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Collection: Part 1 · VIDEHA MITHILA MAITHILI DISCUSSION CRITICISM SERIES PART 1
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0:00–0:11So, picture this, it's 2018 and there's this absolutely vicious, just highly public digital fistfight breaking out on Facebook.
0:11–0:12Yeah, a full-on brawl.
0:12–0:17Right, and it's over what, I mean, on the surface seems like a really simple question, right?
0:17–0:20Like, who published the very first Mephilim language blog?
0:20–0:24Which sounds so niche, but the stakes for them were incredibly high.
0:24–0:29Exactly. And to prove his case, one of these guys essentially has to become
0:30–0:31like a digital forensic detective.
0:31–0:34I mean, he's digging into the invisible architecture
0:34–0:35of the internet itself.
0:35–0:39Yeah, he's exposing fake URL timestamps,
0:39–0:41forged publication dates, all that stuff.
0:41–0:43Yeah, and even debunking these really technical claims
0:43–0:46about like 1990s font software.
0:46–0:47It is wild.
0:47–0:48So welcome to the deep dive everyone.
0:48–0:51Today we are exploring the surprisingly cutthroat,
0:51–0:55fiercely passionate, and just incredibly complex world
0:55–0:56of Mathilli web journalism.
0:56–0:57It really is a fascinating world.
0:57–1:01And it perfectly illustrates this much larger phenomenon
1:01–1:01because what we're looking at
1:01–1:03is a transnational language community.
1:03–1:05Right, because Mathilius spoken in a few different areas.
1:05–1:09Yeah, primarily in Bihar and Harkhand in India
1:09–1:12and then also the Eastern Terai region of Nepal.
1:12–1:15And we're basically watching this entire community
1:15–1:18step onto the completely uncharted,
1:18–1:20volatile territory of the early internet.
1:20–1:22And that is exactly our mission today.
1:22–1:25We're diving into a really grounded,
1:25–1:27super detailed source text today.
1:27–1:30It's called A History of Methili Web Journalism.
1:30–1:32And it's written by Ashish Anshar.
1:32–1:34It's a great book, really meticulous.
1:34–1:35It is.
1:35–1:36And we're gonna use it to figure out
1:36–1:40how this linguistic community literally fought for space
1:40–1:43online, the immense technological brick walls
1:43–1:44they kept slamming into,
1:44–1:47and the sheer grass roots unpaid labor
1:47–1:50that was required to digitize an entire culture.
1:50–1:52Because honestly, if you think about it,
1:52–1:54this isn't just about one language in South Asia.
1:54–1:56It's a blueprint.
1:56–1:59It's a case study for how any traditional culture survives the digital age.
1:59–2:00Yeah, exactly.
2:00–2:04Oh, let's untack this because before we get into, you know, the forge time stamps
2:04–2:08and the Facebook showdowns, we kind of need to understand the environment these
2:08–2:09pioneers were walking into.
2:09–2:10Yeah, you have to set the stage.
2:10–2:11Right.
2:11–2:14And the author, Anshinhar, he spends a good chunk of time just setting up the
2:14–2:15sociology of the internet itself.
2:16–2:16He does.
2:16–2:20And I think it's completely necessary because you really can't understand the
2:20–2:24magnitude of putting a regional language on the web without understanding what
2:24–2:28a chaotic paradigm shift the web actually was in the first place.
2:28–2:29Oh for sure.
2:29–2:35So Anshin Haar establishes this massive global and Indian timeline just to show how quickly
2:35–2:36everything changed.
2:36–2:43I mean we go from the US Defense Department tying computers together with Arpanet in 1969.
2:43–2:44Right to super early days.
2:44–2:49And then to Tim Berners-Lee creating the World Wide Web in 1989.
2:49–2:53But the Indian context is really where the clock starts ticking for our specific story.
2:53–2:57Yeah, the book notes that the internet arrived in India via
2:57–2:59Urnett, which is the educational and research network,
2:59–3:00around 1986.
3:00–3:05But I imagine that wasn't something like a teenager in Bihar
3:05–3:07was just logging into from their bedroom.
3:07–3:08Oh, not at all. No.
3:08–3:09Urnett was strictly a closed loop.
3:09–3:12It was for the government and top academic institutions only.
3:12–3:14Okay. So highly restricted.
3:14–3:15Very.
3:15–3:18The real turning point, the one they author highlights as the Big Bang,
3:18–3:21is August 15, 1995.
3:21–3:221995.
3:22–3:28Yeah, that is when the general public finally got access through VSNL, which is the Vadesh
3:28–3:30Sanjharni Gump Limited.
3:30–3:31August 1995.
3:31–3:34I mean, it's wild to think that's barely three decades ago.
3:34–3:36No, it feels like ancient history, but it's really not.
3:36–3:37Right.
3:37–3:41And the author points out how the internet in India didn't just grow, it basically
3:41–3:44detonated, especially as we moved into the 2000s and 2010s.
3:44–3:46Oh yeah, an absolute explosion.
3:46–3:49It went from this very slow, you know, dial-up novelty where you couldn't use the
3:49–3:54landline phone to the absolute backbone of daily life, especially for the youth.
3:54–3:59I mean, banking, education, booking a train ticket, suddenly it all migrated online.
3:59–4:02It became essential. But what's really fascinating here is that
4:02–4:05Incheon Heart doesn't write this as a purely triumphant tech bro narrative.
4:05–4:06No, he really doesn't.
4:06–4:12He takes a highly critical, deeply sociological look at what this new frontier was actually
4:12–4:18doing to people. Like, he explicitly brings up internet addiction disorder as a societal
4:18–4:21crisis that just arrived right alongside all the convenience.
4:21–4:25Yeah, he really doesn't gloss over the ugly stuff at all, which I appreciated.
4:25–4:26Same.
4:26–4:31He talks about people essentially living their entire lives through screens, spending up
4:31–4:33to 15 hours a day online.
4:33–4:36And he goes into specific societal damages too.
4:36–4:37Yeah, he pulls no punches.
4:37–4:43Like he notes how the massive proliferation of online pornography started destroying marriages
4:43–4:45and creating deep psychological rifts in society.
4:45–4:46Right.
4:46–4:51even points to the rise of cyberterrorism, where warfare suddenly became invisible.
4:51–4:56You didn't need a physical army anymore, you just needed bugs, viruses, and a keyboard.
4:56–5:00And he also delves into the political weaponization of the internet, which is a huge theme.
5:00–5:02Oh, the IT cells.
5:02–5:03Exactly.
5:03–5:08The text specifically calls out the creation of political IT cells.
5:08–5:13And for the listener, these are basically organized groups using these massive call
5:13–5:18center-like setups to intentionally manufacture and spread fake news.
5:18–5:23Wow. Yeah, they use it to incite riots and manipulate public perception on a massive scale.
5:23–5:27He's really painting a picture of a digital space that is incredibly hostile.
5:27–5:32Hustle, yeah. Yeah. And he also talks about the psychological shift in how we value things,
5:32–5:36right, like the whole validation economy. Yes, this is one of his most crucial points,
5:36–5:40I think. And to illustrate this, the author brings up Justin Rosenstein.
5:40–5:42Wait, isn't he the guy who invented the Facebook like button?
5:42–5:44He co-created it, yes.
5:44–5:44Okay, yeah.
5:44–5:46And the author points out the heavy irony here.
5:46–5:49Rosenstein later actually deleted the Facebook app
5:49–5:51from his own phone because he was so terrified
5:51–5:54of the psychological feedback loop he helped create.
5:54–5:55That is so telling.
5:55–5:56Right.
5:56–5:58Anshinhar observes that in this new digital space,
5:58–6:02the like button basically created a brand new currency.
6:02–6:05Digital validation literally became wealth.
6:05–6:07Which completely changes human behavior.
6:07–6:09I mean, the author mentions how this metric driven
6:09–6:14culture turned artists, poets, writers just into clout chasers.
6:14–6:21Precisely. Like think about it. If you are a mathilly poet in say 1990, you write a poem
6:21–6:26based on your internal artistic drive, right? Or maybe the feedback of a very small peer
6:26–6:27group in your village.
6:27–6:28Yeah, it's intimate.
6:28–6:33Exactly. But Anshinher notes that once you put that poet on the internet, the quality
6:33–6:37of the art is suddenly judged by a highly visible public number of likes.
6:37–6:39Right. The metric is right there for everyone to judge.
6:39–6:41And it causes genuine anxiety.
6:41–6:45It actually alters what people choose to create because they start favoring whatever
6:45–6:47gets the most immediate viral reaction.
