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Collection: Part 1 · VIDEHA MITHILA MAITHILI DISCUSSION CRITICISM SERIES PART 1
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0:00–0:07Imagine if, tomorrow morning, someone discovered a box of old, moldy letters in a basement in London.
0:07–0:09Okay, color me intrigued.
0:09–0:17Right. And these letters proved, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that William Shakespeare wasn't this wealthy, respectable English gentleman at all.
0:17–0:18Oh wow.
0:18–0:27Yeah. Imagine finding out he was actually like a lower class street poet, someone entirely outside the elite circles,
0:27–0:31and that the royal court had basically stolen his identity, scrubbed his background,
0:31–0:33and repackaged him to make the empire look good.
0:33–0:37I mean that would completely upend centuries of academic study.
0:37–0:40People would absolutely lose their minds over that.
0:40–0:43Right. The entire industry built around Shakespeare would collapse overnight.
0:44–0:49Well what if I told you that exact kind of historical identity theft isn't just a hypothetical?
0:49–0:50Wait, you're saying this actually happened?
0:50–0:54It actually happened and it's just one tiny piece of a thousand-year
0:54–0:59literary cover-up that we are digging into today. So welcome to the deep dive. We
0:59–1:03are so glad you're here with us. We really are. Today we're looking at this massive
1:03–1:08sprawling battle over, you know, who gets to write history, who gets to erase it,
1:08–1:12and how people fight back. Yeah and the battleground we are exploring today is
1:12–1:16the history of the Mothili language and its literature. And I have to say
1:16–1:21our source material for this is just monumental. It's huge. It really is.
1:21–1:26We're working with excerpts from this staggering undertaking called A Parallel History of Mythla
1:26–1:28and Metheli Literature.
1:28–1:32And this thing spans volumes one through one hundred.
1:32–1:33A hundred of volumes?
1:33–1:34That is wild.
1:34–1:35Yeah.
1:35–1:40It's an archive curated by Gajendra Thakur and a collective known as the Videha Parallel
1:40–1:41Literary Movement.
1:41–1:46Now, I know you, the listener, might be thinking, Matili, I'm not a linguist specializing
1:46–1:48in South Asia, so why does this matter to me?
1:48–1:49Which is a fair question.
1:49–1:50Totally fair.
1:50–1:54exactly what I thought when I first looked at this massive stack of sources.
1:54–1:59But look, Mathilius has spoken by tens of millions of people across India and Nepal,
1:59–2:05but for decades, its official history has been presented as this very pristine, elite,
2:05–2:09upper caste, predominantly Brahminical tradition.
2:09–2:12It's been sold as a language of courts and kings.
2:12–2:17But this parallel history, these 100 volumes, they completely tear that narrative to shreds.
2:17–2:18They really do.
2:18–2:19Yeah.
2:19–2:26pressed history that is radical, subaltern, it crosses national borders, and it's now
2:26–2:28fueling a massive digital rebellion.
2:28–2:29Which is fascinating.
2:29–2:30It is.
2:30–2:33But to answer that question of why you, the listener, should care, because this isn't
2:33–2:35just a story about one language.
2:35–2:41It is a terrifyingly clear masterclass in how institutional power constructs what we
2:41–2:42just blindly accept as truth.
2:42–2:43Yeah, exactly.
2:43–2:48It shows us the literal mechanics of how marginalized voices can be systematically erased from
2:48–2:53the record and crucially how those voices are using the internet right now to completely
2:53–2:56bypass the traditional gatekeepers of culture.
2:56–2:58It's essentially a blueprint for cultural survival.
2:58–2:59Right.
2:59–3:02So to understand how deep this goes, we have to go back to the very beginning.
3:02–3:05We're talking between the eighth and twelfth centuries.
3:05–3:06Let's do it.
3:06–3:11When you read the official mainstream histories of Mesa Lee, they usually just gloss over
3:11–3:14the earliest texts from this era.
3:14–3:20Like, they treat them like some vague, archaic curiosity that belongs to a general ancient
3:20–3:22past, not specifically to Methili.
3:22–3:27Yeah, but the parallel history places these texts, which are called the chariopadas, absolutely
3:27–3:28front and center.
3:28–3:30So what are the chariopadas, exactly?
3:30–3:32Well context is crucial here.
3:32–3:35To understand the chariopadas, we first have to understand where the language even
3:35–3:36came from.
3:36–3:39So Mithili evolved from something called Magadi Precreate.
3:39–3:41Okay, let's pause right there for a second.
3:41–3:43What exactly is a precreate?
3:43–3:44Are we talking about a dead language
3:44–3:46or something people actually spoke on the street?
3:46–3:47Oh, definitely on the street.
3:47–3:51Prachrits were the everyday vernacular languages
3:51–3:52of ancient India.
3:52–3:54This is as opposed to Sanskrit,
3:54–3:57which was the highly formalized elite language
3:57–3:58of religion and literature.
3:58–3:59Oh, got it.
3:59–4:00So Sanskrit is the High Court
4:00–4:02and Prachrit is the local tavern.
4:02–4:03That's a good way to put it.
4:03–4:06And Magadi Prachrit was the specific vernacular
4:06–4:08spoken in the Eastern part of the subcontinent.
4:08–4:12It was actually the language of the ancient Malaya empire.
4:12–4:15So think of historical figures like the Emperor Ashoka.
4:15–4:16Okay, wow.
4:16–4:17That's old.
4:17–4:18Very old.
4:18–4:20So from that ancient root over centuries,
4:20–4:23regional languages began to branch off.
4:23–4:25And the Charipadas are where we see
4:25–4:27the very first distinct sparks
4:27–4:30of what would eventually become monthly.
4:30–4:31And what's wild is that these texts
4:31–4:35aren't royal decrees or like dry historical ledgers.
4:35–4:38They are 50 mystical songs composed
4:38–4:40by 23 different poets.
4:40–4:44And our sources say these poets were Vajrayana Siddhas,
4:44–4:45which sounds incredibly profound,
4:45–4:46but what does that actually mean?
4:46–4:47Yeah, it does sound intense.
4:47–4:49Vajrayana is a form of tantric Buddhism,
4:49–4:53and a Siddha is essentially a realized master or a mystic.
4:53–4:55We actually have names for these figures from the texts,
4:55–4:57Louis Paddha, Kanapada, Saraha.
4:57–4:59Okay, so they were monks.
4:59–5:01Yes, but what's really important here
5:01–5:03is who they were in the social hierarchy.
5:03–5:06Because they were not court intellectuals living in luxury,
5:06–5:09they often came from the very lowest strata of society.
5:09–5:12We're talking about sweepers, arrow makers, cowherds.
5:12–5:15Oh wow, so these are really working class mystics.
5:15–5:19Exactly, they were roaming non-sectarian monks.
5:19–5:21And their choice of language was a deliberate act
5:21–5:22of defiance.
5:22–5:24They did not write in Sanskrit,
5:24–5:26which as we mentioned was the gate kept language
5:26–5:29of the educated upper castes.
5:29–5:32Instead they wrote in a style called Sandhya Bhasha,
5:32–5:34which translates to Twilight language.
5:34–5:36I love that term so much, Twilight language.
5:36–5:38It sounds like something straight out of a Tolkien novel.
5:38–5:41How did Twilight Language actually work in practice?
5:41–5:42It worked as a code.
5:42–5:45It was a language that operated on multiple levels
5:45–5:46simultaneously.
5:46–5:50So on the surface, a song might seem to be about
5:50–5:52a completely mundane activity,
5:52–5:54like brewing liquor or hunting.
5:54–5:56But the Twilight Language used paradoxes
5:56–5:59and esoteric metaphors to provide instructions
5:59–6:03for their secret heterodox spiritual practices.
6:03–6:06It was designed to be understood only by the initiated
6:06–6:08while flying completely under the radar
6:08–6:11of the Orthodox religious authorities.
6:11–6:12Okay, but let me push back on this a bit.
6:12–6:14Were they actually trying to start
6:14–6:17some sort of social revolution,
6:17–6:20or were they just writing in a coded local language
6:20–6:21because it was practical?
6:21–6:23Like maybe that's just the only language
6:23–6:25their followers actually understood.
6:25–6:25That's a great question.
6:25–6:27And the parallel history argues
6:27–6:29that it was absolutely both.
6:29–6:31You really can't separate the spiritual
6:31–6:32from the social here.
6:32–6:32Interesting.
6:32–6:33Yeah.
6:33–6:35By explicitly choosing to write
6:35–6:37in what was called D'Silvayana,
6:37–6:39which means the language of the people.
6:39–6:42They were actively rejecting the sedentary,
6:42–6:45caste-bound, orthodox discourse of their time.
6:45–6:47So it was a conscious rebellion.
6:47–6:47Completely.
6:47–6:48They were basically saying,
6:48–6:52we don't need your elite Sanskrit to achieve enlightenment.
6:52–6:53And we don't need it to express
6:53–6:55complex philosophical thought either.
6:55–6:56So they were bypassing
6:56–6:59the institutional gatekeepers of the ninth century.
6:59–7:00Exactly.
