Diana Screams!

The Choli Song Controversy, Hindi Defacement & Diana

#memoriesfromdiaries #newspaperinlearning

25th January 1994

Three newsworthy events were there on this particular day’s newspapers!

First of all –

Dubbed to be a Hindi song with vulgar lyrics, the number Choli ke Peeche was considered taboo at a time and age when speaking about sex and sexuality was considered anathema!

The song had released just a few weeks ago, on 1st January 1994, to mixed reactions from cultural critics and the general lay!

It was in this backdrop that an MLA was suspended in Calcutta for singing this ‘Choli’ song.

Secondly,

This was a moment in the history of Tamil Nadu, when all the major political parties were up against the imposition of Hindi in the State. 

It was in the wake of this political stand, that DMK Chief Mr. Karunanidhi had asked his party cadres to deface Hindi letters on signages all across the state.

The timing was significant! 25th January! 

Since, it was on 26th January 1950, on the occasion of our Republic Day, that Hindi became the official language of India (Although, on 14th September 1949, Hindi was adopted as the official language of the Union of India - the Indian constitution, in 1950, had declared Hindi in Devanagari script to be the official language of the union).

It was also declared that, unless Parliament decided otherwise, the use of English for official purposes was to cease 15 years after the constitution came into effect, that is, on 26 January 1965!

Remember R. K. Narayan’s ‘Fifteen Years’? 😊

Well, this led to a great crisis and confusion among the non-Hindi-speaking people of India. Hence Parliament enacted the Official Languages Act, 1963, which provided for the continued use of English for official purposes along with Hindi, even after the year 1965.

Also, students in Tamil Nadu were faced with a crisis. Their mother tongue was Tamil, and English was their medium of instruction in schools and colleges across the State.

Now they would have to face the central government-related exams in a language unbeknownst to them! One added reason for protests against Hindi imposition.

Since protest on 26th January would mean dishonouring the Nation, a few prominent political parties, led by the DMK, gave a call for defacing Hindi all over Tamil Nadu - one day earlier - on 25th January. 

Students were seen painting graffiti and pasting posters all over cities, towns and villages, with slogans that read, ‘Hindi never! English ever! Down with Hindi’, etc.

One reason why, many of us (including me) 😊 had to learn Hindi at the Hindi Prachar Sabha, since Hindi was not taught in schools back then!

Finally,

Diana screams at photographers!

A rather strange presentiment foretelling her impending death at the hands of the same photographers just a few years later! ☹

Princess Diana – dubbed the ‘most hunted person of the modern age’, was also called the ‘most photographed person’, back then!

One reason why her elder son Prince William is allergic to any media coverage of him or his family members.

What he once said in her interview, could really move our hearts.

He said that the paparazzi would spit on her (Princess Diana) to get her reaction for it!

How shameful an act!

William adds,

If you are the Princess of Wales and you're a mother, I don’t believe being chased by 30 guys on motorbikes who block your path, who spit at you to get a reaction from you… and make a woman cry in public to get a photograph, I don't believe that is appropriate.

Most of the time his mother cried, because of press intrusion into her private life,

he adds.

Right from the time when news of her engagement to Prince Charles was confirmed, Diana was followed by the paparazzi, until the time they hunted her down to her death!

In a memoir titled, Dicing With Di: The Amazing Adventures of Britain’s Royal Chasers, Harvey and his paparazzi partner Saunders, recollect on how they hunted Diana for those sensational ‘million dollar’ clicks of the Princess in March 1994.

Mark Saunders and Glenn Harvey were sipping coffee in Kensington, west London.

The pair had spent the day attempting to photograph the most famous woman in the world, without success.

Then Harvey’s cell rang; Princess Diana had been spotted!

Seconds later both of them were in hot pursuit of the Princess, through red lights, driving down the wrong side of a traffic island and accelerating in front of trucks, until the Princess began turning into the entrance of Kensington Palace.

Harvey – leaping out from the vehicle, camera in hand, and dives across the bonnet of the car, firing his camera at the Audi as it disappeared from sight.

“Please, please, let that picture be sharp,” he prays.

It was. 

Harvey’s photograph of Diana was then sold to the British tabloid News of the World in an exclusive deal, for a fortune!

Well, Diana ‘screams at’ photographer (as I’ve jotted down in my diary), was something that she had to do on a regular basis, day after day after day, all through her life, to avoid the hunting photographers, up until that dreaded day, just three years later, when she was finally hunted down by the same paparazzi!

Again, this act of ‘screaming at photographers’ could possibly be a premonition or a presentiment on the part of the Princess!

Pic courtesy: Newsweek

PS: You may also want to read a Role Play done by Shruti of II MA English, as Princess Diana, on our past post HERE