

“Trouble is,” said Anjum impatiently, “Indians as a people wallow in gobbledygook. Or how does bullshit like that get circulated? How, for instance, do parents tolerate the rubbish that school textbooks dump on their children? Gobbledygook in school textbooks is the greatest crime of all. It cripples children’s minds.”

“But don’t you see,” Deb reasoned patiently, “That’s just what we’ve got to make people understand. That if they don’t insist on plain language for all, fraud will prosper all round, and only they’ll be its victims. Unless they stand up for clear language, they’ll be duped by every charlatan - by netas and bureaucrats after power and wealth; by godmen and crooked lawyers after money; by private-sector banks after citizens’ property - by every goddamned mountebank that uses language to deceive.”

That added fuel to Anjum’s fire: “Just how do you think you can get Indians to understand how they’re duped with language, when they themselves use language without meaning?”

“We’ll have to find a way,” Deb insisted. “How do you think the plain language movement succeeded in the West? The European Commission Council now has Directive 93/13. That requires unfair terms to be removed from business contracts. All written contracts must always be drafted in plain, intelligible language. The law says where there is doubt about the meaning of a term, the interpretation most favourable to the consumer shall prevail.”

“Wow!” said Deepak. “That’s a great achievement!”

“Also,” said Deb, “look at what the movement in Sweden’s achieved. No government bill, including acts of parliament, can go to the printers without the approval of the Swedish Justice Ministry’s ‘division for legal and linguistic draft revision’.”

“Gosh!” said Chhanda. “How’d they manage to push that through?”

“Through ceaseless campaigns,” said Deb. “When citizens understand that transparency in government’s dealings is their democratic right, they’ll force their government to ensure transparency.”

“That requires enlightened citizens,” said Anjum. “You can’t get citizens who mutter mantras and never bother about meaning, to understand the idea of transparency. Indians have foggy minds and blinkered eyes.”

“I grant the way’s uphill,” said Deb. “But there was a time when Indians didn’t understand why they should struggle for independence from British rule. Nothing comes without a fight, you know.”

“Yes,” said Anjum. “But this requires Indians to fight their own tradition.”

“Sure,” said Deb. “When Gandhiji began, foreign rule was India’s centuries-old tradition--since the Mughals. But the freedom movement fought that tradition, didn’t it?”