No Odia Please, We Are Odias

Naveen Patnaik has many distinctions, but at least one of them is of the dubious variety. Even 12 years after becoming Chief Minister of Odisha, he still can’t speak more than a smattering of Odia - “Apana mananku samastanku mora namaskar” being the most frequently heard. I do not know of any Chief Minister in the history of independent India who became one without knowing the language of the state - forget about staying on in the hot seat for 12 long years. It looks as if Naveen is DETERMINED not to learn Odia! How else does one explain his steadfast refusal to speak even a rudimentary level of Odia a full 12 years after becoming Chief Minister? After all, IAS and IPS officers in the state are apparently given no more than six months to learn class VII level Odia. In fact, many of them speak enviable Odia if the bytes they give on television news are anything to go by. In contrast, our popular Chief Minister revels in his ‘native’ tongue of English! Every time he tries speaking in Odia, he unwittingly provides comic relief to those around or watching him on the tele. The ultimate irony (and shame, for me) came at an NDA (of which Naveen’s party was part then) public meeting at the PMG Square in Bhubaneswar a few years ago – in 2006, if memory serves me right. The then and current Chief Minister of Jharkhand Arjun Munda – who, by the way, is the MLA from the place this columnist belongs to – spoke extempore for about 12 minutes in Odia! When our Chief Minister’s turn came, he unsheathed his paper and then started reading out a speech in English. It was a mixed feeling. I was ashamed that my Chief Minister was not shamed enough by his previous speaker to abandon his prepared English text for once and start speaking extempore in Odia. At the same time, I felt not a little elated that my MLA had cocked a snook at the Chief Minister in his den. If Arjun Munda can do it, I told myself, Naveen certainly can do it. Arjun Munda had to learn Odia because a section of the electorate in Kharswan – his Assembly constituency - speaks Odia. And here was our Chief Minister whose whole electorate is Odia and he still stubbornly refuses to speak even an acceptable level of Odia. That is when I stumbled upon this discovery that Naveen is determined not to learn Odia. Having arrived at the hypothesis, I then groped around for the possible motivation. After long and careful deliberations, I now think I have zeroed in on it. Somebody has apparently drilled it into Naveen’s mind that his three successive election wins had a lot do with his inability (or is it unwillingness?) to speak Odia. In fact, it has been his USP! The moment he starts speaking in Odia like you and me, he becomes part of the hoi polloi. I remember asking a senior BJD leader in the run up to the last elections about how Naveen communicates with the people in the rural areas. “Naveen Babu logon ki maan ki bhasha padh lete hain (Naveen Babu can read the language of the people’s minds),” answered the suitably fawning leader. [The interview was in Hindi.] What I did not ask him then (it didn’t go with the interview that I was doing) was: but how would the people read their leader’s maan ki bhashawhen they can’t understand the language he speaks? After all, they can’t be expected to have the super natural gifts of the supreme leader to read other people’s minds without speaking or understanding their language, can they? If my hypothesis has a rational basis, it can be safely assumed that Naveen Babu will never really make a serious effort at learning Odia till he bites the dust in an election – a possibility that looks extremely remote in the foreseeable future. So, we Odias have to suffer his heavily accented English, his pedestrian Hindi and his atrocious Odia at least till 2014, if not beyond that. Let us leave aside his Odia for a moment and speak about the language that he is most comfortable with: English. Under the spell that he has cast on us Odias with his Doon-honed accent , one thing has gone almost unnoticed: the fact that Naveen is not only reluctant but also terribly uncomfortable about speaking extempore even in the language of his choice. When was the last time he spoke extempore in English – on any subject - for five minutes at a stretch? When he does have to speak extempore - mostly before the cameras of news channels – he comes across as a person who is not in command of his words, notwithstanding his ear-to-ear grin. Public speaking is certainly not one of Naveen’s strengths. That is why he always keeps it short (God bless him for that) unlike most of our leaders. This fear of being caught off-guard is perhaps also the reason for another dubious distinction of his: not having a proper press conference in his 12 years as Chief Minister! [This feat will certainly take some beating.] People from the television biradari tell me that when they go for their customary daily dose of the CM’s byte, his office asks them to give the questions in writing first. The Chief Minister apparently ticks off the questions that he does not want to answer and asks his officers to prepare the answers for the rest. Now that he has been rudely jolted out of his stupor by the midnight coup bid by his erstwhile mentor Pyari Mohan Mohapatra (who recently admitted that all his efforts to make Naveen learn Odia came to nought), Naveen should realize that speaking the language of the people will take him closer to them. It will enhance his appeal, not diminish it. He now has an additional reason to learn to communicate in Odia soon: the need to interact with the grassroots level workers and leaders of his party to keep tabs on the pulse of party men and to smell any possible revolt brewing in the party. Go for it, Naveen Babu. You will be a winner all the way. [PS: How I wish Prof. RK Mishra would someday write in some detail about his experience of ‘teaching’ Odia to his illustrious pupil! ] [This piece was first published in The Political and Business Daily.]