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Given the fact that our country is a home of strange political
culture,the recent decision taken by the Government at the fag end of
their rule ( or is it misrule?) to drop the Westernized version of the
state name,has come across to me as phony and contrived.I have no issue
with accounts of their effort to reinvent Assam as Asom in order to
give an ethnic touch to the state--all that is very praiseworthy
indeed.However,the time chosen by the Government to revert the state's
name to the pre-colonial one indicates that the move is nothing but a
gimmick to impress the people and get their votes.Moreover,one may
rightly ask-- is Asom,the correct transliteration of the original word?
The lexical meaning of the word " transliterate" is to write or spell
words in corresponding characters of another alphabet and for which it
warrants the opinion of scholars,who deal with the linguistic
phonology.Did the Government consult such scholars before embarking on
the change? There is no sign that they were contacted.Unless one allows
one's intelligence to go to sleep,there is no compelling reason to
automatically assign a " right" value to the new name.Your editorial on
March 2 aptly pointed out that the 'X' would have been the firm
correspondence to the actual pronounciation in consonance with the
natives of the land.But then,it will unfailingly lead to faulty
pronounciation by other Indians as well as foreigners and in which case
the very objective of renaming the state will be defeated.
Bombay's re-christening triggered the renaming of several Indian cities
in a show of muscle-flexing by local political bodies.Gauhati became
Guwahati.But the riddle of moniker does not seem to go away.The State's
two top institutions have stuck to their old names.It is still Gauhati
High Court and Gauhati University; perhaps altering these would require
an act Parliament.
Kamaljit Deka
Sugarland,Texas.
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