Taffy Stuck and Tongue Tied asks: who owns community identity? Those who try to define it in a certain rigid fashion, or is it everyone who claims to belong to that identity?
Linked by kuffir. Join Blogbharti facebook group.In one of them, the blogger was talking smack about a coworker of hers, a fellow “Marathi maanus”, who was unable to rattle off names of all the months in the Marathi calendar year on demand. The blogger was also outraged that this coworker did not know something as trivial as adhik maas. With righteous indignation, the blogger concluded that such people should not call themselves Marathi. (It translates a little awkward – basically, she was saying that “such people” do not rightfully belong to the Marathi community.)
Nobody would blindly accept anyone’s claims to be beautiful or intelligent or a fantastic skier or a skillful musician, why should anyone blindly accept people’s claims to belong to an identity?
Nobody “owns” the definition of “Marathi” anymore than anyone owns the definition of “ripe” or “buxom” or “beautiful” — meanings arise from the ways in which people use words.