7:00–7:02Scholars in the parallel tradition,
7:02–7:03like Rahul Sankritian,
7:03–7:06have rigorously analyzed these occult songs
7:06–7:09and they've demonstrated how their linguistic structure,
7:09–7:11you know what linguists call morphology,
7:11–7:13matches protomythole,
7:13–7:15they're the undeniable roots of the language.
7:15–7:18But the mainstream narrative waters this all down, right?
7:18–7:19Oh, absolutely.
7:19–7:21By treating the chariapadas
7:21–7:25as just this shared generic Eastern heritage,
7:25–7:27the mainstream history neatly avoids acknowledging
7:27–7:31the radical, anti-cast, subaltern origins
7:31–7:32of the language itself.
7:32–7:36It's like discovering that a highly formalized,
7:36–7:37classically trained symphony orchestra
7:37–7:40actually traces its roots back to an underground
7:40–7:41punk rock movement.
7:41–7:43And the directors of the symphony
7:43–7:44are just deeply embarrassed by it.
7:44–7:46They want everyone to think they've always been
7:46–7:47wearing tuxedos.
7:47–7:48There's a very vivid way to frame it.
7:48–7:50The parallel tradition, on the other hand,
7:50–7:52embraces the punk rock roots.
7:52–7:53They view these mystic monks
7:53–7:56as the original subaltern resistance.
7:56–7:58Which raises the million dollar question for me.
7:58–8:02If the language started out in the dirt on the roads
8:02–8:05as this democratic tool of working class mystics,
8:05–8:08how did it become so intensely restricted later on?
8:08–8:10I mean, how do you go from twilight language
8:10–8:13to a pristine elite museum exhibit?
8:13–8:16Well, that requires tools of control.
8:16–8:17And looking at the sources,
8:17–8:19there are a few tools more effective
8:19–8:20for controlling a culture
8:20–8:22than the literal scripts they write with
8:22–8:24and the ledgers they use to track their people.
8:24–8:25So true.
8:25–8:27The history of a language as alphabet
8:27–8:29is rarely just about linguistics, right?
8:29–8:30Yeah.
8:30–8:31It's almost always about political autonomy.
8:31–8:31Yeah.
8:31–8:33For nearly a thousand years,
8:33–8:35Melideal wasn't written in the script
8:35–8:37most people associate with Hindi today.
8:37–8:38Ah.
8:38–8:41It had its own distinct ancient script called
8:41–8:43Terhuta, or sometimes Mithlakshara.
8:43–8:45Right, and the sources mentioned the script evolved
8:45–8:47from the ancient Brahmi script
8:47–8:48way back in the 7th century.
8:48–8:50We even have physical proof of it,
8:50–8:52like the Mendar Hill stone inscriptions.
8:52–8:52Exactly.
8:52–8:55But Terhuta wasn't just a basic alphabet.
8:55–8:57The sources say it was heavily associated
8:57–8:59with Tantric Yantra motifs.
8:59–9:00What does that mean?
9:00–9:04Well, Eantra in tantric traditions is a mystical diagram.
9:04–9:07It's often composed of intersecting geometric shapes,
9:07–9:10and it's used as an aid in meditation or ritual.
9:10–9:11Okay.
9:11–9:13The T'huta script was highly ornamental,
9:13–9:15and its curves and lines
9:15–9:18actually reflected some of this sacred geometry.
9:18–9:19So it wasn't just functional,
9:19–9:22it carried the spiritual and aesthetic weight of the culture.
9:22–9:25It was a mature, sophisticated script
9:25–9:27used for everything from academic treatises
9:27–9:29to everyday correspondence.
9:29–9:31But over the last hundred years,
9:31–9:33Trujuta was essentially pushed off a cliff.
9:33–9:35It was systematically marginalized.
9:35–9:39First, it lost ground to a script called Kythi.
9:39–9:40What was Kythi used for?
9:40–9:42Kythi was a more functional cursive script.
9:42–9:45It was used primarily by the Kayaastha community,
9:45–9:47who were the traditional record keepers and administrators.
9:47–9:49They used it for bookkeeping,
9:49–9:51land records and legal documents.
9:51–9:52Oh, okay.
9:52–9:54So the administrative necessity
9:54–9:56started superseding the cultural aesthetic.
9:56–9:57Yes, exactly.
9:57–10:03But the fatal blow really came the 20th century with the wholesale institutional adoption of Devan Agari.
10:03–10:08Devan Agari being the script used for Sanskrit and modern Hindi.
10:08–10:13Now, the official justification for this switch always sounds so reasonable, right?
10:13–10:16Like, they say, oh, we have printing presses that are already set up for Devan Agari.
10:16–10:19It's just easier for the colonial administration. It's more efficient.
10:19–10:23Yeah, but efficiency is the classic Trojan horse for assimilation.
10:23–10:24Ooh, that's a good quote.
10:24–10:25That's a good quote.
10:25–10:28The parallel history emphasizes that this switch
10:28–10:31was a deliberate mechanism of dialectization.
10:31–10:32Let's break that down
10:32–10:35because dialectization sounds very academic.
10:35–10:37Is that just when people start treating a language
10:37–10:39as less important?
10:39–10:40It's a bit more insidious than that.
10:40–10:41Think of it this way.
10:41–10:43Imagine a historic building
10:43–10:47covered in a vibrant unique thousand-year-old mural.
10:48–10:50Dialectization is when a new landlord comes in
10:50–10:52and paints the entire building
10:52–10:55with a standard beige institutional paint.
10:55–10:55Oh wow.
10:55–10:56Right.
10:56–10:58And once it's beige, the landlord can point to it
10:58–11:01and say, see, it looks exactly like all the other beige
11:01–11:02buildings on the block.
11:02–11:03It's nothing special.
11:03–11:05It's just a minor variation of the main property.
11:05–11:07OK, that makes total sense.
11:07–11:10So by forcing Mothili to be written in the Hindi script,
11:10–11:13it became visually indistinguishable to outsiders.
11:13–11:14Exactly.
11:14–11:17It allowed colonial officials and later the Indian state
11:17–11:19governments to just easily classify Mothili
11:19–11:24as merely a rugged regional dialect of Hindi,
11:24–11:26rather than acknowledging it as an independent language
11:26–11:29with a millennium of distinct literary history.
11:29–11:30Precisely.
11:30–11:32You strip away the visual identity
11:32–11:34and you instantly weaken the claim
11:34–11:36to political and cultural autonomy.
11:36–11:37But as you mentioned,
11:37–11:40the script was really only the first tool of control.
11:40–11:43The sources dive deeply into a social mechanism
11:43–11:44called the Ponji Proband.
11:44–11:46Yes, the Ponji system.
11:46–11:47When I first read about this in the sources,
11:47–11:48I was actually quite impressed.
11:48–11:50It was established around the 14th century.
11:50–11:52And it was this incredibly sophisticated,
11:52–11:54massive system of genealogical record keeping
11:54–11:57for Mithal Brahmins and Khyastas.
11:57–11:59And if you read the mainstream historians
11:59–12:02like Mahamahapatiya, Parmesh Warchaw,
12:02–12:05they tout this as the crowning lorry of their culture.
12:05–12:08And if you look at it purely as an archival feat,
12:08–12:09it is astonishing.
12:09–12:12I mean, they maintain vast intricate databases
12:12–12:15of lineages, marriages, and ancestral movements
12:15–12:17across centuries.
12:17–12:19and they did all of this without computers.
12:19–12:22Right, but here's where I need you to explain the patch.
12:22–12:25Because on paper, meticulous historical record keeping
12:25–12:26sounds fantastic.
12:26–12:28I mean, we're doing a deep dive on history right now.
12:28–12:29We obviously love archives.
12:29–12:30We do.
12:30–12:32So why does the parallel movement
12:32–12:35despise the Pongee system so intensely?
12:35–12:38Like, what is the danger in knowing your family tree?
12:38–12:41Well, the danger is in how that data is used.
12:41–12:44The parallel movement denounces the Pongee system
12:44–12:47because it wasn't a benign historical society,
12:47–12:49it was a vicious instrument of social engineering.
12:49–12:50How so?
12:50–12:52Like practically speaking.
12:52–12:54It functioned almost like a draconian credit score
12:54–12:56for human value and purity.
12:56–12:59The records were used to enforce an incredibly strict system
12:59–13:01of Brahminical patriarchy.
13:01–13:01Okay.
13:01–13:03You couldn't just marry who you wanted.
13:03–13:06Your lineages had to be checked against the Panji
13:06–13:08to ensure absolute caste purity
13:08–13:11and to avoid prohibited degrees of consanguinity.
13:11–13:12What?
13:12–13:13Yeah.
13:13–13:17The panjyakaris found a flaw in your lineage.
13:17–13:21Your family could be instantly downgraded or completely ostracized.
13:21–13:26It dictated who controlled wealth, who could own land, and who was socially invisible.
13:26–13:31So it was less of a family tree and more of a weapon to maintain a very exclusive club.
13:31–13:32Precisely.
13:32–13:37But the Vidae Hill movement didn't just complain about this system in abstract terms.
13:37–13:44In 2009, they executed what I can only describe as a massive historical leak.
13:44–13:47They digitized and published something called the Dushan Pange.
13:47–13:48The Black Book.
13:48–13:49The Black Book.
13:49–13:53These were the secret, suppressed files of the genealogical records.
