In Chennai... if it rains, it drizzles...
Yay! First day of rain since arriving in India. You have to understand that Chennai and the monsoon have a hit-miss relationship. More often than not this wonderfully hot city will descend into a week of stickiness and overcast conditions as the monsoon lashes itself on all regions except here! Then, just when you think it's going to rain, you wake up to a clear-sky day and grumble one's way to work. Today however, Indra (the Hindu God of Thunder & Rain) decided to fill up the manholes and other roadly-crevices with sweet acid rain. Is there more around the corner? *silent prayer*
The rest of this post is rather long and dry for those who don't know much about the linguistic diversity of India. If however you'd like to learn some rather useless information, feel free to
You can refer to the bottom four states which fit into a weird-looking rectangle...
Madras, Nalla Madras (Tamil for Madras, good ole Madras)
With Madras/Chennai being the capital of Tamil Nadu (which btw literally means, Land of the Tamils), you wouldn't stop to think twice about which is the language of predominance. The irony however is that, at the time of state-reorganization in the early 1950s, when the erstwhile British and Princely Provinces were broken up on largely ethno-linguistic lines, two languages were prominently spoken in Chennai... and depending on which side of town you were on, one was clearly in the majority.
No surprise then that Chennai was, in some ways, justly claimed by the new, Telugu-dominated, Andhra Pradesh state to be its capital! Even today, North Madras has a significant Telugu-speaking population but due to the dominance of Tamil-speaking politicians during the state-reorganization, Madras became the capital of Tamil Nadu (then known simply as Madras State/Presidency). As a result of their loss, Hyderabad was made the capital of Andhra Pradesh, even though at the time, Urdu was the language of the majority as it had been the capital of the Nizam's ( aMuslim ruler's) province of the same name. Hyderabad however was deep inside a province known as Telengana (one of the 3 dominant Telugu-speaking areas) and was able to act as a compromise to the Telengana people who even today want to separate from the larger-state of Andhra Pradesh, despite the fact Telugu is the dominant language.
For those who've been able to keep pace till now, it might also seem interesting to note that during the creation of Karnataka, Tamil Nadu fought hard to include Bangalore within its borders due to the majority of Tamil-speaking people there as a result of the British-induced migrations in the late 19th and early 20th century. Most of the Tamils lived in the Cantonment area but the Kannadigas would have nothing of it due to the historical fact that a Gowda, a prominent Kannadiga community, had been the founder of the city, hundreds of years ago...
In fact, while I'm at it, how about mention the wrangling over the town of Palakkad in today's Kerala? At the time of Kerala's creation, the dominant community of the area were the Tamil-speaking Brahmins. But due to the majority of Malayalam-speakers in the adjoining areas, it was made a part of Kerala, otherwise there would've been a pocket of Tamil Nadu within Kerala which the the Mallus were not so keen about.
And there you have it, a 'synopsis' of the linguistic tussles that occupied domestic politics in the early-to-mid-1950s. What relevance this has to my holiday I have no idea but I just felt like sharing...
Cheers!
The rest of this post is rather long and dry for those who don't know much about the linguistic diversity of India. If however you'd like to learn some rather useless information, feel free to
You can refer to the bottom four states which fit into a weird-looking rectangle...
Madras, Nalla Madras (Tamil for Madras, good ole Madras)
With Madras/Chennai being the capital of Tamil Nadu (which btw literally means, Land of the Tamils), you wouldn't stop to think twice about which is the language of predominance. The irony however is that, at the time of state-reorganization in the early 1950s, when the erstwhile British and Princely Provinces were broken up on largely ethno-linguistic lines, two languages were prominently spoken in Chennai... and depending on which side of town you were on, one was clearly in the majority.
No surprise then that Chennai was, in some ways, justly claimed by the new, Telugu-dominated, Andhra Pradesh state to be its capital! Even today, North Madras has a significant Telugu-speaking population but due to the dominance of Tamil-speaking politicians during the state-reorganization, Madras became the capital of Tamil Nadu (then known simply as Madras State/Presidency). As a result of their loss, Hyderabad was made the capital of Andhra Pradesh, even though at the time, Urdu was the language of the majority as it had been the capital of the Nizam's ( aMuslim ruler's) province of the same name. Hyderabad however was deep inside a province known as Telengana (one of the 3 dominant Telugu-speaking areas) and was able to act as a compromise to the Telengana people who even today want to separate from the larger-state of Andhra Pradesh, despite the fact Telugu is the dominant language.
For those who've been able to keep pace till now, it might also seem interesting to note that during the creation of Karnataka, Tamil Nadu fought hard to include Bangalore within its borders due to the majority of Tamil-speaking people there as a result of the British-induced migrations in the late 19th and early 20th century. Most of the Tamils lived in the Cantonment area but the Kannadigas would have nothing of it due to the historical fact that a Gowda, a prominent Kannadiga community, had been the founder of the city, hundreds of years ago...
In fact, while I'm at it, how about mention the wrangling over the town of Palakkad in today's Kerala? At the time of Kerala's creation, the dominant community of the area were the Tamil-speaking Brahmins. But due to the majority of Malayalam-speakers in the adjoining areas, it was made a part of Kerala, otherwise there would've been a pocket of Tamil Nadu within Kerala which the the Mallus were not so keen about.
And there you have it, a 'synopsis' of the linguistic tussles that occupied domestic politics in the early-to-mid-1950s. What relevance this has to my holiday I have no idea but I just felt like sharing...
Cheers!