Thread by @dikgaj

those protesting "cultural imperialism" shd think carefully: there is a fine line between what defines our nationhood& what is "external". Our nationhood is based on the entire geography of the subcontinent which in turn is the base of the "superstructure" that includes "culture"

geography permeates our language, expressions, food, and the reason once a pan-subcontinental society evolved with a shared language (Praakrits), philosophy, ideology - that largely survived through political fragmentation. the issue of "cultural imperialism" is much deeper.

a nationhood is based on geography, but extends to an evolved common ideology expressed through broadly understood common language: once formed, any subset of these features may shrink or modify a bit, but the other elements remain sufficiently close to do "self-correction"

what many now see as "cultural imperialism" is actually imperialism of a deviation from true "nationhood". The most common imposition protested, is "language": the trigger for this tweet seq today was seeing the word "dimaag" used casually by someone claiming to be "North Indian"

why was "dimaag" a trigger for me? I remember someone from the subregion who protest "northie imposition" once tweeting "dimaage to chiloi na": she casually used an Arabic loanword, even though her subregional dialect retains excellent pre-Islamic alternatives, like "Mone/Manane"

Here for me was an excellent illustration of both a protesting zone, and a "concerned/nationalist-only-bashing-out-of-concern-love-not-real-ethnic-hatred" zone - casually use an Arabic word replacing Sanskrit/Praakrit alternatives. Both are carrying out "cultural imperialism".

Using Arabic "dimaag" to replace words that preexisted in subcontinental languages of both "culturally"-warring subregions, is not just an act of simple replacement: it erases the use of those other words and thereby breaks the links in public discourse/literature to pre-existing

narratives that use those other words: our brains remember things by linkages, and associations. In a way such replacement is breaking those deeper narrative links, and accelerates erasure of your own culture. Culture exists in ur mind, in ur recollections, when u forget-it dies.

Arabic "dimaag" will come up and get linked with narratives culturally alien to the subcontinent& natives sufficiently kept in the dark from those other alien narratives - so neither the Arabic, nor the Indic will be absorbed. what ur left with is a deracinated moronic mindset.

if u need to fight "cultural imperialism", correctly point out the deviation frm the truly more common, native shared framework that once spanned the subcontinent before jihadis came along -in language/religion& reject it. Otherwise it becomes a subregional contest for supremacy.