13:53–13:55It's literally like a cultural WikiLeaks.
13:55–13:57So what did the Black Book actually show?
13:57–14:00It proved that the elite historians had been blatantly falsifying their own pristine
14:00–14:04records to cover up impurities among their most revered figures.
14:04–14:05Unbelievable.
14:05–14:09An example of this is the case of Gangeshu Pattaya.
14:09–14:13Let's talk about Gangesh, because this ties back to that idea of historical identity theft
14:13–14:14I brought up at the start.
14:14–14:16How big of a deal was this guy?
14:16–14:17He was a Titan.
14:17–14:21He lived in the 12th century and wrote a text called the Tupikintamani.
14:21–14:24He essentially founded the Navinaya school.
14:24–14:28Which means what exactly for those of us who aren't philosophy majors?
14:28–14:30Navinaya translates to new logic.
14:30–14:35It was a revolutionary system of logic and epistemology that deeply influenced Indian
14:35–14:38philosophy for centuries.
14:38–14:42Being the founder of Navya Naya is akin to being the Isaac Newton of Indian philosophical
14:42–14:43logic.
14:43–14:46He's an absolute superstar of the intellect.
14:46–14:47Got it.
14:47–14:51So you have the superstar and the orthodox upper caste establishment claims him as their
14:51–14:52ultimate poster boy.
14:52–14:56He's their proof of intellectual and cultural superiority.
14:56–15:02But the Dushin Ponji, the black book, revealed a reality that terrified the Orthodox establishment.
15:02–15:06The records showed that Genghisjie Bidiya had actually married a Charmed Karini.
15:06–15:09A woman from the lower leather tanning cast?
15:09–15:10Yes.
15:10–15:14A union that defied every single rigid rule the Ponji system was built to enforce.
15:14–15:18And the records also contained an entry indicating that his family was born five years
15:18–15:20after his father's death.
15:20–15:21Okay.
15:21–15:22Wow.
15:22–15:24So his personal life, his marriage, his family origins.
15:24–15:31They completely shattered the myth of the pure orthodox, rule-abiding Raman the scholar.
15:31–15:32Completely.
15:32–15:34And here is where the institutional cover-up comes in.
15:34–15:39The sources detail how a very prominent elite historian named Ramanath Shah, who was a
15:39–15:44massive power broker in the Sahita Academy, which is India's National Academy of Letters,
15:44–15:47he actively suppressed these specific Ponji records.
15:47–15:49Wait, really?
15:49–15:51He knew they existed, but he buried them.
15:51–15:52I have to stop you there.
15:52–15:53Why?
15:53–15:58I mean, I understand prejudice, but from a purely historical standpoint, why would a scholar
15:58–16:02actively destroy the true biography of the man they're supposed to be celebrating?
16:02–16:06Because the institution's legitimacy depended on the illusion of unbroken purity.
16:06–16:11If their greatest philosopher was mingling across strict caste lines, the entire justification for
16:11–16:16the Ponzi system, this idea that strict caste separation is necessary for intellectual
16:16–16:20and spiritual greatness just falls apart. Wow. So as the parallel history terms it,
16:20–16:22They committed an honor killing of his legacy.
16:22–16:27They erased his wife. They erased his actual lived reality. I mean, the sources point out that
16:27–16:32even in his latest 2016, the Sahiti Academy was still publishing monographs about him that
16:32–16:35perpetuated the sanitized fake biography.
16:35–16:39That is the raw power of institutional gatekeeping. You take the man's genius,
16:40–16:43but you execute his true identity so it serves your political narrative.
16:43–16:46And you know, if the establishment was willing to erase the wife of their greatest
16:46–16:52philosopher just to keep his cast pure, it really makes you wonder what they did to their artists.
16:52–16:56Which brings us to the Shakespeare level bombshell I mentioned at the start of the show.
16:56–17:02The identity theft of Vidyapatti. Yeah. Vidyapatti Thakur is the undisputed son around which
17:02–17:07Massili literature orbits. He lived from roughly 1360 to 1450. And to the mainstream,
17:07–17:13institutional scholars, he is known as the Abhinava Jayadeva, the new Jayadeva.
17:13–17:18So the official history paints him as this highly refined, deeply devout Brahmin courtier.
17:18–17:23He's a polymath, right? They say he wrote dense treatises in Sanskrit and also in something
17:23–17:29called avahada. What is avahada? Avahada is a really fascinating linguistic stage. It was a
17:29–17:34transitional literary language that basically bridged the gap between the older upper-branchal
17:34–17:39languages and the early modern eastern languages like Mithili, Bengali, and Asimis.
17:39–17:44So he's writing in Sanskrit, he's writing in Abhahada, but what he's really famous for,
17:44–17:47the works that actually made him immortal, are his padavali.
17:48–17:49Yes.
17:49–17:55These are the incredibly beautiful musical songs about the divine love of Rata and Krishna,
17:55–17:58and these were written in the local vernacular, in Maitali.
17:58–18:04And the mainstream narrative claims that this single elite Brahmin genius graciously
18:04–18:09lowered himself to write in the vernacular, and by doing so, he elevated the local dialect
18:09–18:13to high art. But the Vedea movement drops an absolute hammer on this narrative. They
18:13–18:19argued that the official history has deliberately taken two entirely different people and smashed
18:19–18:23them together into one mythological figure. This is one of the most contentious and significant
18:23–18:27interventions by the parallel historians. Oh that. Yeah, they posit that the famous
18:27–18:32Padavali poet, the person who wrote those beloved, racy, crisp, mathilly love songs
18:32–18:38that the common people actually memorized and sang in the fields, is entirely distinct
18:38–18:42from the Sanskrit and Avahata court writer named Vijapati Thakuta, who actually lives
18:42–18:43later.
18:43–18:45Let me make sure I'm wrapping my head around this.
18:45–18:51They are saying there's an elite Sanskrit writing court bureaucrat named Vidyatti.
18:51–18:55And then there's an earlier populist poet who wrote the massive folk anthems, who was
18:55–18:57also named Vidyatti.
18:57–19:00And the historians just decided, hey, let's pretend the rich courtier wrote all the
19:00–19:02popular folk songs too.
19:02–19:04That is exactly their assertion.
19:04–19:06The parallel narrative critiques mainstream historians
19:06–19:08were deliberately fusing them.
19:08–19:10And the motive is clear, right?
19:10–19:12If you admit the greatest poetry in your language
19:12–19:15was written by an unknown, possibly lower caste,
19:15–19:17vernacular poet, the Orthodox court
19:17–19:19loses its cultural supremacy.
19:19–19:20Oh, wow.
19:20–19:22By claiming the two Vigipottis are one person,
19:22–19:25the Brominical establishment successfully appropriates
19:25–19:26the vernacular genius
19:26–19:28and claims it as their own property.
19:28–19:31It is literal historical identity theft.
19:31–19:33They took a populist icon and dressed him up
19:33–19:35in elite casteist attire.
19:35–19:37And the Videha movement pushes back
19:37–19:39against his visually, don't they?
19:39–19:40They do.
19:40–19:41Their e-journal logo is a sketch
19:41–19:43by the artist Panaklal Mandal,
19:43–19:45and it depicts what they call
19:45–19:46a subaltern Vidyapati.
19:46–19:49Yes, they acknowledge that the true
19:49–19:51Padavali poet's specific caste
19:51–19:52is historically uncertain,
19:52–19:54but they fiercely contest his
19:54–19:56appropriation by the elite.
19:56–19:58The true Vidyapati of the parallel
19:58–20:00tradition made a conscious choice
20:00–20:01to write in Diziloviana
20:01–20:03the language of the people.
20:03–20:03Right.
20:03–20:05His poetry was direct.
20:05–20:08It was filled with imagery of contemporary village life.
20:08–20:11And it resonated so deeply that his lines literally
20:11–20:12passed into common speech.
20:12–20:16And here's the thing about truly great resonant art.
20:16–20:18You just can't keep it in a box.
20:18–20:20Even as the elite historians tried to sanitize them
20:20–20:23and lock them up in the court, his vernacular songs
20:23–20:24sprouted wings.
20:24–20:25They didn't just stay in Methila.
20:25–20:28They sparked a massive transnational cultural
20:28–20:30explosion that the parallel history calls
20:30–20:31the Great Diaspora.
20:31–20:33Which is such an important era.
20:33–20:35We often suffer from a modern bias,
20:35–20:38where we assume regional languages are strictly confined
20:38–20:40to their current geographical borders.
20:40–20:41Yeah, we totally do.
20:41–20:45But the sources frame Mathilli not as a localized dialect,
20:45–20:47but as the Latin of Eastern India.
20:47–20:49It was a donor civilization.
20:49–20:52It profoundly shaped the literature of its neighbors.
20:52–20:56We're talking Nepal, Bengal, Assam, and Orissa.
20:56–20:57Let's look at Nepal first,
20:57–20:59because this feels like a massive blind spot
20:59–21:00in standard history.
21:00–21:03In the medieval period, the ruling dynasty in Mozilla,
21:03–21:06the Oyn Wars, starts facing conquests.
21:06–21:07Things get very dangerous.
21:07–21:09Where do the scholars and artists go?