6:47–6:48Okay.
6:48–6:52I have to pause here because reading this brought up a massive contradiction for me.
6:52–6:53Oh, what's that?
6:53–6:58Well, if the author recognizes that the internet is this, you know, this toxic casino of
6:58–7:04fake news, cyber warfare and desperate validation seeking, then why even put Mathilli on it?
7:04–7:07Like it seems totally counterintuitive.
7:07–7:14If you have this rich, nuanced, centuries-old literary tradition, isn't digitizing it just
7:14–7:15throwing it to the wolves?
7:15–7:21I mean, it's like building a beautiful, quiet library in the middle of a chaotic amusement
7:21–7:22park.
7:22–7:23That is the ultimate paradox, isn't it?
7:23–7:26And what's great is the author faces it head-on.
7:26–7:29He doesn't shy away from that contradiction.
7:29–7:30How does he justify it?
7:30–7:33Well, he argues that the internet has a dual nature.
7:33–7:37makes people incredibly knowledgeable but simultaneously incredibly ignorant.
7:37–7:41Wait, how does that actually work in practice, knowledgeable and ignorant at the same time?
7:41–7:43Do you think about the mechanics of a search engine?
7:43–7:48When you look up a historical fact, the algorithm doesn't just hand you a beautifully bound,
7:48–7:50peer-reviewed encyclopedia.
7:50–7:52Right, it gives you millions of links.
7:52–7:55Exactly, it hands you the truth. But right next to it, maybe one link down,
7:55–8:00it hands you highly visible, extremely well-funded fake news or wild conspiracy theories.
8:00–8:01Oh, I see.
8:01–8:04Because both results are formatted exactly the same way.
8:04–8:09You know, a clean black headline, a blue link, a little snippet of text critical thinking
8:09–8:10is naturally eroded.
8:10–8:15The digital authority looks identical for both the truth and the absolute lie.
8:15–8:16Wow.
8:16–8:17Yeah.
8:17–8:18That's terrifying when you put it like that.
8:18–8:23Okay, so if the environment is that corrosive to the truth, I have to go back to my question.
8:23–8:26Why build your cultural home there?
8:26–8:29Because, simply put, the alternative is extinction.
8:29–8:30Extinction.
8:30–8:31Yes.
8:31–8:36makes it very clear, avoiding the internet is just no longer a viable option for any culture.
8:37–8:42If a young person in 2010 searches for a Mathili poem or the history of a specific region in
8:42–8:45Bihar and the internet returns zero results...
8:45–8:46Then it just doesn't exist for them.
8:46–8:51Exactly. To that young person, that history simply ceases to exist. It drops entirely out of the
8:51–8:57modern consciousness. Therefore, establishing a pristine, factual, and robust digital presence
8:57–9:01wasn't about wanting to join the chaotic amusement park.
9:01–9:03It was basically a hostage situation,
9:03–9:04digitize or disappear.
9:04–9:06Wow, okay.
9:06–9:09So the stakes literally couldn't be higher.
9:09–9:11It's a literal battle for cultural memory.
9:11–9:12Exactly.
9:12–9:13And that brings us right back to the drama
9:13–9:15we started the deep dive with.
9:15–9:17Because once people realize this digital land grab
9:17–9:19is essential for survival,
9:19–9:21the race to plant the first flag begins.
9:21–9:22The rush is on.
9:22–9:26And human nature dictates that everyone wants to be recognized
9:26–9:27the first explorer in the history books.
9:27–9:32And truly. And Anshin Har spends a significant portion of his research definitively sorting
9:32–9:37out this timeline because in a digital void, establishing who laid the very first brick
9:37–9:40is a matter of immense historical pride.
9:40–9:45Right. So according to his digital archeology, the absolute first Mathili presence on the
9:45–9:48internet was a website called Balsaric Gah.
9:48–9:49Balsaric Gah, yes.
9:49–9:52And it was hosted on Yahoo Geo Cities in the year 2000.
9:52–9:58Yahoo GeoCities. Man, for listeners who might not have been around for that era, you really
9:58–10:02have to understand what a wild west that was. Oh, it was chaos. It was a platform where absolutely
10:02–10:08anyone could claim a little plot of digital city space and build a very rudimentary,
10:08–10:13usually visually chaotic website. Oh yeah, we're talking neon green backgrounds,
10:13–10:20spinning globe gifs, the sparkly text, the whole nine yards. Exactly. So this site,
10:20–10:24Palsar Gok was built by a man named Gajendra Thakur.
10:24–10:25Gajendra Thakur.
10:25–10:29Yes. And the book notes that this initial site was followed by a few other pioneers.
10:29–10:36There was a site called Palav Mithila in 2003 and an early news blog named Samadhiya in 2004.
10:36–10:41Okay, so that's the established timeline. But anytime you have someone claiming to be the
10:41–10:44first in history, you're inherently going to have challengers.
10:44–10:45Oh, always.
10:45–10:48Which brings us to the controversy. Here's where it gets really interesting.
10:48–10:55A rival blog called Katek Rasbat, which was operated by Kumar Pabmanab and a few associates,
10:55–10:58they stepped forward and basically said, no, we were first.
10:58–11:02And to prove it, they pointed to posts on their blog that explicitly displayed publication
11:02–11:04dates of 1999 and 2004.
11:04–11:08Now if that were true, it would completely rewrite the timeline of the language's digital
11:08–11:09history.
11:09–11:11Tucker wouldn't be first anymore.
11:11–11:12Right.
11:12–11:16But Anjanhar, he doesn't just look at the dates typed on the screen and nod his head,
11:16–11:17you know?
11:17–11:21curtain back on how blog platforms actually function. He investigates the underlying
11:21–11:25architecture of Blogger, which is the platform Kitacross Bot was using.
11:25–11:29And the forensic breakdown he uses here is just fascinating. He starts by looking at the features
11:29–11:33Google actually offered on Blogger at that specific time.
11:33–11:39Right. He points out that the ability to schedule a future post or back data post,
11:39–11:43basically that little feature that lets you manually change the display date of a piece of
11:43–11:47content that wasn't even introduced by Google until years later around 2008.
11:47–11:48It didn't exist.
11:48–11:49Didn't exist.
11:49–11:52But Anshanar goes even deeper than just feature updates.
11:53–11:54He looks at the URLs.
11:54–11:58And for the listener, we really should explain why a URL is so damning in this
11:58–11:59specific context.
11:59–12:00Yeah, please do.
12:00–12:02Because I was a little lost on this at first.
12:02–12:04How does a web address prove a forgery?
12:04–12:05Okay.
12:05–12:08So when you publish a post on a platform like blogger, the system
12:08–12:12automatically generates a unique web address, a URL.
12:12–12:15So the internet knows exactly where to find that specific page.
12:15–12:17Right, the www.whatever.
12:17–12:23Exactly. And the way Blogger's automated system worked back then was by embedding the actual
12:23–12:26year and month of creation directly into that URL string.
12:26–12:27Oh, automatically.
12:27–12:30Completely automatically. So it would look something like, you know,
12:30–12:36blogspot.com, forpression 21307, name of the post.
12:36–12:40That URL is hard-coded by the server at the exact moment you hit the publish button.
12:40–12:49Ah, so anyone can go into the text editor type published on July 1st 1999 in like huge bold font at the top of the page
12:49–12:55Yeah, and the public will see that display date. Yes, but the server knows the truth. Exactly. It's the digital equivalent of
12:56–13:02Forging a medieval manuscript, but forgetting that the paper you use has a 2013 watermark visible when you hold it up to the light
13:02–13:03That's a perfect analogy
13:03–13:08The display date is manual and easily faked, but the URL timestamp is systemic.
13:08–13:10And Anshanhar just caught them red-handed with this.
13:10–13:11Yeah.
13:11–13:16I mean, he proves that a post on Catacross Bot that proudly displayed a 1999 date actually
13:16–13:20had a URL timestamp of July 2013 embedded in his web address.
13:20–13:22It's undeniable proof.
13:22–13:24And he went post by post.
13:24–13:30Another one claiming a 2004 publication date had a 2005 URL timestamp.
13:30–13:36the server architecture completely 100% exposed the manual manipulation of the historical record.
13:36–13:40Which naturally led to that massive confrontation you mentioned at the start of the deep dive.
13:40–13:42Yeah, the 2018 Facebook showdown.
13:42–13:46And I love that Anshin Haar actually includes screenshots of this public debate in the book.
13:46–13:47He brings the receipts?
