No sooner had Mamata Banerjee made her “I am a simple man” gaffe on CNN-IBN, than Twitter went ablaze. Digs and jokes ranged from the derisive to the racist. And sexist, of course. They went on.
Yes, accents and pronunciations can indeed be funny. Quite often. And if you are a pundamentalist, you can always have a rolling day out in a multi-lingual country like India. But this Mamata ‘slip of the tongue’ was more a ‘slip of the mind’, and it was certainly not punny.
Mamata is not known for her prowess over the English language; what she, in all likelihood, had done was to transliterate. She probably had the “manush” bit of her election catchphrase in her mind when she uttered those few words. Bangla is less sexist than English since there’s practically no gender in the language. “Sadharon manush” (ordinary people) would include both men and women. The common parlance in both English and Hindi in India, however, are decidedly sexist. Both “common man” and “aam aadmi” are gender-inclusive. It’s should be obvious why Mamata called herself a simple man.
The problem is not with Mamata, it lies with us. The problem is with a milieu that cannot rid itself of gender-inclusive language.
It’s very easy to pinpoint the blame. Just look at the manifesto of the woman-led party which rules us today: Congress documents talk only of the “aam aadmi”. Follow this link to see which news establishments in India talk of the “common man” when they actually mean “people”.