21:09–21:12They flee north, up into the Himalayas.
21:12–21:14Exactly, they saw it sanctuary in the Nepal Valley,
21:14–21:16specifically under the Maloa kings.
21:16–21:19And what happened there is just remarkable.
21:19–21:21Under rulers like Jugatjur, Tirmala,
21:21–21:23and later Bupitindramala,
21:23–21:26Mathilli didn't just survive as a refugee language,
21:26–21:27it actually became the language of the court.
21:27–21:29I mean, the sources mentioned that
21:29–21:32Pupitan Dramala alone composed 26 plays in Mothilli.
21:32–21:36Yes, for roughly 150 years,
21:36–21:40Mothilli drama essentially replaced Sanskrit drama
21:40–21:41in the high courts of Nepal.
21:41–21:45It was this golden age of transporter literature.
21:45–21:48But if you read modern official histories today,
21:48–21:51how do they categorize all this Mala era literature?
21:51–21:54They frequently label it simply as Nepali heritage,
21:54–21:57which effectively erases the Mothilli roots.
21:57–22:00The parallel historians are trying to reclaim this era
22:00–22:04as a shared classical age of newer Mothili civilization
22:04–22:07that operated all along the India-Tibet trade rest.
22:07–22:08Okay, so Nepal adopts it,
22:08–22:11but the story in Bengal is even wilder.
22:11–22:12It really is.
22:12–22:14In Bengal, they didn't just adopt Mothili.
22:14–22:16The Bengali singers and poets became so obsessed
22:16–22:18with Vigipati's love songs
22:18–22:21that they actually invented a fake hybrid language
22:21–22:22just so they could sound more like him.
22:22–22:25It is an unparalleled phenomenon in literary history.
22:25–22:26It's known as Brajabuli.
22:26–22:29Explain how this actually worked linguistically.
22:29–22:31Well, many Bengali Vaishnava singers
22:31–22:35who were devotees of Krishna had traveled to study in Mithila.
22:35–22:38They were so captivated by the rhythm, the emotional depth,
22:38–22:41and the specific cadence of Vijapati's
22:41–22:44Mithili Padavali that they wanted to compose
22:44–22:46their own devotional songs in the exact same style.
22:46–22:47OK.
22:47–22:49But they didn't write them in pure Bengali,
22:49–22:50nor did they write in pure Mithili.
22:50–22:53They created an artificial literary language.
22:53–22:56It was a mix of Bengali vocabulary heavily modified
22:56–22:58with Mathili grammar and phonetic structures.
22:58–23:02So they formed a massive linguistic cover band of Vidyapati.
23:02–23:04A profoundly successful one too.
23:04–23:07Brajibhuli wasn't just a fleeting trend.
23:07–23:10It became the primary vehicle for the entire medieval Bengali
23:10–23:12Vaishnaval lyric movement.
23:12–23:15Absolute giants of Bengali literature
23:15–23:17wrote their masterpieces in this Mongol language.
23:17–23:19And this obsession lasted for centuries.
23:19–23:22I have to bring up the Tagore anecdote from the sources
23:22–23:23because it is just too perfect.
23:23–23:24Oh, it's brilliant.
23:24–23:29We're talking about the late 19th century, Rabindranath Tagore, who would eventually become
23:29–23:34the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.
23:34–23:39He's young, he's ambitious, and the cultural clout of this mathilly-based brajabooly is
23:39–23:42still so strong that he decides he wants in on it.
23:42–23:47Yes, Tagore composed a series of exquisite lyrics in brajabooly.
23:47–23:52But rather than publishing them under his own name as Modern Pastiches, he orchestrated
23:52–23:54a literal literary hoax.
23:54–23:55Wait, really?
23:55–24:00Yeah. He claimed he had discovered the lost manuscripts of an ancient medieval poet named
24:00–24:05Banu Singha. And he published his own poems as the Banu Singha Thakur Padavali.
24:05–24:08He just faked it entirely. And did people believe him?
24:08–24:13Oh, the Bengali literary elite completely bought it at first. They praised these ancient
24:13–24:17texts entirely unaware they were actually written by a teenager in the 1870s.
24:17–24:18That is hilarious.
24:18–24:21It really just demonstrates how deeply the aesthetic of Mathili had penetrated the
24:21–24:23intellectual psyche of Eastern India.
24:23–24:28And it wasn't just Bengal, the sources show a parallel development in Assam known as Brajavali.
24:28–24:29Yes.
24:29–24:34Driven by Srimanta Sankaradeva in the late 15th century, Sankaradeva was a massive cultural
24:34–24:36and religious figure in Assam.
24:36–24:40He traveled extensively through Mathila and was deeply inspired by the Mathili-Kirtania
24:40–24:42drama traditions.
24:42–24:47To write his famous Aikiyanat plays, he created his own hybrid language, mixing
24:47–24:49Mithili with Asamese.
24:49–24:51It is just staggering.
24:51–24:54It was mainly a sprawling trans-regional superpower.
24:54–24:58It was the lingua franca of eastern Indian devotionalism.
24:58–25:02So how does a language that shapes entire neighboring cultures that influences future
25:02–25:05Nobel laureates end up fighting for its own life?
25:05–25:06It's a steed fall.
25:06–25:07It really is.
25:07–25:11How does it go from a donor civilization to a language struggling for basic recognition
25:11–25:14in its own homeland by the 20th century?
25:14–25:18Well that tragic art brings us to the intersection of colonialism, class bias, and the rise
25:18–25:20of modern institutional hegemony.
25:20–25:23To understand the decline, we have to look at the 19th century and the arrival of the
25:23–25:25British colonial administration.
25:25–25:30Specifically, an Irish civil servant and linguist named George Abraham Gerson.
25:30–25:33Gerson seems like a very complicated figure in this narrative.
25:33–25:36On one hand, the sources give him a lot of credit.
25:36–25:40He essentially throws Methili a lifeline when it was drowning in Hindi assimilation.
25:40–25:41He did.
25:41–25:46In 1881, Gerson published a systematic grammar of Methili and later compiled
25:46–25:50a Mathalie Christamathie, which was a collection of literary texts.
25:50–25:55He provided the rigorous academic framework necessary to prove to the colonial government
25:55–26:00that Mathalie was a distinct language with its own morphology and history, not merely
26:00–26:02a corrupted dialect of Hindi.
26:02–26:03Which is foundational, right.
26:03–26:07Without Grierysen, the later fights for constitutional recognition would have had no legal or academic
26:07–26:09leg to stand on.
26:09–26:10True.
26:10–26:13But the parallel history introduces a massive caveat here.
26:13–26:15Grierysen was a colonial administrator.
26:15–26:18He didn't wander the villages talking to farmers.
26:18–26:21His informants, the people who guided his understanding of the language and curated
26:21–26:28the texts he analyzed, were almost exclusively elite upper-caste Brahmin scholars.
26:28–26:33So the colonial gaze essentially legitimized one very specific, highly privileged version
26:33–26:36of Methili while ignoring everyone else.
26:36–26:37Exactly.
26:37–26:42The so-called new awakening of Methili in the 19th century was fundamentally skewed.
26:42–26:46To see this bias in action, we just need to look at two poets from that exact same
26:46–26:47era.
26:47–26:51On the elite side, the official history celebrates Chandaha.
26:51–26:54He was attached to the court of the Maharaja of Darbhanga, right?
26:54–26:55Yes.
26:55–26:57Chandaha wrote the myth of Basha Ramayana.
26:57–27:02It was a monumental work and it proved that Mithili could sustain a grand, classical,
27:02–27:03epic narrative.
27:03–27:07The mainstream canon treats him as the ultimate savior of modern Mithili.
27:07–27:12But the parallel history points to a completely different poet writing at the exact same
27:12–27:16time. Fetcheryl. Who was Fetcheryl and what was he writing about?
27:16–27:21Fetcheryl was producing literature from below. Specifically, he wrote the Akali Covet. This
27:21–27:25was visceral, devastating poetry documenting the horrific agrarian suffering during the
27:25–27:28famine of 1873 to 1874.
27:28–27:29Oh, wow.
27:29–27:33Yeah. While the court poets were writing epics about gods, Fetcheryl was writing
27:33–27:38about the raw reality of colonial misrule, systemic poverty, and literal starvation.
27:38–27:43And let me guess, the elite historians didn't find his topics very refined.
27:43–27:44They completely ignored him.
27:44–27:49Fitzgerald's famine versus never entered the mainstream canon because they were uncomfortable.
27:49–27:54They didn't fit the epic or devotional aesthetics preferred by the establishment.
27:54–27:58His work remained unpublished and uncelebrated until Grierson actually included it in his
27:58–27:59Christomathy.
27:59–28:04And even then, it was treated more as an ethnographic curiosity than high literature.
28:04–28:06It's the museum analogy all over again.
28:06–28:12You put the pristine court-sponsored Ramayana in the glass display case, and you shove the
28:12–28:17screaming, starving reality of the farmers down into the basement.
28:17–28:21And the most frustrating part is that this exclusion didn't end with the Victorians.
28:21–28:26It carried right over into independent India, orchestrated by the Sahitya Academy.
28:26–28:28India's National Academy of Letters.
28:28–28:31They formally recognized Mothili in 1965.