13:47–13:48He does.
13:48–13:53So Kumar Padmanab, defending his claim, tries to use this highly technical argument
13:53–13:57to invalidate Gajendra Thakur's year 2000 site.
13:57–14:03Podmanub argues that it was functionally impossible to build a Mathili website in 2000.
14:03–14:07Because according to him, Devanagari typing tools didn't even exist before 2003.
14:07–14:12With Devanagari being the primary script that Mathili is often written in today.
14:12–14:13Right.
14:13–14:16So Podmanub is essentially saying you couldn't have built a site in 2000 because you literally
14:16–14:18couldn't type the alphabet on a computer yet.
14:18–14:19Checkmate.
14:19–14:22And how does the author systematically dismantle that defense?
14:22–14:23Because he does.
14:23–14:25Oh, he destroys it.
14:25–14:28NGR points out a very specific piece of software history.
14:29–14:34He casually notes that fonts like Kruti Dev had been around since 1997.
14:34–14:40Ah, Kruti Dev. Wow. That is a name that brings back a lot of memories for early Indian internet users.
14:40–14:44Walk us through that because I don't know it. Why is Kruti Dev the smoking gun here?
14:44–14:45How did it actually work?
14:45–14:47Okay, so before we had Unicode.
14:47–14:48What's Unicode?
14:48–14:53Unicode is the modern universal standard that allows computers to natively understand
14:53–14:59thousands of different alphabets. Before that, computers were stubbornly, completely English-centric.
14:59–15:04They really only understood the Latin alphabet. So software developers in India had to create a
15:04–15:10hack. And Krudi Dev was a non-unicode font. What it did was visually map Devanagari characters onto
15:10–15:14the standard English QWERTY keyboard. Okay, so wait, the computers still thought you were
15:14–15:19typing in English? Exactly. If you press the letter K on your keyboard, the computer internally
15:19–15:24registered in English K. It had no idea about Hindi or Mathili, but the Kruti Dev font file
15:24–15:30told the monitor to draw the Hindi character, Ela, on the screen. It was entirely a visual
15:30–15:34illusion. In fact, if you sent that document to someone who didn't have the Kruti Dev font
15:34–15:39installed on their computer, they would open it up and just see a string of random English gibberish.
15:39–15:43That is brilliant, but also sounds so incredibly frustrating.
15:43–15:48It was. But because Crudy Dev existed and was widely used in 1997,
15:48–15:54Anshinore proves that people absolutely had the tools to type and publish in Dev and Agari
15:54–15:58by the year 2000. So Padmanov's technical alibi completely falls apart.
15:58–16:02Completely. You know this raises such an interesting behavioral question though.
16:02–16:07What's that? Why go through all the trouble? Like why forge a digital time stamp,
16:07–16:12backdate your blog posts and then get into a public bitter highly technical
16:12–16:17debate on Facebook over a blog. Well because in the fluid constantly shifting
16:17–16:20landscape of the early internet being the undisputed first grants you an
16:20–16:25incredible amount of legacy. Yeah, yes. You become the founding father of a digital
16:25–16:29movement you get the Wikipedia page the citations but more importantly I
16:29–16:32think Anshunhar is highlighting a massive vulnerability in how we record
16:32–16:36history today. Because it's so easy to fake. Because it relies entirely on the
16:36–16:39digital literacy of the public.
16:39–16:40Think about it.
16:40–16:42If the general public doesn't know the mechanical difference
16:42–16:46between a display date that someone just typed on a page
16:46–16:50and an automated URL timestamp generated by a server,
16:50–16:52they will just believe the lie.
16:52–16:54Yeah, if it says 1999, they believe 1999.
16:54–16:55Right.
16:55–16:58It's a stark warning about how easily digital history
16:58–16:59can be rewritten by bad actors
16:59–17:02if nobody checks the underlying code.
17:02–17:03That is genuinely unsettling.
17:03–17:06It really means our history is only as secure
17:06–17:08our understanding of the software that hosts it.
17:08–17:08Exactly.
17:08–17:12But you know, this actually transitions this perfectly into the next major hurdle the book
17:12–17:19covers because while proving who published first is great drama, there's a much bigger,
17:19–17:21much quieter struggle happening in the background.
17:21–17:22We have to talk about the infrastructure.
17:22–17:27Yes, the invisible wall, because you can't have a vibrant web journalism scene if the
17:27–17:30keyboard literally does not recognize your language.
17:30–17:31Right.
17:31–17:34We just talked about crudy dev and how it hacked the English keyboard to show Devan
17:34–17:35Agari.
17:35–17:38But Mathili has its own unique historical script, right?
17:38–17:40It isn't just a Vanagari.
17:40–17:41It does.
17:41–17:45While it is commonly written in Devanagari today, its traditional historical script is
17:45–17:48called Tehuta, or sometimes Mythilakshar.
17:48–17:51And Tehuta is visually and functionally distinct.
17:51–17:56It has different curves, different ways the consonants combine with vowels, which are
17:56–17:57called conjuncts.
17:57–18:00You can't just slap a Devanagari fawn hack on it and call it a day.
18:00–18:03It needs its own bespoke architecture.
18:03–18:08And the author points out that the very first digital Trahuda font was created in 2003 by
18:08–18:09a man named C.K. Rout.
18:09–18:13Which is a fascinating footnote, by the way, because Anshun Har mentions that C.K. Rout
18:13–18:17is now a very prominent youth political leader in Nepal.
18:17–18:18Oh, really?
18:18–18:19Yeah.
18:19–18:22It just shows you the caliber of people who are dedicating their time to this early,
18:22–18:24deeply technical foundational work.
18:24–18:25Wow.
18:25–18:28But, you know, creating a font so you can type a word document is really only step
18:28–18:29one.
18:29–18:31The internet is navigated through browsers.
18:31–18:37And the book details this massive milestone in 2012 when Mozilla Firefox was fully localized
18:37–18:39from a Thilly.
18:39–18:44And this was spearheaded by a team led by Sangita Kumari and Rajesh Ranjan.
18:44–18:48And we really need to pause and think about what localizing a browser actually means
18:48–18:49mechanically.
18:49–18:52Yeah, it's not just translating the word file or edit, right?
18:52–18:57Far from it, a web browser has thousands and thousands of strings of text.
18:57–19:02Every single menu, every dropdown, every obscure settings page, every privacy warning, every
19:02–19:07error code like for a whore page not found or SSL certificate invalid.
19:07–19:08Oh my God.
19:08–19:11All of that had to be manually translated into monthly so that a user could actually
19:11–19:13navigate the internet natively.
19:13–19:14That sounds exhausting.
19:14–19:15Yeah.
19:15–19:18And that introduces a really fascinating dynamic that Ankeenhar explores throughout
19:18–19:22the text, which is the difference between how these massive translation projects are
19:22–19:23actually funded and organized.
19:23–19:24Yes.
19:24–19:28sharp line between paid projects and community projects.
19:28–19:32It's a crucial distinction for understanding how digital infrastructure is actually built
19:32–19:34in the developing world.
19:34–19:40The author uses the Microsoft Bing translator project as a prime example of a paid project.
19:40–19:41Right.
19:41–19:46And this was led by Dr. Girishnath Ha, at JNU, Jawaharlal, Nehru University.
19:46–19:47Correct.
19:47–19:52So in a paid institutional model, linguists, developers, data entry workers, they are
19:52–19:54They are all compensated financially.
19:54–19:55They are doing a job.
19:55–19:56Which is great.
19:56–19:57It is.
19:57–20:03But the trade-off is that the massive corporation, Microsoft in this case, ultimately owns the
20:03–20:07proprietary algorithm and keeps the overarching credit.
20:07–20:09It's a corporate product at the end of the day.
20:09–20:13But on the other side of the spectrum, you have the community projects.
20:13–20:17And these are just staggering to read about because they rely entirely on unpaid crowd
20:17–20:20sourced volunteer labor.
20:20–20:24It's just people doing grueling technical work purely out of a sense of cultural duty.
20:24–20:28The prime example of this, which the author details quite extensively, is the creation
20:28–20:30of the Mephili Wikipedia.
20:30–20:31The Wikipedia epic.
20:31–20:32This blew my mind.
20:32–20:34Because I think we take Wikipedia for granted.
20:34–20:35You know?
20:35–20:37You just assume every language has one.
20:37–20:40You go to the drop-down menu and there it is.
20:40–20:44But getting an official Methi Wikipedia approved wasn't just a matter of sending an email
20:44–20:47to the Wikimedia Foundation and asking nicely.
