Admittedly English is a phoren language to most of us and undoubtedly the Bhakts, but at least the NRIs among them have no excuse for getting gender, singular-plural, past-present tense or even past participles wrong. Sitting with a Wren and Martin beside them always might be a good idea.
Messing up spellings, gender and tense however seems to be a uniquely right-wing accomplishment, even in countries where English should not be an alien language. Remember the then US President Donald Trump tweeting about journalists who “pour” over his tweets when he meant “pore” and Harry Potter writer JK Rowling going into spasms of laughter pointing out that error and giving him the right spelling. Miriam-Webster dictionary was also constrained then to tweet the right spelling and meaning of “pore over”, which is study or go through carefully, rather than “pour over” which is not like pouring tea – for you only pour tea. But it could be like pouring milk all over your cornflakes or pouring water over all your hopes and desires – two very different things, if the Bhakts can discern – I do hope they get my drift.
Their supreme leader too is spelling-challenged, mixing up STRENGTH and STREANH, presuming the latter is truly an English word which, to date, does not appear in any English language dictionary – I checked all at my disposal but strangely could not find the word in any of them.
The Bhakts’ reaction towards Rahul Gandhi’s English this week reminded me of this snobbish British classmate of mine at the institute in Paris where I did a mid-career course in journalism. She had spelt ‘catastrophe’ as ‘catastrophy’. As there were both Francophones and Anglophones at the institute, it was left to fellow students to check each others’ use of language and grammar while our professors only fact-checked our reports. She refused to accept my correction of the spelling- because I was Indian and should not have been speaking – or writing – near perfect English unlike some of the British themselves. We went through all editions of all dictionaries – Canadian, Australian apart from British and American editions of Chambers, Oxford, Miriam- Webster and Random House, the best among them available at the institute. Each one gave us only ‘catastrophe’, no one spelt it as ‘catastrophy’, even as I chased after her pleading, “Jane, Jane! I come from a country where there are so many catastrophes that I have reason to know that word!”
She refused to listen until we were through all the dictionaries whereupon she pulled out her own pocket Oxford dictionary from her bag and said, rather loftily, “I am sure my dictionary will give me the Y“. Sadly, that day it refused to co-operate with its owner and still gave her only the E, whereupon she at least had the grace to concede defeat and acknowledge that at least one Indian had better English than one Brit, however supercilious and arrogant.