28:31–28:35For the mainstream Orthodox historians, this was the ultimate triumph.
28:35–28:39It meant state funding, national awards, and prestige.
28:39–28:45But the parallel movement refers to the Academy's reign over Mantholy as a festival of shame.
28:45–28:47They do not mince words.
28:47–28:48Festival of shame.
28:48–28:51Why are they so angry at the National Academy?
28:51–28:55Because they view the Academy's Mathili advisory boards as having been completely
28:55–28:59captured by elite conservative caste organizations.
28:59–29:05The parallel historians argue that these boards used state power to suppress subaltern literature
29:05–29:08and distribute patronage only within their own closed circles.
29:08–29:10And they don't just allege this, right?
29:10–29:12They brought the actual receipts.
29:12–29:13They did.
29:13–29:19Between 2011 and 2014, two researchers, Vinid Uttpal and Ashish Anjinghar, filed a
29:19–29:21series of write-to information requests.
29:21–29:25For our listeners who might not be familiar, an RTI in India is a legal mechanism
29:25–29:29that forces government bodies to release their internal data.
29:29–29:31It's a major anti-corruption tool.
29:31–29:32Very powerful tool.
29:32–29:36So they demand the data on who is getting the state-funded translation and publication
29:36–29:38assignments for Mathili.
29:38–29:39What did they actually find?
29:39–29:44The RTI data revealed that over 90% of the Sahecha Academy assignments went directly to
29:44–29:48friends, relatives, and close associates of the 10-member advisory board.
29:48–29:4990%.
29:49–29:50Think about that in modern terms.
29:50–29:55Imagine if the Academy awards were funded by taxpayer money, and 90% of the Oscars
29:55–29:57were just handed out to the judges, nephews, and cousins.
29:57–29:58It's staggering.
29:58–30:04And meanwhile, how many assignments went to authors representing the parallel subaltern tradition?
30:04–30:07Zero. It was a perfectly closed loop.
30:07–30:14It was an institutional mechanism of obscurantism designed to keep Mithili as an exclusive elite domain.
30:14–30:18And perhaps the most glaring victim of this gatekeeping wasn't even some obscure poet.
30:18–30:20It was Hari Mohan Shah.
30:20–30:23Let's talk about him because the way the academy treated him is just mind-blowing.
30:23–30:27He was arguably the most popular modern Mithili writer of the 20th century, correct?
30:27–30:34Undoubtedly in 1933 Hari Moran Shah published a brilliant biting satirical novel called Kanyadan
30:34–30:41It viciously attacked conservative marriage customs the dowry system and the hypocrisy of the Bomenical Orthodoxy
30:41–30:46Wow, it was a massive bestseller. Everyone read it. He was shaking the foundations of the establishment from the inside. Yes
30:47–30:54But when the Sahitya Academy began giving out their prestigious annual awards for Missile literature, they steadfastly ignored him
30:54–30:57In fact, the sources point out an incredible detail.
30:57–31:03In 1967, the academy actually chose to leave the Mathili Award completely blank, unrewarded,
31:03–31:05rather than give it to Haramohan Chah.
31:05–31:07That is just petty.
31:07–31:12How does a National Literary Institution justify refusing to acknowledge the most widely read
31:12–31:14author in the language?
31:14–31:17They justify it under the guise of protecting classical standards.
31:17–31:22Haramohan Chah was deemed too dangerous, too irreverent.
31:22–31:27By denying him recognition, the establishment sent a chilling message to all writers.
31:27–31:32If you critique the social hierarchy, if you make the elite uncomfortable, you will be
31:32–31:36erased from the official record, regardless of your talent or popularity.
31:36–31:42Okay, so if you are a subaltern writer or a satirist or anyone outside that 10-member
31:42–31:47boards inner circle, the front door is locked, the government academies are shutting
31:47–31:48you out.
31:48–31:49What do you do?
31:49–31:50You build your own house.
31:50–31:51Exactly.
31:51–31:57entirely new house. And that brings us to the final act of this story, the modern resistance.
31:57–32:01To build their own house, the parallel movement first had to reclaim the demographic reality
32:01–32:06of the region. They focused on what they call the throbbing human heart of the mice elite
32:06–32:12tradition. Meaning what exactly? This means bypassing the written elite manuscripts entirely
32:12–32:18and centering the vast folk literature preserved orally by Dalits and lower castes. Because
32:18–32:20Because realistically they are the demographic majority.
32:20–32:21Exactly.
32:21–32:24And the scale of this oral literature is just breathtaking.
32:24–32:26We were talking about massive epics.
32:26–32:30The mainstream ignores them because they aren't written down in classical verse, but these
32:30–32:33epics are the literal lifeblood of the culture.
32:33–32:35The sources mention a few of these.
32:35–32:39There's Salhasa, which is the story of a guardian spirit revered by the Dusada
32:39–32:40community.
32:40–32:44There's Dina Badri, preserved by the Musahar community, which is this powerful
32:44–32:46tale of brothers resisting bonded labor.
32:46–32:49So let's dive in to just one of them to understand the scale.
32:49–32:51Talk to me about Lorica.
32:51–32:56Lorica is a sprawling, heroic epic that celebrates Yadava's strength and chivalry.
32:56–33:01It is an incredibly complex narrative involving love, war, and social honor.
33:01–33:04But what is truly staggering is the performance itself.
33:04–33:07This isn't a poem you read in a book over an hour.
33:07–33:11The Loric Gita is a living performance that can take up to 36 hours to sing.
33:11–33:1236 hours?
33:12–33:13That's not a poem.
33:13–33:16That's an entire television season delivered from memory.
33:16–33:17It's a communal event.
33:17–33:22It is a living, breathing language, existing completely outside of the control of state
33:22–33:23academies.
33:23–33:26The singers are the true custodians of the language.
33:26–33:30And the parallel movement isn't just looking backward at ancient epics, either.
33:30–33:35They are championing contemporary writers, who are tackling modern harsh realities.
33:35–33:38Writers who the mainstream actively tried to ignore.
33:38–33:43Yes, writers like Bishan Thakur, he pioneered a parallel Dullet Theater.
33:43–33:47mainstream Mithili theater often relied on light slapstick or historical romances.
33:47–33:49Which is pretty standard.
33:49–33:54Yeah. But Bishan Laker's work is described by the movement as a necessary slap on the face of
33:54–33:58that elite theater, bringing the stark violence of cast realities straight to the stage.
33:58–34:01And then there is Jagdish Prasad Mandal.
34:01–34:05Mandal is a pivotal figure. He writes from deeply within the sub-ulchern experience.
34:06–34:11His novel, Pangu, which eventually forced the Academy to reluctantly recognize him
34:11–34:15much later in 2021, it represents a seismic shift.
34:15–34:16Because of what he writes about.
34:16–34:21Exactly. He doesn't write romanticized pastoral stories about village life.
34:21–34:25He writes about the crippled agricultural system, the exploitation of farmers,
34:25–34:28and the raw, unvarnished struggles of modern rural economics.
34:28–34:31And we absolutely cannot forget the women writers.
34:31–34:35If you look at the official mainstream anthologies curated by the elites,
34:35–34:37women are virtually invisible.
34:37–34:42The parallel history has done immense work to unearth and highlight a deeply suppressed
34:42–34:46canon of female voices. They highlight contemporary playwrights like Viparani,
34:46–34:51critical scholars like Runghadi Devi, and they promote the first major anthology of
34:51–34:57Mathilli women poets titled Ejoriak on Gavimor. But unearthing these voices is only half the
34:57–35:01battle, right? How do you distribute them? If the Sahithi Akademi controls the funding
35:01–35:06in the printing presses, how do you get Jagdish Prasad Mandala or the Lorica Epic into the
35:06–35:07the hands of the actual people.
35:07–35:08Right.
35:08–35:10Well, in the 21st century, the Vedea movement
35:10–35:12found the ultimate loophole, the internet.
35:12–35:14The digital rebellion of the Vedea movement
35:14–35:17is arguably their most consequential achievement.
35:17–35:20They launched their efforts initially around 2000.
35:20–35:24And by 2004, Vedea became a massive e-journal.
35:24–35:27They realized that digital spaces have no gatekeepers.
35:27–35:27Yeah.
35:27–35:29You don't need a corrupt advisory board
35:29–35:31to approve your publication if you own the server
35:31–35:32yourself.
35:32–35:34The scale of what they accomplished digitally
35:34–35:36is almost hard to comprehend.
35:36–35:38According to the sources,
35:38–35:39they didn't just publish new articles,
35:39–35:42they went to war for the archive.
35:42–35:45They digitized thousands of out-of-print Mathili books.
35:45–35:48And they went further back than books.
35:48–35:49They located and transcribed
35:49–35:5211,000 ancient palm leaf manuscripts.
35:52–35:53Wait, 11,000?
35:53–35:55Yes, 11,000.
35:55–35:58Manuscripts containing the old suppressed Terhuda script.
35:58–36:00They brought the twilight language
36:00–36:03and the old genealogies right into the digital light.
36:03–36:05And they didn't stop at just scanning things.
36:05–36:08They engaged in like high level digital diplomacy.