20:47–20:48Not at all.
20:48–20:54Again, led by Gojendra Thakur, the guy who made the first GeoCity site.
20:54–20:58They had to enter what Wikipedia calls the incubator phase.
20:58–21:00Explain that, because it sounds intense.
21:00–21:01It is.
21:01–21:05The Wikimedia Foundation doesn't just hand out empty domains to anyone who asks.
21:05–21:10To get an official language Wikipedia, a community has to prove two things.
21:10–21:15First, that the language has a dedicated active base of contributors, and second, that
21:15–21:17they can generate a significant volume
21:17–21:20of high quality standardized content.
21:20–21:21Right, you have to build a house
21:21–21:22before they give you the address.
21:22–21:24Exactly, you have to prove you can maintain it.
21:24–21:28And the sheer volume of work required is mind-numbing.
21:28–21:29The author points out one individual,
21:29–21:32Humech Mandal, who was responsible for creating
21:32–21:35roughly 70% of the early pages
21:35–21:36during this incubator phase.
21:36–21:4070%, and that brings up a massive mechanical challenge.
21:40–21:43How do you translate the sum total of human knowledge
21:43–21:46into a language that might not have established vocabulary
21:46–21:47from modern concepts.
21:47–21:48Right.
21:48–21:48I was wondering about this.
21:48–21:51If Omish Mandal is sitting at his computer,
21:51–21:55translating a Wikipedia article about, say, quantum physics
21:55–21:57or the internal combustion engine
21:57–22:01or even just internet terminology like hyperlink or download,
22:01–22:03what does he do if there is no traditional
22:03–22:05messily word for it?
22:05–22:07This is where translators essentially become
22:07–22:08linguistic engineers.
22:08–22:09They have to make choices.
22:09–22:11They either borrow words from English or Hindi
22:11–22:14and standardize how they're spelled in Mephili,
22:14–22:16or they have to look at the root structures
22:16–22:18of their own language and coin entirely new words
22:18–22:20that make grammatical sense.
22:20–22:21That is a huge responsibility.
22:21–22:22It is.
22:22–22:24Omej Mandal wasn't just translating facts,
22:24–22:28he was actively expanding the modern functionality
22:28–22:30of the language in real time.
22:30–22:31And doing it all for free.
22:31–22:34Just sitting there for hours, days, years.
22:34–22:37It took six years of this relentless,
22:37–22:39unpaid petitioning and translating
22:39–22:40before the Mephili Wikipedia
22:40–22:43finally received official approval in 2014.
22:43–22:47It is the ultimate example of grassroots digital survival.
22:47–22:50And honestly, it perfectly bridges the gap
22:50–22:51to what the author sees happening
22:51–22:54at the absolute cutting edge today.
22:54–22:56Which is the artificial intelligence revolution.
22:56–22:57Exactly.
22:57–22:59Yeah, Anshinghar doesn't just leave us in 2014.
22:59–23:01He brings the history right up to the present.
23:01–23:04He discusses the work being done by AI for Herat,
23:04–23:07specifically their work out of the Naila Khani Center
23:07–23:09at IIT Madras.
23:09–23:09Right.
23:09–23:13They have created this AI model called IndieTrans2.
23:13–23:14Which is incredible.
23:14–23:16It handles translation, speech recognition,
23:16–23:19and transliteration for 22 different Indian languages,
23:19–23:20including Maitrely.
23:20–23:23I really want to drill down into the transliteration aspect
23:23–23:26because I think people often confuse that with translation
23:26–23:27and they are very different.
23:27–23:30How does IndieTrans2 handle transliteration, say,
23:30–23:33between Devanagari and the traditional Thiru descript?
23:33–23:35Okay, so translation is changing the meaning
23:35–23:37from one language to another,
23:37–23:39like changing the English word hello
23:39–23:41to the French word, bourgeois,
23:41–23:44transliteration is keeping the exact same spoken words,
23:44–23:46but swapping the alphabet they're written in.
23:46–23:50Okay, give me an analogy, because that sounds tricky.
23:50–23:52Imagine you have a live interpreter
23:52–23:54listening to an English speech,
23:54–23:56but instead of translating it into Russian,
23:56–23:58they are writing down exactly what the English speaker
23:58–24:02is saying phonetically using the Russian Cyrillic alphabet.
24:02–24:04So if you read it out loud, it still sounds like English,
24:04–24:07but visually it's a completely different script.
24:07–24:08Oh, that makes total sense.
24:08–24:12So, in Detrans2, using integrated tools like Aksharamuka
24:12–24:16can take an entire news article written in the Devanagagari script
24:16–24:19and instantly transliterate it, swap out the visual architecture
24:19–24:21into the traditional Tirhuda script.
24:21–24:22Wow.
24:22–24:24It automates the agonizing manual labor
24:24–24:29that people like C.K. Rao and Umesh Mandal had to do by hand a decade ago.
24:29–24:31It's a quantum leap in infrastructure.
24:31–24:32It really is.
24:32–24:32Yeah.
24:32–24:34I mean, think about the progression.
24:34–24:37First, you have the chaotic Wild West where nobody can even type the language.
24:37–24:43Then you have the manual painstaking era of hacking English fonts and crowdsourcing encyclopedias
24:43–24:44page by page.
24:44–24:49And now you have AI that can seamlessly translate and transliterate across dozens of languages
24:49–24:50instantly.
24:50–24:52So the infrastructure is finally robust.
24:52–24:54The train tracks are officially laid down.
24:54–24:55Exactly.
24:55–24:59But laying the tracks is really only half the story.
24:59–25:05The question then becomes, once the trains can run, what do these pioneers actually build?
25:05–25:07Which brings us to the empires.
25:07–25:13massive publications that define the era of Mithili web journalism. And according to the author,
25:13–25:17there was one absolute juggernaut that towers over the rest, and it's called Vedea.
25:17–25:21Vedea is the foundational pillar of this entire history.
25:21–25:27And it was born out of that very first year 2000 website, Balsari Gakh. Vedea evolved and
25:27–25:32eventually launched its first official issue as a comprehensive digital journal in 2008.
25:32–25:36Again, under the leadership of Kajendra Thakur.
25:36–25:40And what makes Fidea so critical isn't just its longevity, though that is impressive.
25:40–25:43It's the aggressive pursuit of global academic legitimacy.
25:43–25:49The author highlights that Fidea became the first mythally e-journal to obtain an ISSN.
25:49–25:51An international standard serial number.
25:51–25:55Now for the listener who isn't, you know, a librarian, why is an ISSN such a big
25:55–25:56deal for a digital blog?
25:56–26:02It is the difference between a self-published Zeme and a recognized academic journal.
26:02–26:08An ISSN is an eight-digit code used globally by libraries, universities, and researchers
26:08–26:12to identify and catalog serial publications.
26:12–26:15Getting one is a strict bureaucratic process.
26:15–26:20By securing an ISSN, VEDEA was essentially forcing the global academic establishment
26:20–26:22to recognize them.
26:22–26:26They planted a flag saying, we aren't just a niche corner of the internet, we exist
26:26–26:31in the same global registry as the New York Times or the Harvard Business Review.
26:31–26:32That is such an incredible power move.
26:32–26:33It really is.
26:33–26:36And their ambition didn't stop at bureaucracy.
26:36–26:40The book details their commitment to inclusivity, which is honestly staggering.
26:40–26:43But they didn't just publish in one standard script.
26:43–26:45They eventually published in 12 different scripts.
26:45–26:4712 scripts for a single language journal.
26:47–26:48Right.
26:48–26:53Devanagari, Terhuda, Kathi, Noori, and they even created a Braille blog for the visually
26:53–26:54impaired.
26:54–26:56Which is a fascinating technical achievement in itself.
26:56–26:57Yeah.
26:57–26:59How does a digital Braille blog actually work?
26:59–27:02because obviously you can't touch a computer monitor.
27:02–27:06Right. It relies on screen reader software interfacing with a physical,
27:06–27:08refreshable Braille display.
27:08–27:09What's that?
27:09–27:13It's a piece of hardware that sits in front of the keyboard and actually pushes
27:13–27:18physical pins up and down to form Braille characters as the user navigates
27:18–27:20the digital text on the screen.
27:20–27:21Oh wow, that's amazing.
27:21–27:26So by formatting their content specifically to be cleanly read by these systems,
27:26–27:32The DEA was ensuring that even the most marginalized members of their linguistic community weren't
27:32–27:34left out of the digital revolution.
