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Politics Of Dinkar

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It has all the right messages for the nation. The polity will be well advised not to slot him into a caste for identity politics or cherry-pick from his statements to imprison governance in dogma. A Bengali in Bihar, I spoke simple Bengali, shorn of Sanskrit-origin words that I thought were meant only for editorials in Anandabazar Patrika until I migrated to Kolkata after school. My Hindi was horrible, with the written form as devoid of gender sensitivity as Bihari Hindi is (and I used to wonder how Biharis couldn’t get it right while speaking but could pull off written compositions perfectly). No elder ever congratulated me for my exam scorecard; for, amid all the scores in 90s, and a few 100s, that in Hindi hovered in the 50-60 range, creating an eyesore and attracting the attention of everybody who had the authority to scold me. But even this hopeless student of Hindi got goosebumps all over when the teacher recited Ramdhari Singh ‘Dinkar’ (who was a Bihar