36:08–36:10They lobbied the Unicode Consortium,
36:10–36:12which is the international body that decides
36:12–36:15which text characters appear on our computers and smartphones.
36:15–36:16And they got the T'Ruida script
36:16–36:19officially standardized in 2014.
36:19–36:21That is a profound act of reclaiming
36:21–36:23linguistic sovereignty.
36:23–36:25By getting T'Ruida into Unicode,
36:25–36:27they ensure that the ancient script
36:27–36:29could not be permanently erased
36:29–36:31by the dominance of Devan Agari.
36:31–36:39Anyone anywhere in the world can now type in the original script of mythola. They generated a million pages over a hundred million words of
36:39–36:41Mathili corpus online
36:41–36:49They initiated massive translation projects into English to bypass the Hindi language gatekeepers entirely and take their literature straight to a global
36:49–36:54Audience it's an incredible story. It's a staggering triumph of grassroots organization
36:54–36:56But as we wrap up this massive story
36:56–37:02I want to ask the ultimate so what question the geopolitical implications exactly we spent this
37:02–37:07entire time talking about 12th century philosophers poetic identity theft and digitized palm leaves
37:08–37:13why does any of this literary history matter to the actual physical political reality of the
37:13–37:18region today because in south asia language and political power are inextricably linked
37:18–37:23historically there was a very strong political movement demanding a separate
37:23–37:28autonomous mytholus state within India based entirely on their distinct linguistic identity.
37:28–37:32But that statehood movement ultimately failed. Why?
37:32–37:37According to the sociological thesis of T.K. Uman, which the parallel movement cites heavily,
37:37–37:43it failed because of caste dynamics. The majority of the population, the subaltern castes, the
37:43–37:48deletes, the yadavuz, they looked at the people leading the statehood demand and who did they
37:48–37:54see. Let me guess. They saw the exact same elite, brahminical orthodoxy that controlled the Pange
37:54–38:01records and the Sahita academy. Ah, so the working class majority essentially looked at the proposed
38:01–38:06new state and said why on earth would we fight for a new political border when the people who
38:06–38:10will run that state are the exact same people who currently use the language to oppress us.
38:10–38:15Precisely. They feared a separate state would merely formalize and enforce a brahminical
38:15–38:20monopoly over political and economic resources. And this is the profound strategic genius of
38:20–38:25the Vidae movement. Because they realize that you can't build a state on an exclusive history.
38:25–38:31Yes. By constructing a parallel inclusive history, one that honors the Dalit epics like
38:31–38:36Loreca, the women writers, the rebel mystic monks, and the trans-border diaspora,
38:36–38:42the Vidae movement is actively attempting to build a broad democratic cultural base.
38:42–38:47The underlying theory is that true linguistic and political autonomy can only be achieved
38:47–38:51when the entire demographic feels ownership over the cultural identity.
38:51–38:54Now we need to be very clear for our listeners here.
38:54–38:57We are analyzing the mechanics of a historical movement.
38:57–39:01We are not endorsing the political demand for a separate myth of the state, nor are
39:01–39:06we taking sides in the immensely complex, real world caste politics of the region
39:06–39:07today.
39:07–39:08Absolutely.
39:08–39:12We're packing the sociological thesis presented in our source text about why cultural movements
39:12–39:18either succeed in rallying a population or fail because they are too exclusionary.
39:18–39:19It is a phenomenal case study.
39:19–39:23It proves that arguing over medieval poetry and ancient scripts isn't just academic
39:23–39:24naval gazing.
39:24–39:27It is the very real work of socio-political state building.
39:27–39:30And that brings us to the end of our journey today.
39:30–39:34We have traveled through a thousand years of cultural warfare.
39:34–39:38We started with the coded twilight language of rebellious monks.
39:38–39:42We opened the black book of genealogies to see how historical figures were stripped of
39:42–39:43their true identities.
39:43–39:45We really covered a lot.
39:45–39:48We watched a Nobel laureate fake a medieval language.
39:48–39:55And we saw a modern digital rebellion bypass a corrupt academy to scan 11,000 palm leaves
39:55–39:57onto the internet.
39:57–40:00The parallel history of mythology literature is not just a catalog of books.
40:00–40:02It is a testament to survival.
40:02–40:04It is an incredible triumph.
40:04–40:06But you know, as I look at how the Vadea movement
40:06–40:10secured this history, I am left with a very unsettling thought
40:10–40:11about the future.
40:11–40:12Oh, what's that?
40:12–40:13Think about the medium of survival.
40:13–40:16We've seen how the parallel movement brilliantly
40:16–40:19used the internet, servers, websites, Unicode,
40:19–40:21to outmaneuver the institutional gatekeepers.
40:21–40:23They realized they couldn't get their books
40:23–40:25into the state-funded brick and mortar libraries,
40:25–40:26so they built a digital library.
40:26–40:27Yeah.
40:27–40:30But this introduces a terrifying new vulnerability.
40:30–40:31How so?
40:31–40:33I mean, the internet is forever, right?
40:33–40:34Is it?
40:34–40:37If a culture's true, unedited heritage
40:37–40:40now exists primarily on independent,
40:40–40:43decentralized digital servers.
40:43–40:45What happens if the funding for those servers
40:45–40:46dries up and they go dark?
40:46–40:47Oh, wow.
40:47–40:50What happens in 50 years when the specific digital formats
40:50–40:53they use to encode those 11,000 palm leaves
40:53–40:56become obsolete and unreadable by new technology?
40:56–40:57Yeah, this, yeah.
40:57–40:59The physical palm leaves survived for centuries
40:59–41:01in the physical world.
41:01–41:03by moving the parallel history to the cloud
41:03–41:04to escape the gatekeepers.
41:04–41:06Have they permanently secured their heritage
41:06–41:08or have they simply transferred it
41:08–41:10to a medium that is infinitely more fragile?
41:10–41:12That is a haunting question.
41:12–41:14You escape the locked basement of the museum
41:14–41:16but you move into a digital cloud
41:16–41:19that could evaporate with a single server crash.
41:19–41:21Something for all of us to really mull over
41:21–41:24as our own lives become increasingly digital.
41:24–41:27Thank you all so much for joining us on this deep dive.
41:27–41:29The next time you walk into a grand museum
41:29–41:31or read an official historical account.
41:31–41:33Remember to ask yourself whose voices were erased
41:33–41:35to make this story look so clean.
41:35–41:38Keep questioning the narrative and we'll see you next time.

Plain text

Imagine if, tomorrow morning, someone discovered a box of old, moldy letters in a basement in London. Okay, color me intrigued. Right. And these letters proved, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that William Shakespeare wasn't this wealthy, respectable English gentleman at all. Oh wow. Yeah. Imagine finding out he was actually like a lower class street poet, someone entirely outside the elite circles, and that the royal court had basically stolen his identity, scrubbed his background, and repackaged him to make the empire look good. I mean that would completely upend centuries of academic study. People would absolutely lose their minds over that. Right. The entire industry built around Shakespeare would collapse overnight. Well what if I told you that exact kind of historical identity theft isn't just a hypothetical? Wait, you're saying this actually happened? It actually happened and it's just one tiny piece of a thousand-year literary cover-up that we are digging into today. So welcome to the deep dive. We are so glad you're here with us. We really are. Today we're looking at this massive sprawling battle over, you know, who gets to write history, who gets to erase it, and how people fight back. Yeah and the battleground we are exploring today is the history of the Mothili language and its literature. And I have to say our source material for this is just monumental. It's huge. It really is. We're working with excerpts from this staggering undertaking called A Parallel History of Mythla and Metheli Literature. And this thing spans volumes one through one hundred. A hundred of volumes? That is wild. Yeah. It's an archive curated by Gajendra Thakur and a collective known as the Videha Parallel Literary Movement. Now, I know you, the listener, might be thinking, Matili, I'm not a linguist specializing in South Asia, so why does this matter to me? Which is a fair question. Totally fair. exactly what I thought when I first looked at this massive stack of sources. But look, Mathilius has spoken by tens of millions of people across India and Nepal, but for decades, its official history has been presented as this very pristine, elite, upper caste, predominantly Brahminical tradition. It's been sold as a language of courts and kings. But this parallel history, these 100 volumes, they completely tear that narrative to shreds. They really do. Yeah. pressed history that is radical, subaltern, it crosses national borders, and it's now fueling a massive digital rebellion. Which is fascinating. It is. But to answer that question of why you, the listener, should care, because this isn't just a story about one language. It is a terrifyingly clear masterclass in how institutional power constructs what we just blindly accept as truth. Yeah, exactly. It shows us the literal mechanics of how marginalized voices can be systematically erased from the record and crucially how those voices are using the internet right now to completely bypass the traditional gatekeepers of culture. It's essentially a blueprint for cultural survival. Right. So to understand how deep this goes, we have to go back to the very beginning. We're talking between the eighth and twelfth centuries. Let's do it. When you read the official mainstream histories of Mesa Lee, they usually just gloss over the earliest texts from this era. Like, they treat them like some vague, archaic curiosity that belongs to a general ancient past, not specifically to Methili. Yeah, but the parallel history places these texts, which are called the chariopadas, absolutely front and center. So what are the chariopadas, exactly? Well context is crucial here. To understand the chariopadas, we first have to understand where the language even came from. So Mithili evolved from something called Magadi Precreate. Okay, let's pause right there for a second. What exactly is a precreate? Are we talking about a dead language or something people actually spoke on the street? Oh, definitely on the street. Prachrits were the everyday vernacular languages of ancient India. This is as opposed to Sanskrit, which was the highly formalized elite language of religion and literature. Oh, got it. So Sanskrit is the High Court and Prachrit