27:34–27:37And speaking of the marginalized, Angie and Harp points out that this desire to bring the
27:37–27:41margins to the center wasn't just technical.
27:41–27:42It was editorial too.
27:42–27:43Yes.
27:43–27:47Videa created an initiative called the Videa Mathila Ratna.
27:47–27:51This is such a prime example of how digital media can disrupt historical gatekeeping.
27:51–27:52Exactly.
27:52–27:58The author explains that traditional print critics and historians in the region had largely ignored lower-cast historical figures.
27:58–28:02There was a very tight grip on the visual history of the culture.
28:02–28:08Like, if the print magazines didn't commission a portrait of someone, their face was essentially lost to history.
28:08–28:15But, Vedea used their digital platform to bypass those print gatekeepers entirely.
28:15–28:17They didn't need permission.
28:17–28:21actively commissioned and published portraits of historically ignored figures
28:21–28:27like Banthach Ammar. They use digital art as a tool for social justice and
28:27–28:31historical correction. This is the true promise of the internet that we talked
28:31–28:36about at the very beginning. Yes, it has a dark side, but it also completely
28:36–28:40removes the middleman. If the traditional publishers won't print your
28:40–28:43script or tell your history, you don't need their printing press anymore. You
28:43–28:46just build your own digital platform and do it yourself. And this explosion
28:46–28:51of independent platforms led to a massive cultural boom, especially in literature.
28:51–28:56And I have to mention the author of our source text, Ashish Ankenhar, he wasn't just an
28:56–28:58observer in all this, he was an active participant.
28:58–29:03Yes, he ran a highly influential blog called Ankenhar Aker, which became the absolute
29:03–29:06epicenter for a very specific literary movement.
29:06–29:07Matthely Ghazals.
29:07–29:08Right.
29:08–29:12The text notes that his blog hosted online, Musharas.
29:12–29:16And a Mushara for context is a traditional poetic symposium.
29:16–29:20It's usually held in person where poets gather to recite and the audience responds.
29:20–29:23Right, but Ansheen Har digitized it.
29:23–29:26They held these gatherings entirely online.
29:26–29:29And it was so impactful that traditional critics actually started referring to this
29:29–29:33period as the Ansheen Har era of poetry.
29:33–29:34It's amazing.
29:34–29:38By removing the geographic barriers, they brought in dozens of new poets who had never
29:38–29:42published before, simply because this digital stage now existed.
29:42–29:46created a completely self-sustaining ecosystem of art and criticism.
29:46–29:49And we can't forget the hard news side of the spectrum either.
29:49–29:53The author points to platforms like Mathila Mirror, which was a major news portal, started
29:53–29:57by Pradeep Shah, Lollit Nrayansha and Rahul Ray.
29:57–29:59And the book includes this incredible human detail.
29:59–30:04Rahul Ray literally donated his own personal laptop just to give the project a physical
30:04–30:05machine to launch from.
30:05–30:08I mean, that is the literal definition of grassroots journalism.
30:08–30:09It is.
30:09–30:15In these early news blogs, like Samadhiya back in 2004, they were basically inventing the
30:15–30:18format of online regional reporting on the fly.
30:18–30:23And Antion Har makes a really crucial point about the broader impact of these news and
30:23–30:24literary portals.
30:24–30:29They weren't just posting updates, they were actively shaping the language itself.
30:29–30:30I don't know.
30:30–30:35Well, by bringing readers and writers from India and Nepal onto the exact same platforms,
30:35–30:40They helped standardize the grammar across regional variations, and they also acted as
30:40–30:41a watchdog.
30:41–30:42Oh, the plagiarism exposing.
30:42–30:43I love this part.
30:43–30:45Exactly.
30:45–30:48In the early days of the internet, some traditional print writers thought the web was invisible,
30:48–30:50right, like nobody was looking.
30:50–30:55So they would blatantly plagiarize content from blogs and publish it in print, or vice
30:55–30:56versa.
30:56–30:57Right.
30:57–31:01But these digital platforms ruthlessly exposed the literary thieves, proving that the digital
31:01–31:03archive was permanent and searchable.
31:03–31:06You know, when you zoom out and look at the whole timeline, Anshinar presents, it's just
31:06–31:10a wild, exhausting, and honestly beautiful trajectory.
31:10–31:11It really is.
31:11–31:16You start in the chaotic neon days of Yahoo Geo cities in 2000.
31:16–31:23You navigate the petty forged timestamp dramas and the Facebook fistfights.
31:23–31:27You watch volunteers like Umesh Mandal sit at a computer translating thousands of Wikipedia
31:27–31:30pages for free because there was literally no other way.
31:30–31:31Yeah.
31:31–31:38arrive at today an era of AI translation and sprawling multi-script digital
31:38–31:43empires with international serial numbers. Every single step was a fight against
31:43–31:46friction. And I think that's the ultimate takeaway from this deep dive. The
31:46–31:49internet with all its addiction and fake news didn't automatically save
31:49–31:54Mithili. Passionate stubborn people use the internet as a tool to save it
31:54–31:58because a language only dies if its people stop innovating. Well said. We
31:58–32:03want to thank you, the listener, for joining us on this exploration. It's a niche corner
32:03–32:07of internet history, sure, but the mechanics of what they achieved apply to absolutely everything
32:07–32:08we do online today.
32:08–32:12But as we close, I want to leave you with one final thought to mull over, building on
32:12–32:16that transition to artificial intelligence we just discussed. We've just spent this
32:16–32:22entire deep dive marveling at the sheer, messy, passionate human grit required to
32:22–32:25force a language onto the internet over the last two decades.
32:25–32:29the Facebook fights, the late nights translating Wikipedia, the donated laptops.
32:29–32:32Exactly. It was a deeply human struggle.
32:32–32:40But right now, models like Indeed Trans2 and ChatGPT are becoming perfectly fluent in almost every language instantly.
32:40–32:45So looking forward, will this dramatic human struggle to preserve language become a thing of the past?
32:45–32:50Will AI be the ultimate frictionless savior of global linguistic diversity?
32:50–32:51Or...
32:51–32:56Or by removing the struggle, will it strip away the beautiful, petty, deeply human drama
32:56–32:59that makes a language truly alive in the first place?
32:59–33:00Wow.
33:00–33:03Remember that ancient, beautiful manuscript we talked about at the beginning?
33:03–33:05The one that needed to be encoded into ones and zeros?
33:05–33:08It turns out the ones and zeros were the easy part.
33:08–33:12The hardest part, and the most fascinating part, was the people fighting over who got
33:12–33:13to press the keys.
33:13–33:16Keep exploring, and we'll see you on the next Deep Dive.

