Tag Archives: Anant Maringanti

Culture, Debates, Ecology/Environment, Identities, Politics

Lok Sabha elections, software imperialism and the Urdu language: Anant Maringanti

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Guest post by ANANT MARINGANTI. Kapil Sibal may have unwittingly erased a whole historical geography of pre-windows software development in India. If the Times of India report on the release of Urdu fonts developed by National Council for Promotion of Urdu Language ( NCPUL) last week is accurate,  Sibal said that India developed Urdu Software and fonts and thereby ended a longstanding dependency on Pakistan. This, according to him is beneficial to the 15 crore Urdu language users. There is a  ‘pre-election Muslim wooing’ feel to the story which nicely blends with the  ‘massaging of Indian (read Hindu) nationalist pride’ feel.  The sense of triumph and pride at this historic achievement by Indian programmers would have been justified even if it could be read as symptomatic of the postcolonial condition that Amitav Ghosh captures in his recounting of the breakdown of conversation between himself and the Imam of Lataifa and Nashawy.  Unfortunately however, Urdu language users in India were never dependent on Pakistan for software and fonts.  This can be said in two different senses: first that Indian Urdu language computing originated in Hyderabad almost 25 years ago and has contributed significantly to local cultural economy. Second, to the extent that there has been exchange between India and Pakistan in Urdu language computing, the participants in that exchange have seen it primarily in terms of exchange. Afterall, people cannot help making language tools even if nation states do not pay them much attention.    Continue reading Lok Sabha elections, software imperialism and the Urdu language: Anant Maringanti →

Everyday Life, Identities, Images, Media politics, Violence/Conflict

Media Induced Morbidity Syndrome: Anant Maringanti

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Or, when suicide threat becomes political strategy

Guest post by ANANT MARINGANTI

I am witnessing a bizarre phenomenon in Andhra Pradesh which I can at the moment only call ‘Media Induced Morbidity Syndrome‘. That this is pathological, and that this has to do with the media I am certain. But it is difficult to pin down what the pathogen is.

First, in the days and weeks following the then chief minister Y S Rajasekhar Reddy’s (YSR) death on September 2nd, 2009; over 450 people were reported to have died either of heart attacks or suicides. Newspapers kept a daily tally and the numbers kept mounting. Being in Singapore at the time, several thousands of miles away from Hyderabad during those weeks, I had no first hand experience of the mood in Hyderabad. I dismissed the reportage as a silly political gimmick. It was easy to surmise that vested interests had simply been collecting daily death reports from various government hospitals in different towns and attributing them to grief over YSR’s death. The largest number of these deaths – 227 occurred on the day of the funeral and the following day. Continue reading Media Induced Morbidity Syndrome: Anant Maringanti →