is the local tavern. That's a good way to put it. And Magadi Prachrit was the specific vernacular spoken in the Eastern part of the subcontinent. It was actually the language of the ancient Malaya empire. So think of historical figures like the Emperor Ashoka. Okay, wow. That's old. Very old. So from that ancient root over centuries, regional languages began to branch off. And the Charipadas are where we see the very first distinct sparks of what would eventually become monthly. And what's wild is that these texts aren't royal decrees or like dry historical ledgers. They are 50 mystical songs composed by 23 different poets. And our sources say these poets were Vajrayana Siddhas, which sounds incredibly profound, but what does that actually mean? Yeah, it does sound intense. Vajrayana is a form of tantric Buddhism, and a Siddha is essentially a realized master or a mystic. We actually have names for these figures from the texts, Louis Paddha, Kanapada, Saraha. Okay, so they were monks. Yes, but what's really important here is who they were in the social hierarchy. Because they were not court intellectuals living in luxury, they often came from the very lowest strata of society. We're talking about sweepers, arrow makers, cowherds. Oh wow, so these are really working class mystics. Exactly, they were roaming non-sectarian monks. And their choice of language was a deliberate act of defiance. They did not write in Sanskrit, which as we mentioned was the gate kept language of the educated upper castes. Instead they wrote in a style called Sandhya Bhasha, which translates to Twilight language. I love that term so much, Twilight language. It sounds like something straight out of a Tolkien novel. How did Twilight Language actually work in practice? It worked as a code. It was a language that operated on multiple levels simultaneously. So on the surface, a song might seem to be about a completely mundane activity, like brewing liquor or hunting. But the Twilight Language used paradoxes and esoteric metaphors to provide instructions for their secret heterodox spiritual practices. It was designed to be understood only by the initiated while flying completely under the radar of the Orthodox religious authorities. Okay, but let me push back on this a bit. Were they actually trying to start some sort of social revolution, or were they just writing in a coded local language because it was practical? Like maybe that's just the only language their followers actually understood. That's a great question. And the parallel history argues that it was absolutely both. You really can't separate the spiritual from the social here. Interesting. Yeah. By explicitly choosing to write in what was called D'Silvayana, which means the language of the people. They were actively rejecting the sedentary, caste-bound, orthodox discourse of their time. So it was a conscious rebellion. Completely. They were basically saying, we don't need your elite Sanskrit to achieve enlightenment. And we don't need it to express complex philosophical thought either. So they were bypassing the institutional gatekeepers of the ninth century. Exactly. Scholars in the parallel tradition, like Rahul Sankritian, have rigorously analyzed these occult songs and they've demonstrated how their linguistic structure, you know what linguists call morphology, matches protomythole, they're the undeniable roots of the language. But the mainstream narrative waters this all down, right? Oh, absolutely. By treating the chariapadas as just this shared generic Eastern heritage, the mainstream history neatly avoids acknowledging the radical, anti-cast, subaltern origins of the language itself. It's like discovering that a highly formalized, classically trained symphony orchestra actually traces its roots back to an underground punk rock movement. And the directors of the symphony are just deeply embarrassed by it. They want everyone to think they've always been wearing tuxedos. There's a very vivid way to frame it. The parallel tradition, on the other hand, embraces the punk rock roots. They view these mystic monks as the original subaltern resistance. Which raises the million dollar question for me. If the language started out in the dirt on the roads as this democratic tool of working class mystics, how did it become so intensely restricted later on? I mean, how do you go from twilight language to a pristine elite museum exhibit? Well, that requires tools of control. And looking at the sources, there are a few tools more effective for controlling a culture than the literal scripts they write with and the ledgers they use to track their people. So true. The history of a language as alphabet is rarely just about linguistics, right? Yeah. It's almost always about political autonomy. Yeah. For nearly a thousand years, Melideal wasn't written in the script most people associate with Hindi today. Ah. It had its own distinct ancient script called Terhuta, or sometimes Mithlakshara. Right, and the sources mentioned the script evolved from the ancient Brahmi script way back in the 7th century. We even have physical proof of it, like the Mendar Hill stone inscriptions. Exactly. But Terhuta wasn't just a basic alphabet. The sources say it was heavily associated with Tantric Yantra motifs. What does that mean? Well, Eantra in tantric traditions is a mystical diagram. It's often composed of intersecting geometric shapes, and it's used as an aid in meditation or ritual. Okay. The T'huta script was highly ornamental, and its curves and lines actually reflected some of this sacred geometry. So it wasn't just functional, it carried the spiritual and aesthetic weight of the culture. It was a mature, sophisticated script used for everything from academic treatises to everyday correspondence. But over the last hundred years, Trujuta was essentially pushed off a cliff. It was systematically marginalized. First, it lost ground to a script called Kythi. What was Kythi used for? Kythi was a more functional cursive script. It was used primarily by the Kayaastha community, who were the traditional record keepers and administrators. They used it for bookkeeping, land records and legal documents. Oh, okay. So the administrative necessity started superseding the cultural aesthetic. Yes, exactly. But the fatal blow really came the 20th century with the wholesale institutional adoption of Devan Agari. Devan Agari being the script used for Sanskrit and modern Hindi. Now, the official justification for this switch always sounds so reasonable, right? Like, they say, oh, we have printing presses that are already set up for Devan Agari. It's just easier for the colonial administration. It's more efficient. Yeah, but efficiency is the classic Trojan horse for assimilation. Ooh, that's a good quote. That's a good quote. The parallel history emphasizes that this switch was a deliberate mechanism of dialectization. Let's break that down because dialectization sounds very academic. Is that just when people start treating a language as less important? It's a bit more insidious than that. Think of it this way. Imagine a historic building covered in a vibrant unique thousand-year-old mural. Dialectization is when a new landlord comes in and paints the entire building with a standard beige institutional paint. Oh wow. Right. And once it's beige, the landlord can point to it and say, see, it looks exactly like all the other beige buildings on the block. It's nothing special. It's just a minor variation of the main property. OK, that makes total sense. So by forcing Mothili to be written in the Hindi script, it became visually indistinguishable to outsiders. Exactly. It allowed colonial officials and later the Indian state governments to just easily classify Mothili as merely a rugged regional dialect of Hindi, rather than acknowledging it as an independent language with a millennium of distinct literary history. Precisely. You strip away the visual identity and you instantly weaken the claim to political and cultural autonomy. But as you mentioned, the script was really only the first tool of control. The sources dive deeply into a social mechanism called the Ponji Proband. Yes, the Ponji system. When I first read about this in the sources, I was actually quite impressed. It was established around the 14th century. And it was this incredibly sophisticated, massive system of genealogical record keeping for Mithal Brahmins and Khyastas. And if you read the mainstream historians like Mahamahapatiya, Parmesh Warchaw, they tout this as the crowning lorry of their culture. And if you look at it purely as an archival feat, it is astonishing. I mean, they maintain vast intricate databases of lineages, marriages, and ancestral movements across centuries. and they did all of this without computers. Right, but here's where I need you to explain the patch. Because on paper, meticulous historical record keeping sounds fantastic. I mean, we're doing a deep dive on history right now. We obviously love archives. We do. So why does the parallel movement despise the Pongee system so intensely? Like, what is the danger in knowing your family tree? Well, the danger is in how that data is used. The parallel movement denounces the Pongee system because it wasn't a benign historical society, it was a vicious instrument of social engineering. How so? Like practically speaking. It functioned almost like a draconian credit score for human value and purity. The records were used to enforce an incredibly strict system of Brahminical patriarchy. Okay. You couldn't just marry who you wanted. Your lineages had to be checked against the Panji to ensure absolute caste purity and to avoid prohibited degrees of consanguinity. What? Yeah. The panjyakaris found a flaw in your lineage. Your family could be instantly downgraded or completely ostracized. It dictated who controlled wealth, who could own land, and who was socially invisible. So it was less of a family tree and more of a weapon to maintain a very exclusive club. Precisely. But the Vidae Hill movement didn't just complain about this system in abstract terms. In 2009, they executed what I can only describe as a massive historical leak. They digitized and published something called the Dushan Pange. The Black Book. The Black Book. These were the secret, suppressed files of the genealogical records. It's literally like a cultural WikiLeaks. So what did the Black Book actually show? It proved that the elite historians had been blatantly falsifying their own pristine records to cover up impurities among their most revered figures. Unbelievable. An example of this is the case of Gangeshu Pattaya. Let's talk about Gangesh, because this ties back to that idea of historical identity theft I brought up at the start. How big of a deal was this guy? He was a Titan. He lived in the 12th century and wrote a text called the Tupikintamani. He essentially founded the Navinaya school. Which means what exactly for those of us who aren't philosophy majors? Navinaya translates to new logic. It was a revolutionary system of logic and epistemology that deeply influenced Indian philosophy for centuries. Being the founder of Navya Naya