Plain text

So, picture this, it's 2018 and there's this absolutely vicious, just highly public digital fistfight breaking out on Facebook. Yeah, a full-on brawl. Right, and it's over what, I mean, on the surface seems like a really simple question, right? Like, who published the very first Mephilim language blog? Which sounds so niche, but the stakes for them were incredibly high. Exactly. And to prove his case, one of these guys essentially has to become like a digital forensic detective. I mean, he's digging into the invisible architecture of the internet itself. Yeah, he's exposing fake URL timestamps, forged publication dates, all that stuff. Yeah, and even debunking these really technical claims about like 1990s font software. It is wild. So welcome to the deep dive everyone. Today we are exploring the surprisingly cutthroat, fiercely passionate, and just incredibly complex world of Mathilli web journalism. It really is a fascinating world. And it perfectly illustrates this much larger phenomenon because what we're looking at is a transnational language community. Right, because Mathilius spoken in a few different areas. Yeah, primarily in Bihar and Harkhand in India and then also the Eastern Terai region of Nepal. And we're basically watching this entire community step onto the completely uncharted, volatile territory of the early internet. And that is exactly our mission today. We're diving into a really grounded, super detailed source text today. It's called A History of Methili Web Journalism. And it's written by Ashish Anshar. It's a great book, really meticulous. It is. And we're gonna use it to figure out how this linguistic community literally fought for space online, the immense technological brick walls they kept slamming into, and the sheer grass roots unpaid labor that was required to digitize an entire culture. Because honestly, if you think about it, this isn't just about one language in South Asia. It's a blueprint. It's a case study for how any traditional culture survives the digital age. Yeah, exactly. Oh, let's untack this because before we get into, you know, the forge time stamps and the Facebook showdowns, we kind of need to understand the environment these pioneers were walking into. Yeah, you have to set the stage. Right. And the author, Anshinhar, he spends a good chunk of time just setting up the sociology of the internet itself. He does. And I think it's completely necessary because you really can't understand the magnitude of putting a regional language on the web without understanding what a chaotic paradigm shift the web actually was in the first place. Oh for sure. So Anshin Haar establishes this massive global and Indian timeline just to show how quickly everything changed. I mean we go from the US Defense Department tying computers together with Arpanet in 1969. Right to super early days. And then to Tim Berners-Lee creating the World Wide Web in 1989. But the Indian context is really where the clock starts ticking for our specific story. Yeah, the book notes that the internet arrived in India via Urnett, which is the educational and research network, around 1986. But I imagine that wasn't something like a teenager in Bihar was just logging into from their bedroom. Oh, not at all. No. Urnett was strictly a closed loop. It was for the government and top academic institutions only. Okay. So highly restricted. Very. The real turning point, the one they author highlights as the Big Bang, is August 15, 1995. 1995. Yeah, that is when the general public finally got access through VSNL, which is the Vadesh Sanjharni Gump Limited. August 1995. I mean, it's wild to think that's barely three decades ago. No, it feels like ancient history, but it's really not. Right. And the author points out how the internet in India didn't just grow, it basically detonated, especially as we moved into the 2000s and 2010s. Oh yeah, an absolute explosion. It went from this very slow, you know, dial-up novelty where you couldn't use the landline phone to the absolute backbone of daily life, especially for the youth. I mean, banking, education, booking a train ticket, suddenly it all migrated online. It became essential. But what's really fascinating here is that Incheon Heart doesn't write this as a purely triumphant tech bro narrative. No, he really doesn't. He takes a highly critical, deeply sociological look at what this new frontier was actually doing to people. Like, he explicitly brings up internet addiction disorder as a societal crisis that just arrived right alongside all the convenience. Yeah, he really doesn't gloss over the ugly stuff at all, which I appreciated. Same. He talks about people essentially living their entire lives through screens, spending up to 15 hours a day online. And he goes into specific societal damages too. Yeah, he pulls no punches. Like he notes how the massive proliferation of online pornography started destroying marriages and creating deep psychological rifts in society. Right. even points to the rise of cyberterrorism, where warfare suddenly became invisible. You didn't need a physical army anymore, you just needed bugs, viruses, and a keyboard. And he also delves into the political weaponization of the internet, which is a huge theme. Oh, the IT cells. Exactly. The text specifically calls out the creation of political IT cells. And for the listener, these are basically organized groups using these massive call center-like setups to intentionally manufacture and spread fake news. Wow. Yeah, they use it to incite riots and manipulate public perception on a massive scale. He's really painting a picture of a digital space that is incredibly hostile. Hustle, yeah. Yeah. And he also talks about the psychological shift in how we value things, right, like the whole validation economy. Yes, this is one of his most crucial points, I think. And to illustrate this, the author brings up Justin Rosenstein. Wait, isn't he the guy who invented the Facebook like button? He co-created it, yes. Okay, yeah. And the author points out the heavy irony here. Rosenstein later actually deleted the Facebook app from his own phone because he was so terrified of the psychological feedback loop he helped create. That is so telling. Right. Anshinhar observes that in this new digital space, the like button basically created a brand new currency. Digital validation literally became wealth. Which completely changes human behavior. I mean, the author mentions how this metric driven culture turned artists, poets, writers just into clout chasers. Precisely. Like think about it. If you are a mathilly poet in say 1990, you write a poem based on your internal artistic drive, right? Or maybe the feedback of a very small peer group in your village. Yeah, it's intimate. Exactly. But Anshinher notes that once you put that poet on the internet, the quality of the art is suddenly judged by a highly visible public number of likes. Right. The metric is right there for everyone to judge. And it causes genuine anxiety. It actually alters what people choose to create because they start favoring whatever gets the most immediate viral reaction. Okay. I have to pause here because reading this brought up a massive contradiction for me. Oh, what's that? Well, if the author recognizes that the internet is this, you know, this toxic casino of fake news, cyber warfare and desperate validation seeking, then why even put Mathilli on it? Like it seems totally counterintuitive. If you have this rich, nuanced, centuries-old literary tradition, isn't digitizing it just throwing it to the wolves? I mean, it's like building a beautiful, quiet library in the middle of a chaotic amusement park. That is the ultimate paradox, isn't it? And what's great is the author faces it head-on. He doesn't shy away from that contradiction. How does he justify it? Well, he argues that the internet has a dual nature. makes people incredibly knowledgeable but simultaneously incredibly ignorant. Wait, how does that actually work in practice, knowledgeable and ignorant at the same time? Do you think about the mechanics of a search engine? When you look up a historical fact, the algorithm doesn't just hand you a beautifully bound, peer-reviewed encyclopedia. Right, it gives you millions of links. Exactly, it hands you the truth. But right next to it, maybe one link down, it hands you highly visible, extremely well-funded fake news or wild conspiracy theories. Oh, I see. Because both results are formatted exactly the same way. You know, a clean black headline, a blue link, a little snippet of text critical thinking is naturally eroded. The digital authority looks identical for both the truth and the absolute lie. Wow. Yeah. That's terrifying when you put it like that. Okay, so if the environment is that corrosive to the truth, I have to go back to my question. Why build your cultural home there? Because, simply put, the alternative is extinction. Extinction. Yes. makes it very clear, avoiding the internet is just no longer a viable option for any culture. If a young person in 2010 searches for a Mathili poem or the history of a specific region in Bihar and the internet returns zero results... Then it just doesn't exist for them. Exactly. To that young person, that history simply ceases to exist. It drops entirely out of the modern consciousness. Therefore, establishing a pristine, factual, and robust digital presence wasn't about wanting to join the chaotic amusement park. It was basically a hostage situation, digitize or disappear. Wow, okay. So the stakes literally couldn't be higher. It's a literal battle for cultural memory. Exactly. And that brings us right back to the drama we started the deep dive with. Because once people realize this digital land grab is essential for survival, the race to plant the first flag begins. The rush is on. And human nature dictates that everyone wants to be recognized the first explorer in the history books. And truly. And Anshin Har spends a significant portion of his research definitively sorting out this timeline because in a digital void, establishing who laid the very first brick is a matter of immense historical pride. Right. So according to his digital archeology, the absolute first Mathili presence on the internet was a website called Balsaric Gah. Balsaric Gah, yes. And it was hosted on Yahoo Geo Cities in the year 2000. Yahoo GeoCities. Man, for listeners who might not have been around for that era, you really have to understand what a wild west that was. Oh, it was chaos. It was a platform where absolutely anyone could claim a little plot of digital city space and build a very rudimentary, usually visually chaotic website. Oh yeah, we're talking neon green backgrounds, spinning globe gifs, the sparkly text, the whole nine yards. Exactly. So this site, Palsar Gok was built by a man named Gajendra Thakur. Gajendra Thakur. Yes. And the book notes that this initial site was followed by a few other pioneers. There was a site called Palav Mithila in 2003 and an early news blog named Samadhiya in 2004. Okay, so that's the established timeline. But anytime you have someone claiming to be the first in history, you're inherently going to have challengers. Oh, always. Which brings us to the controversy. Here's where it gets really interesting. A rival blog called Katek Rasbat, which was operated by Kumar Pabmanab and a few associates, they stepped forward and basically said, no, we were first. And to prove it, they pointed to posts on their blog that explicitly displayed publication dates of 1999 and 2004. Now if that were true, it would completely rewrite the timeline of the