“You don’t look like a Bihari,” I have heard this often enough to wonder: how a Bihari should look or sound like? What is it that I should do to look like one? Wearing a cotton sari, having a gamcha around my neck, always munching Magahi pan, or talking in a tone in which Lalu Prasad Yadav talks; will those be sufficient qualities for me to ‘look’ like a Bihari? It has been a task for me and a secret to tell my peer groups in Delhi that I speak the same language as Lalu Prasad Yadav.
Frankly speaking, I do not have a ‘Bihari tone’ in my language, although I have been speaking Bhojpuri since my childhood. It was the first and only language I spoke till the age of twelve; Hindi and English being just part of books, not practiced. As I said, it is a difficult to convince people that I know and speak Bhojpuri, living in Delhi. I do not see any person from Delhi getting dumfounded over a Marathi person speaking Marathi or a person from Tamil Nādu, living in Delhi, speaking Tamil. People generally presume that these states’ speakers would know their mother languages, but Biharis? Why is it so? Why do we presume that people from Bihar would talk in a certain way and yet not think that they would speak “Bihari”—a term coined by Grierson?
Not everyone in the said state says things like “Kahe be” “Kaun be”, we have language(s). You can use them; nobody is stopping you from doing that! Use your imagination, be!
Namrata
Bhojpuri is spoken by over 35 million people in India and yet it does not stand anywhere in the political backdrop. It is not an official language in the eighth schedule of the Indian constitution, but a part of over 56 odd so-called ‘dialects’ of Hindi.
I feel that it is people from Bihar themselves who stigmatise their own language in a way that it seems “earthy” to others. Many people, I have observed, did not want to get associated with the state, ten years ago (if they were well off and did not ‘look’ like a Bihari). This concept is dropping out of sight now, but the infamy associated with the language is all the same. The veneration for Bhojpuri is not as elaborate as is there for other languages in the country. The reason, as far as I can see, is largely the (in)famous Bhojpuri film industry. The language is not lauded for its rich culture and the people associated with it, but the songs and to an extent movies (and their nomenclature, Bhauji!). For instance, if I say the word Bihar or Bhojpuri I have been asked “ohh! It’s the same state of “Pawan Singh, no?”” and why not “ohh! It’s the same state of the first president of India” (Dr. Rajendra Prasad).
If I tell anyone that I speak this language (and mind it I have told this to a handful of people only), some of the very first reactions that I receive are: “Lollipop lagelu?” (Songs!!) “Isn’t it the same language?” “Can you sing that for us?” “Can you translate it?” I can. But No, I don’t want to!
Let me also bring in the context of Bollywood, which has, as stated, played a major role in constructing the wrong perception of being a Bihari.
“Ee ka kar rahe ho, be” (what are you doing, jackass?) is a kind of dialogue given to an actor who portrays a Bihari character (who is either an uneducated rickshaw puller, a factory worker, a gangster), as if it’s a proclamation. If you have seen some Hindi movies, you couldn’t have missed it. That’s not the language we speak in Bihar. Not everyone in the said state says things like “Kahe be” “Kaun be”, we have language(s). You can use them; nobody is stopping you from doing that! Use your imagination, be! Or at least do a FactCheck! There is only one movie as far as I know, which goes back to the 80s – Nadiya ke paar (1982; in Awadhi, not particularly in Bhojpuri), that has in some sense captured a realistic portrayal of the region.
Not a lot of individuals want their children to learn their language, lest they acquire the tone associated with those bad and lowly characters in Bollywood movies! There are children in my family (who live in other states), who do not understand Bhojpuri whatsoever. The reason being, their parents don’t want the kids to get bullied for having a peculiar tone among their circle of friends. There you are again, the stigma around the language.
I was skeptical about telling people that I have the superpower of one more language and not only Hindi and English. It was Linguistics that tranquillized and provided me with a favourable vantage point to understand by situatedness; even though I am not a versed speaker of the language, I am a proud speaker. The infinitesimal work that I have done in my mother language gave me the courage to enunciate, to talk about it, at least. I would say I speak one of the many languages of Bihar and study it further to see where it takes me.
ekushé 