Why This Revival Of Hindu Chauvinism?, Hindustan Times

Some years ago, I was at a literary meeting in Bhubaneshwar. Odia had just been declared the sixth classical language in India, after Tamil, Sanskrit, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam. My scholarly hosts were naturally delighted; one taking particular pleasure in imagining how President Pranab Mukherjee felt when he signed the relevant file, since his mother tongue, Bengali, would never remotely be considered a ‘classical’ language.

That conversation came back to me when, last week, the senior C...