language's digital history. Tucker wouldn't be first anymore. Right. But Anjanhar, he doesn't just look at the dates typed on the screen and nod his head, you know? curtain back on how blog platforms actually function. He investigates the underlying architecture of Blogger, which is the platform Kitacross Bot was using. And the forensic breakdown he uses here is just fascinating. He starts by looking at the features Google actually offered on Blogger at that specific time. Right. He points out that the ability to schedule a future post or back data post, basically that little feature that lets you manually change the display date of a piece of content that wasn't even introduced by Google until years later around 2008. It didn't exist. Didn't exist. But Anshanar goes even deeper than just feature updates. He looks at the URLs. And for the listener, we really should explain why a URL is so damning in this specific context. Yeah, please do. Because I was a little lost on this at first. How does a web address prove a forgery? Okay. So when you publish a post on a platform like blogger, the system automatically generates a unique web address, a URL. So the internet knows exactly where to find that specific page. Right, the www.whatever. Exactly. And the way Blogger's automated system worked back then was by embedding the actual year and month of creation directly into that URL string. Oh, automatically. Completely automatically. So it would look something like, you know, blogspot.com, forpression 21307, name of the post. That URL is hard-coded by the server at the exact moment you hit the publish button. Ah, so anyone can go into the text editor type published on July 1st 1999 in like huge bold font at the top of the page Yeah, and the public will see that display date. Yes, but the server knows the truth. Exactly. It's the digital equivalent of Forging a medieval manuscript, but forgetting that the paper you use has a 2013 watermark visible when you hold it up to the light That's a perfect analogy The display date is manual and easily faked, but the URL timestamp is systemic. And Anshanhar just caught them red-handed with this. Yeah. I mean, he proves that a post on Catacross Bot that proudly displayed a 1999 date actually had a URL timestamp of July 2013 embedded in his web address. It's undeniable proof. And he went post by post. Another one claiming a 2004 publication date had a 2005 URL timestamp. the server architecture completely 100% exposed the manual manipulation of the historical record. Which naturally led to that massive confrontation you mentioned at the start of the deep dive. Yeah, the 2018 Facebook showdown. And I love that Anshin Haar actually includes screenshots of this public debate in the book. He brings the receipts? He does. So Kumar Padmanab, defending his claim, tries to use this highly technical argument to invalidate Gajendra Thakur's year 2000 site. Podmanub argues that it was functionally impossible to build a Mathili website in 2000. Because according to him, Devanagari typing tools didn't even exist before 2003. With Devanagari being the primary script that Mathili is often written in today. Right. So Podmanub is essentially saying you couldn't have built a site in 2000 because you literally couldn't type the alphabet on a computer yet. Checkmate. And how does the author systematically dismantle that defense? Because he does. Oh, he destroys it. NGR points out a very specific piece of software history. He casually notes that fonts like Kruti Dev had been around since 1997. Ah, Kruti Dev. Wow. That is a name that brings back a lot of memories for early Indian internet users. Walk us through that because I don't know it. Why is Kruti Dev the smoking gun here? How did it actually work? Okay, so before we had Unicode. What's Unicode? Unicode is the modern universal standard that allows computers to natively understand thousands of different alphabets. Before that, computers were stubbornly, completely English-centric. They really only understood the Latin alphabet. So software developers in India had to create a hack. And Krudi Dev was a non-unicode font. What it did was visually map Devanagari characters onto the standard English QWERTY keyboard. Okay, so wait, the computers still thought you were typing in English? Exactly. If you press the letter K on your keyboard, the computer internally registered in English K. It had no idea about Hindi or Mathili, but the Kruti Dev font file told the monitor to draw the Hindi character, Ela, on the screen. It was entirely a visual illusion. In fact, if you sent that document to someone who didn't have the Kruti Dev font installed on their computer, they would open it up and just see a string of random English gibberish. That is brilliant, but also sounds so incredibly frustrating. It was. But because Crudy Dev existed and was widely used in 1997, Anshinore proves that people absolutely had the tools to type and publish in Dev and Agari by the year 2000. So Padmanov's technical alibi completely falls apart. Completely. You know this raises such an interesting behavioral question though. What's that? Why go through all the trouble? Like why forge a digital time stamp, backdate your blog posts and then get into a public bitter highly technical debate on Facebook over a blog. Well because in the fluid constantly shifting landscape of the early internet being the undisputed first grants you an incredible amount of legacy. Yeah, yes. You become the founding father of a digital movement you get the Wikipedia page the citations but more importantly I think Anshunhar is highlighting a massive vulnerability in how we record history today. Because it's so easy to fake. Because it relies entirely on the digital literacy of the public. Think about it. If the general public doesn't know the mechanical difference between a display date that someone just typed on a page and an automated URL timestamp generated by a server, they will just believe the lie. Yeah, if it says 1999, they believe 1999. Right. It's a stark warning about how easily digital history can be rewritten by bad actors if nobody checks the underlying code. That is genuinely unsettling. It really means our history is only as secure our understanding of the software that hosts it. Exactly. But you know, this actually transitions this perfectly into the next major hurdle the book covers because while proving who published first is great drama, there's a much bigger, much quieter struggle happening in the background. We have to talk about the infrastructure. Yes, the invisible wall, because you can't have a vibrant web journalism scene if the keyboard literally does not recognize your language. Right. We just talked about crudy dev and how it hacked the English keyboard to show Devan Agari. But Mathili has its own unique historical script, right? It isn't just a Vanagari. It does. While it is commonly written in Devanagari today, its traditional historical script is called Tehuta, or sometimes Mythilakshar. And Tehuta is visually and functionally distinct. It has different curves, different ways the consonants combine with vowels, which are called conjuncts. You can't just slap a Devanagari fawn hack on it and call it a day. It needs its own bespoke architecture. And the author points out that the very first digital Trahuda font was created in 2003 by a man named C.K. Rout. Which is a fascinating footnote, by the way, because Anshun Har mentions that C.K. Rout is now a very prominent youth political leader in Nepal. Oh, really? Yeah. It just shows you the caliber of people who are dedicating their time to this early, deeply technical foundational work. Wow. But, you know, creating a font so you can type a word document is really only step one. The internet is navigated through browsers. And the book details this massive milestone in 2012 when Mozilla Firefox was fully localized from a Thilly. And this was spearheaded by a team led by Sangita Kumari and Rajesh Ranjan. And we really need to pause and think about what localizing a browser actually means mechanically. Yeah, it's not just translating the word file or edit, right? Far from it, a web browser has thousands and thousands of strings of text. Every single menu, every dropdown, every obscure settings page, every privacy warning, every error code like for a whore page not found or SSL certificate invalid. Oh my God. All of that had to be manually translated into monthly so that a user could actually navigate the internet natively. That sounds exhausting. Yeah. And that introduces a really fascinating dynamic that Ankeenhar explores throughout the text, which is the difference between how these massive translation projects are actually funded and organized. Yes. sharp line between paid projects and community projects. It's a crucial distinction for understanding how digital infrastructure is actually built in the developing world. The author uses the Microsoft Bing translator project as a prime example of a paid project. Right. And this was led by Dr. Girishnath Ha, at JNU, Jawaharlal, Nehru University. Correct. So in a paid institutional model, linguists, developers, data entry workers, they are They are all compensated financially. They are doing a job. Which is great. It is. But the trade-off is that the massive corporation, Microsoft in this case, ultimately owns the proprietary algorithm and keeps the overarching credit. It's a corporate product at the end of the day. But on the other side of the spectrum, you have the community projects. And these are just staggering to read about because they rely entirely on unpaid crowd sourced volunteer labor. It's just people doing grueling technical work purely out of a sense of cultural duty. The prime example of this, which the author details quite extensively, is the creation of the Mephili Wikipedia. The Wikipedia epic. This blew my mind. Because I think we take Wikipedia for granted. You know? You just assume every language has one. You go to the drop-down menu and there it is. But getting an official Methi Wikipedia approved wasn't just a matter of sending an email to the Wikimedia Foundation and asking nicely. Not at all. Again, led by Gojendra Thakur, the guy who made the first GeoCity site. They had to enter what Wikipedia calls the incubator phase. Explain that, because it sounds intense. It is. The Wikimedia Foundation doesn't just hand out empty domains to anyone who asks. To get an official language Wikipedia, a community has to prove two things. First, that the language has a dedicated active base of contributors, and second, that they can generate a significant volume of high quality standardized content. Right, you have to build a house before they give you the address. Exactly, you have to prove you can maintain it. And the sheer volume of work required is mind-numbing. The author points out one individual, Humech Mandal, who was responsible for creating roughly 70% of the early pages during this incubator phase. 