3/11/11

the Goddess of English


She looks like the Statue of Liberty, she's made of Bronze, about two feet tall and she's standing on a computer. How cool is that? This is one up-to-date Goddess here, she's new, she'll probly tweet. I'm not quite sure how this works though, if you need a god you just make one up out of thin air? Are there forms to fill out?

Chandra Bhan Prasad knows, he's the guy who thought up the Goddess English and gave her the job of being the symbol of Dalit renaissance. If anybody needs a renaissance it's the Dalits: the Hindus treat them like shit, and when they convert to Christianity they still get treated like shit, even after they're dead. Prasad feels that the way up is to know English. Not the Goddess, and not in the Biblical sense, so get your mind out of the gutter, the language. I like the idea, and I like the goddess, I like how she's kinda feminist.


"She holds a pen in her right hand which shows she is literate. She is dressed well and sports a huge hat - it's a symbol of defiance that she is rejecting the old traditional dress code.
"In her left hand, she holds a book which is the constitution of India which gave Dalits equal rights. She stands on top of a computer which means we will use English to rise up the ladder and become free for ever."




There's really a lot to this. It's drawing on history, how the British transformed India with their guns and English lessons. Tradition is that the Brahmins are the big shots, and they're all about speaking Hindi and looking down their noses at people who don't. But LULZ, the modern world is passing them by with people learning English from Azerbaijan to Zimbabwe: Hindi, not so much. If this empowers the Dalits and lets them thumb their nose at tradition, well, too bad preachers,Welcome to the Pantheon, English!

The Brahmins won't even let Dalits go in their crummy old temples, so Prasad and the Goddess are building their own. They're having trouble getting a building permit though. It ain't like the old days when us Goddesses could just smite the crap out of people and get them to worshiping. I miss those days.


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