The War on Misguided Youth and Other Indian Euphemisms - NYTimes

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JUNE 27, 2013, 2:09 AM

The War on Misguided Youth and Other Indian EuphemismsBy ADITYA SINHA

If the War on Terror had been undertaken by the government of India, it probably would have been called the War on Misguided Youth. Thats because in the 1980s and90s, when New Delhi was try ing to suppress separatist movements in Punjab, Kashmirand Assam, each official speech and classified document used the euphemism misguided youth to refer to young men who had rejected the idea of India and had taken to arms.

Such a tame euphemism conjures images of sulky teenagers falling into bad company atthe school playground, rather than the reality of politically active young peoplechallenging the existing order. Undoubtedly, by understating the movements potency,the euphemism also served to undermine it.

As Indias government did not send in a battery of guidance counselors to settlegrievances but instead sent in the Indian Army to subdue the boys, Indias war onterror might even have been called Befitting Reply to Misguided Youth. The army likesto talk in terms of giving fitting and befitting replies; it not only gives a sense of the otherguy having started it, but it also sounds gentlemanly, as if war were cricket and it wasnow the home sides turn at bat.

The Indian Army isnt much different from the Pentagon in using euphemisms that seek to give a clinical gloss to the essential job of militaries, which is killing. The only differenceis that where the Pentagon is Orwellian in its language, the Indian Army is Wodehousian.Thus the government never tires of declaring to its citizenry: Our armed forces areprepared for any misadventure, as it did in its response to the fourth war with Pakistanin 19 99 in Kar gil in Jammu and Kashmir. A lethal battle on the disputed border isroutinely described as a skirmish . Perhaps, then, the war on terror would correctly becalled, in Indian officialese, Befitting Reply to Misguided Youths Misadventures.

After the reply comes the reconciliation. Especially if the gov ernment believes that thepro blem is solved, as New Delhi apparently does nowadays w ith regard to Kashmir.Reconciliation includes forgiving. Or, as the government of In dia puts it, its time for anamnesty scheme.

In India a scheme is not an underhanded plot, or a piece of seamy intrigue; it is on par with a countrywide macroeconomic plan or a national developmental mission. In this

usage, Indians follow their former colonial masters, the English, though the latter aresparing in their schemes.

So, in India, the largest Keynesian intervention to generate work for the rural poor is
http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/sino-india-border-row-is-india-prepared-to-deal-with-chinese-provocation/1/268947.htmlhttp://india.blogs.nytimes.com/author/aditya-sinha/http://india.blogs.nytimes.com/http://india.blogs.nytimes.com/http://india.blogs.nytimes.com/http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/sino-india-border-row-is-india-prepared-to-deal-with-chinese-provocation/1/268947.htmlhttp://india.blogs.nytimes.com/author/aditya-sinha/http://india.blogs.nytimes.com/


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titled Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, a title so wordy that it sounds like a misadventure. There is also the Indira Gandhi National Widow Pension Scheme and the Rajiv Gandhi National Rural Electrification Scheme, but theJawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission leads me to believe that some secretsubversive in government is determined that anything that is named after a Gandhi isnecessarily a scheme.

In a proper English classroom, amnesty scheme is an oxymoron, and bound to fail.

What does stick in the public mind is the possibility of an amnesty scheme for those with black money. Such a scheme is in fact a desperate plea by government to dishonest businessmen, corrupt politicians and cunning bureaucrats: a plea to bring their stashhome and pay a token tax on it. Ever since the 1997 Voluntary Disclosure of Income and Wealth Scheme unearthed about $10 billion (at prevailing exchange rates), variousfinance ministers have been under pressure to announce another black money amnesty scheme. It has not happened, probably because this form of amnesty has beencacophonously denounced by lawyers, tax experts, politicians and the media, as anofficially sanctioned money-laundering scheme.

You could thus say that the government was in a difficult position, or that the black-money amnesty had left it compromised. But in India, you could not say that thegovernment was in a compromising position because a police party would then land upat the next Cabinet meeting brandishing handcuffs. In India, anyone caught in the act of intimacy, be it cuddling on the lawn of a public park or behind the bushes at a nationalmonument is said in official parlance to be a compromising position . The euphemism, when published in newspapers, leaves a lot to the imagination of the reader, whichprobably helps the beat constable who, more often than not, in every nook and corner of the country, aims to extort middle-class youngsters or middle-aged adulterers.

If you asked someone in government to change its polices position on compromisingpositions, he would probably decline, citing the national interest, a euphemism that hasto come to mean anything but what is in Indias interest. I ts provenance is the era whenthe government thought it had a monopoly on deciding what was best for everyone and soshoved its policies down the countrys proverbial throat with the paternalistic justificationthat these policies were in the interest of the newly independent yet vulnerable nation.

Under this line of reasoning, anyone opposed was unpatriotic. Indeed, anyone disagreeing with the government was routinely accused of stoking fissiparous tendencies, which waspresumably invoked to scare people about the potential balkanization of young India.However, when you consider that fissiparous is itself a tendency to break apart,fissiparous tendencies would actually mean tendencies to have a tendency to break apart which is somewhat less sinister. And lest you think that national interest andfissiparous tendencies are euphemisms of a bygone era, then think again: both figuredin discussions last month of the states chief ministers over the federal governmentsproposal for a National Counter-Terrorism Center.

I could keep giving example after example of clunky Indian officialese, but then this piece
http://www.hindustantimes.com/India-news/NewDelhi/NCTC-should-not-be-under-secret-organisation-like-IB-Naveen-Patnaik/Article1-851078.aspxhttp://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-03-17/patna/29137961_1_cyber-cafes-police-station-couples


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would start sounding like the prime ministers Independence Day speech at Red Fort. Youhave to wonder why it is that Indians love a good euphemism, because it doesnt justappear in official-speak, but also in corporate memos as well as in the posts and tweets of online India. So what lies behind this euphemism euphoria? Perhaps a sensitivegovernment tries not to offend the ethnic, linguistic, religious, class or caste groups thatpopulate the Indian mosaic.

Or it may simply reflect the governments continuing conceptual confusion. It could even be part of a larger scheme: Indias zombification of the English language killing wordsand phrases, and then bringing them back to life in a brain-dead disfigured form thatseeks out healthy humans as prey. Whichever way you look at it, you have to admit:giving a befitting reply to misguided youth whose fissiparous tendencies threaten thenational interest sounds a lot jollier than war on terror.

Aditya Sinha is the former Editor-in-Chief of Daily News and Analysis and The New Indian Express.
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The War on Misguided Youth and Other Indian Euphemisms - NYTimes