70%, and that brings up a massive mechanical challenge. How do you translate the sum total of human knowledge into a language that might not have established vocabulary from modern concepts. Right. I was wondering about this. If Omish Mandal is sitting at his computer, translating a Wikipedia article about, say, quantum physics or the internal combustion engine or even just internet terminology like hyperlink or download, what does he do if there is no traditional messily word for it? This is where translators essentially become linguistic engineers. They have to make choices. They either borrow words from English or Hindi and standardize how they're spelled in Mephili, or they have to look at the root structures of their own language and coin entirely new words that make grammatical sense. That is a huge responsibility. It is. Omej Mandal wasn't just translating facts, he was actively expanding the modern functionality of the language in real time. And doing it all for free. Just sitting there for hours, days, years. It took six years of this relentless, unpaid petitioning and translating before the Mephili Wikipedia finally received official approval in 2014. It is the ultimate example of grassroots digital survival. And honestly, it perfectly bridges the gap to what the author sees happening at the absolute cutting edge today. Which is the artificial intelligence revolution. Exactly. Yeah, Anshinghar doesn't just leave us in 2014. He brings the history right up to the present. He discusses the work being done by AI for Herat, specifically their work out of the Naila Khani Center at IIT Madras. Right. They have created this AI model called IndieTrans2. Which is incredible. It handles translation, speech recognition, and transliteration for 22 different Indian languages, including Maitrely. I really want to drill down into the transliteration aspect because I think people often confuse that with translation and they are very different. How does IndieTrans2 handle transliteration, say, between Devanagari and the traditional Thiru descript? Okay, so translation is changing the meaning from one language to another, like changing the English word hello to the French word, bourgeois, transliteration is keeping the exact same spoken words, but swapping the alphabet they're written in. Okay, give me an analogy, because that sounds tricky. Imagine you have a live interpreter listening to an English speech, but instead of translating it into Russian, they are writing down exactly what the English speaker is saying phonetically using the Russian Cyrillic alphabet. So if you read it out loud, it still sounds like English, but visually it's a completely different script. Oh, that makes total sense. So, in Detrans2, using integrated tools like Aksharamuka can take an entire news article written in the Devanagagari script and instantly transliterate it, swap out the visual architecture into the traditional Tirhuda script. Wow. It automates the agonizing manual labor that people like C.K. Rao and Umesh Mandal had to do by hand a decade ago. It's a quantum leap in infrastructure. It really is. Yeah. I mean, think about the progression. First, you have the chaotic Wild West where nobody can even type the language. Then you have the manual painstaking era of hacking English fonts and crowdsourcing encyclopedias page by page. And now you have AI that can seamlessly translate and transliterate across dozens of languages instantly. So the infrastructure is finally robust. The train tracks are officially laid down. Exactly. But laying the tracks is really only half the story. The question then becomes, once the trains can run, what do these pioneers actually build? Which brings us to the empires. massive publications that define the era of Mithili web journalism. And according to the author, there was one absolute juggernaut that towers over the rest, and it's called Vedea. Vedea is the foundational pillar of this entire history. And it was born out of that very first year 2000 website, Balsari Gakh. Vedea evolved and eventually launched its first official issue as a comprehensive digital journal in 2008. Again, under the leadership of Kajendra Thakur. And what makes Fidea so critical isn't just its longevity, though that is impressive. It's the aggressive pursuit of global academic legitimacy. The author highlights that Fidea became the first mythally e-journal to obtain an ISSN. An international standard serial number. Now for the listener who isn't, you know, a librarian, why is an ISSN such a big deal for a digital blog? It is the difference between a self-published Zeme and a recognized academic journal. An ISSN is an eight-digit code used globally by libraries, universities, and researchers to identify and catalog serial publications. Getting one is a strict bureaucratic process. By securing an ISSN, VEDEA was essentially forcing the global academic establishment to recognize them. They planted a flag saying, we aren't just a niche corner of the internet, we exist in the same global registry as the New York Times or the Harvard Business Review. That is such an incredible power move. It really is. And their ambition didn't stop at bureaucracy. The book details their commitment to inclusivity, which is honestly staggering. But they didn't just publish in one standard script. They eventually published in 12 different scripts. 12 scripts for a single language journal. Right. Devanagari, Terhuda, Kathi, Noori, and they even created a Braille blog for the visually impaired. Which is a fascinating technical achievement in itself. Yeah. How does a digital Braille blog actually work? because obviously you can't touch a computer monitor. Right. It relies on screen reader software interfacing with a physical, refreshable Braille display. What's that? It's a piece of hardware that sits in front of the keyboard and actually pushes physical pins up and down to form Braille characters as the user navigates the digital text on the screen. Oh wow, that's amazing. So by formatting their content specifically to be cleanly read by these systems, The DEA was ensuring that even the most marginalized members of their linguistic community weren't left out of the digital revolution. And speaking of the marginalized, Angie and Harp points out that this desire to bring the margins to the center wasn't just technical. It was editorial too. Yes. Videa created an initiative called the Videa Mathila Ratna. This is such a prime example of how digital media can disrupt historical gatekeeping. Exactly. The author explains that traditional print critics and historians in the region had largely ignored lower-cast historical figures. There was a very tight grip on the visual history of the culture. Like, if the print magazines didn't commission a portrait of someone, their face was essentially lost to history. But, Vedea used their digital platform to bypass those print gatekeepers entirely. They didn't need permission. actively commissioned and published portraits of historically ignored figures like Banthach Ammar. They use digital art as a tool for social justice and historical correction. This is the true promise of the internet that we talked about at the very beginning. Yes, it has a dark side, but it also completely removes the middleman. If the traditional publishers won't print your script or tell your history, you don't need their printing press anymore. You just build your own digital platform and do it yourself. And this explosion of independent platforms led to a massive cultural boom, especially in literature. And I have to mention the author of our source text, Ashish Ankenhar, he wasn't just an observer in all this, he was an active participant. Yes, he ran a highly influential blog called Ankenhar Aker, which became the absolute epicenter for a very specific literary movement. Matthely Ghazals. Right. The text notes that his blog hosted online, Musharas. And a Mushara for context is a traditional poetic symposium. It's usually held in person where poets gather to recite and the audience responds. Right, but Ansheen Har digitized it. They held these gatherings entirely online. And it was so impactful that traditional critics actually started referring to this period as the Ansheen Har era of poetry. It's amazing. By removing the geographic barriers, they brought in dozens of new poets who had never published before, simply because this digital stage now existed. created a completely self-sustaining ecosystem of art and criticism. And we can't forget the hard news side of the spectrum either. The author points to platforms like Mathila Mirror, which was a major news portal, started by Pradeep Shah, Lollit Nrayansha and Rahul Ray. And the book includes this incredible human detail. Rahul Ray literally donated his own personal laptop just to give the project a physical machine to launch from. I mean, that is the literal definition of grassroots journalism. It is. In these early news blogs, like Samadhiya back in 2004, they were basically inventing the format of online regional reporting on the fly. And Antion Har makes a really crucial point about the broader impact of these news and literary portals. They weren't just posting updates, they were actively shaping the language itself. I don't know. Well, by bringing readers and writers from India and Nepal onto the exact same platforms, They helped standardize the grammar across regional variations, and they also acted as a watchdog. Oh, the plagiarism exposing. I love this part. Exactly. In the early days of the internet, some traditional print writers thought the web was invisible, right, like nobody was looking. So they would blatantly plagiarize content from blogs and publish it in print, or vice versa. Right. But these digital platforms ruthlessly exposed the literary thieves, proving that the digital archive was permanent and searchable. You know, when you zoom out and look at the whole timeline, Anshinar presents, it's just a wild, exhausting, and honestly beautiful trajectory. It really is. You start in the chaotic neon days of Yahoo Geo cities in 2000. You navigate the petty forged timestamp dramas and the Facebook fistfights. You watch volunteers like Umesh Mandal sit at a computer translating thousands of Wikipedia pages for free because there was literally no other way. Yeah. arrive at today an era of AI translation and sprawling multi-script digital empires with international serial numbers. Every single step was a fight against friction. And I think that's the ultimate takeaway from this deep dive. The internet with all its addiction and fake news didn't automatically save Mithili. Passionate stubborn people use the internet as a tool to save it because a language only dies if its people stop innovating. Well said. We want to thank you, the listener, for joining us on this exploration. It's a niche corner of internet history, sure, but the mechanics of what they achieved apply to absolutely everything we do online today. But as we close, I want to leave you with one final thought to mull over, building on that transition to artificial intelligence we just discussed. We've just spent this entire deep dive marveling at the sheer, messy, passionate human grit required to force a language onto the internet over the last two decades. the Facebook fights, the late nights translating Wikipedia, the donated laptops. Exactly. It was a deeply human struggle. But right now, models like Indeed Trans2 and ChatGPT are becoming perfectly fluent in almost every language instantly. So looking forward, will this dramatic human struggle to preserve language become a thing of the past? Will AI be the ultimate frictionless savior of global linguistic diversity? Or... Or by removing the struggle, will it strip away the beautiful, petty, deeply human drama that makes a language truly alive in the first place? Wow. Remember that ancient, beautiful manuscript we talked about at the beginning? The one that needed to be encoded into ones and zeros? It turns out the ones and zeros were the easy part. The hardest part, and the most fascinating part, was the people fighting over who got to press the keys. Keep exploring, and we'll see you on the next Deep Dive.

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