It is now a century since C.K. Ogden and I.A. Richards came together to produce their book with a rather enigmatic title: The Meaning of Meaning: A Study of the Influence of Language upon Thought and of the Science of Symbolism. It inaugurated the study of semantics in England. Ogden and Richards were interested in understanding how representation is perceived by the users of linguistic signs and observed that the term, ‘meaning’, does not have a perennially fixed inference. It keeps changing, exactly as the meaning of any given word does from time to time. Words acquire new meanings, which can be radically different from their previously-held meanings, not because language is a slippery system of signs but because the society within which words circulate tends to shift its views and attitudes. Some meanings remain steady for centuries or millennia but are found to have been trashed overnight owing to tectonic shifts in the society’s world views. Take, for instance, the term, ‘Rama’. It has been in use as a proper noun ever since Valmiki composed his epic on the life of a heroic character named Rama, probably during the reign of Pushyamitra Shunga in the second-first century BCE. A name-word like it had existed in the early Sumerian period, some twenty-one centuries before the Common Era. The Sumerian king, Rimush, was King Sargon’s son and the father of King Manishtushu. His grandson was named Naram-Sin. Although names like Rama in the ancient world were initially proper nouns, in the case of the protagonist of Valmiki’s Ramayana, the meaning of the name acquired many new forms in subsequent centuries.

With the rise of the Vyakarana school of philosophy, particularly Bhartrihari’s Vakyapadiya, ‘Rama’ started getting used as the mandatory pedagogic method for early lessons in Sanskrit learning. The very first formula that the students of Sanskrit are required to learn till date is the case-inflection for masculine nouns with the terminal, ‘a’. The rule as stated is ‘Rama — ramou-ramAh-prathma’. It means that the nominative case for the noun, ‘Rama’, becomes in plural (duel) ‘ramou’ and (for more than two) ramAh. In this rule, ‘Rama’ stands for any noun that has an ‘a’ ending. The rule is ingrained in the minds of learners of Sanskrit as an inviolable language norm. Thus ‘Rama’ can be one, two or many. Rama can be any subject or, philosophically speaking, it is ‘all subjects’, animate or inanimate; it is all substance. Hence, in several languages that descended from Sanskrit, the term, ‘Ram’, came to be used in ways that Valmiki would never have imagined. In Marathi, for example, people often say, ‘hyat kahi ram nahi’ (a given matter or action is meaningless). In popular political terminology, phrases like ‘aaya-ram-gaya-ram’ can work for a habitual lobby-crossing person. ‘Mast-ram’, on the other hand, can mean a drunkard. ‘Ram-ram’ became a common salutation for all classes and castes before ‘Kaise hain’ (How do you do?) and, later, ‘Hi’ replaced it. ‘Hey Ram’, the very last words Mahatma Gandhi uttered, were drawn from the widespread popular expression for pain, agony and exasperation. Over the last few days, several television channels liberally used the term, ‘paltu-ram’, for a prominent politician for having frequently shifted political alliances. Thus what meant ‘the significant and pervasive’ in metaphysics and philosophy has turned into popular usage as ‘insignificant’ and a ‘butt of ridicule’. If this can happen to the name of a mighty character from an epic, it can happen to any other word initially coined to signify a lofty principle.

Take, for example, the term, ‘Parliament’. When India became a republic, it was expected to be understood as the most sacred of democratic institutions created for discussing issues of national importance. Now, it means a place where anything but discussion can take place. The Question Hour once used to mean the time provided for raising questions. Now it means the time spent in avoiding questions. ‘Secular’ meant maintaining a distance between the matters of faith and those of public affairs. Now it is made to mean a sickness as indicated by the term, ‘sickular’. ‘Media’ was a term that was once used for publications that ensured government accountability. They were expected to be the watchdogs of democracy. Now ‘media’ means government lapdogs, as the Hindi coinage, ‘godi media’, suggests. The term, ‘positive’, had an entirely negative connotation during the pandemic. It meant a person affected by the coronavirus. However, it is now used to describe loyalty to the regime, particularly to its economic policies. Thus, the one who is critical of the policies is charged with ‘spreading negativity’ and the one who endorses them is hailed as possessing ‘positivity’.

History shows that autocratic regimes are clever with words. George Orwell’s novel, 1984, depicts how the government of Oceania — Orwell’s dystopia — created the Ministry of Love to supervise torture, the Ministry of Peace to manage wars, the Ministry of Plenty to deal with starvation and the Ministry of Truth to run false propaganda. ‘Positivity’ is a term that invites today’s Indians to perceive teacher suicides, farmer suicides, unemployment and the concentration of wealth in only a few hands as ‘development’. ‘Positivity’ invites people to look at the silencing of all voices of opposition and the slapping of the UAPA on anyone asking uneasy questions as ‘democracy’. It asks us to hail myopic nationalism and jingoistic religious triumphalism as the return of ‘Ramrajya’. It asks us to believe that the complete erasure of the separation among judiciary, legislature and executive is ‘rashtra nirmity’.

Orwell’s Animal Farm was banned in Stalin’s Russia. As was 1984. Since the current regime is seeking to depict the present moment as the foundation of India for the next millennium, one may ask why not ban 1984? But we seem to have gone past that need since most of the key terms in our Constitution have already been emptied of their original meanings. The vast propaganda machinery — the ‘truth factories’ being run with tax-payers’ money — has already invented new meanings for these terms. The only problem is that words have a habit of returning into circulation with their original meanings, concealed or converted in subsequent eras. Who knows, at some point in the future, the term, ‘samividhan’, may resurface in public memory as the foundation of India that is Bharat.

G.N. Devy is a cultural activist