is akin to being the Isaac Newton of Indian philosophical logic. He's an absolute superstar of the intellect. Got it. So you have the superstar and the orthodox upper caste establishment claims him as their ultimate poster boy. He's their proof of intellectual and cultural superiority. But the Dushin Ponji, the black book, revealed a reality that terrified the Orthodox establishment. The records showed that Genghisjie Bidiya had actually married a Charmed Karini. A woman from the lower leather tanning cast? Yes. A union that defied every single rigid rule the Ponji system was built to enforce. And the records also contained an entry indicating that his family was born five years after his father's death. Okay. Wow. So his personal life, his marriage, his family origins. They completely shattered the myth of the pure orthodox, rule-abiding Raman the scholar. Completely. And here is where the institutional cover-up comes in. The sources detail how a very prominent elite historian named Ramanath Shah, who was a massive power broker in the Sahita Academy, which is India's National Academy of Letters, he actively suppressed these specific Ponji records. Wait, really? He knew they existed, but he buried them. I have to stop you there. Why? I mean, I understand prejudice, but from a purely historical standpoint, why would a scholar actively destroy the true biography of the man they're supposed to be celebrating? Because the institution's legitimacy depended on the illusion of unbroken purity. If their greatest philosopher was mingling across strict caste lines, the entire justification for the Ponzi system, this idea that strict caste separation is necessary for intellectual and spiritual greatness just falls apart. Wow. So as the parallel history terms it, They committed an honor killing of his legacy. They erased his wife. They erased his actual lived reality. I mean, the sources point out that even in his latest 2016, the Sahiti Academy was still publishing monographs about him that perpetuated the sanitized fake biography. That is the raw power of institutional gatekeeping. You take the man's genius, but you execute his true identity so it serves your political narrative. And you know, if the establishment was willing to erase the wife of their greatest philosopher just to keep his cast pure, it really makes you wonder what they did to their artists. Which brings us to the Shakespeare level bombshell I mentioned at the start of the show. The identity theft of Vidyapatti. Yeah. Vidyapatti Thakur is the undisputed son around which Massili literature orbits. He lived from roughly 1360 to 1450. And to the mainstream, institutional scholars, he is known as the Abhinava Jayadeva, the new Jayadeva. So the official history paints him as this highly refined, deeply devout Brahmin courtier. He's a polymath, right? They say he wrote dense treatises in Sanskrit and also in something called avahada. What is avahada? Avahada is a really fascinating linguistic stage. It was a transitional literary language that basically bridged the gap between the older upper-branchal languages and the early modern eastern languages like Mithili, Bengali, and Asimis. So he's writing in Sanskrit, he's writing in Abhahada, but what he's really famous for, the works that actually made him immortal, are his padavali. Yes. These are the incredibly beautiful musical songs about the divine love of Rata and Krishna, and these were written in the local vernacular, in Maitali. And the mainstream narrative claims that this single elite Brahmin genius graciously lowered himself to write in the vernacular, and by doing so, he elevated the local dialect to high art. But the Vedea movement drops an absolute hammer on this narrative. They argued that the official history has deliberately taken two entirely different people and smashed them together into one mythological figure. This is one of the most contentious and significant interventions by the parallel historians. Oh that. Yeah, they posit that the famous Padavali poet, the person who wrote those beloved, racy, crisp, mathilly love songs that the common people actually memorized and sang in the fields, is entirely distinct from the Sanskrit and Avahata court writer named Vijapati Thakuta, who actually lives later. Let me make sure I'm wrapping my head around this. They are saying there's an elite Sanskrit writing court bureaucrat named Vidyatti. And then there's an earlier populist poet who wrote the massive folk anthems, who was also named Vidyatti. And the historians just decided, hey, let's pretend the rich courtier wrote all the popular folk songs too. That is exactly their assertion. The parallel narrative critiques mainstream historians were deliberately fusing them. And the motive is clear, right? If you admit the greatest poetry in your language was written by an unknown, possibly lower caste, vernacular poet, the Orthodox court loses its cultural supremacy. Oh, wow. By claiming the two Vigipottis are one person, the Brominical establishment successfully appropriates the vernacular genius and claims it as their own property. It is literal historical identity theft. They took a populist icon and dressed him up in elite casteist attire. And the Videha movement pushes back against his visually, don't they? They do. Their e-journal logo is a sketch by the artist Panaklal Mandal, and it depicts what they call a subaltern Vidyapati. Yes, they acknowledge that the true Padavali poet's specific caste is historically uncertain, but they fiercely contest his appropriation by the elite. The true Vidyapati of the parallel tradition made a conscious choice to write in Diziloviana the language of the people. Right. His poetry was direct. It was filled with imagery of contemporary village life. And it resonated so deeply that his lines literally passed into common speech. And here's the thing about truly great resonant art. You just can't keep it in a box. Even as the elite historians tried to sanitize them and lock them up in the court, his vernacular songs sprouted wings. They didn't just stay in Methila. They sparked a massive transnational cultural explosion that the parallel history calls the Great Diaspora. Which is such an important era. We often suffer from a modern bias, where we assume regional languages are strictly confined to their current geographical borders. Yeah, we totally do. But the sources frame Mathilli not as a localized dialect, but as the Latin of Eastern India. It was a donor civilization. It profoundly shaped the literature of its neighbors. We're talking Nepal, Bengal, Assam, and Orissa. Let's look at Nepal first, because this feels like a massive blind spot in standard history. In the medieval period, the ruling dynasty in Mozilla, the Oyn Wars, starts facing conquests. Things get very dangerous. Where do the scholars and artists go? They flee north, up into the Himalayas. Exactly, they saw it sanctuary in the Nepal Valley, specifically under the Maloa kings. And what happened there is just remarkable. Under rulers like Jugatjur, Tirmala, and later Bupitindramala, Mathilli didn't just survive as a refugee language, it actually became the language of the court. I mean, the sources mentioned that Pupitan Dramala alone composed 26 plays in Mothilli. Yes, for roughly 150 years, Mothilli drama essentially replaced Sanskrit drama in the high courts of Nepal. It was this golden age of transporter literature. But if you read modern official histories today, how do they categorize all this Mala era literature? They frequently label it simply as Nepali heritage, which effectively erases the Mothilli roots. The parallel historians are trying to reclaim this era as a shared classical age of newer Mothili civilization that operated all along the India-Tibet trade rest. Okay, so Nepal adopts it, but the story in Bengal is even wilder. It really is. In Bengal, they didn't just adopt Mothili. The Bengali singers and poets became so obsessed with Vigipati's love songs that they actually invented a fake hybrid language just so they could sound more like him. It is an unparalleled phenomenon in literary history. It's known as Brajabuli. Explain how this actually worked linguistically. Well, many Bengali Vaishnava singers who were devotees of Krishna had traveled to study in Mithila. They were so captivated by the rhythm, the emotional depth, and the specific cadence of Vijapati's Mithili Padavali that they wanted to compose their own devotional songs in the exact same style. OK. But they didn't write them in pure Bengali, nor did they write in pure Mithili. They created an artificial literary language. It was a mix of Bengali vocabulary heavily modified with Mathili grammar and phonetic structures. So they formed a massive linguistic cover band of Vidyapati. A profoundly successful one too. Brajibhuli wasn't just a fleeting trend. It became the primary vehicle for the entire medieval Bengali Vaishnaval lyric movement. Absolute giants of Bengali literature wrote their masterpieces in this Mongol language. And this obsession lasted for centuries. I have to bring up the Tagore anecdote from the sources because it is just too perfect. Oh, it's brilliant. We're talking about the late 19th century, Rabindranath Tagore, who would eventually become the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. He's young, he's ambitious, and the cultural clout of this mathilly-based brajabooly is still so strong that he decides he wants in on it. Yes, Tagore composed a series of exquisite lyrics in brajabooly. But rather than publishing them under his own name as Modern Pastiches, he orchestrated a literal literary hoax. Wait, really? Yeah. He claimed he had discovered the lost manuscripts of an ancient medieval poet named Banu Singha. And he published his own poems as the Banu Singha Thakur Padavali. He just faked it entirely. And did people believe him? Oh, the Bengali literary elite completely bought it at first. They praised these ancient texts entirely unaware they were actually written by a teenager in the 1870s. That is hilarious. It really just demonstrates how deeply the aesthetic of Mathili had penetrated the intellectual psyche of Eastern India. And it wasn't just Bengal, the sources show a parallel development in Assam known as Brajavali. Yes. Driven by Srimanta Sankaradeva in the late 15th century, Sankaradeva was a massive cultural and religious figure in Assam. He traveled extensively through Mathila and was deeply inspired by the Mathili-Kirtania drama traditions. To write his famous Aikiyanat plays, he created his own hybrid language, mixing Mithili with Asamese. It is just staggering. It was mainly a sprawling trans-regional superpower. It was the lingua franca of eastern Indian devotionalism. So how does a language that shapes entire neighboring cultures that influences future Nobel laureates end up fighting for its own life? It's a steed fall. It really is. How does it go from a donor civilization to a language struggling for basic recognition in its own homeland by the 20th century? Well that tragic art brings us to the intersection of colonialism, class bias, and the rise of modern institutional hegemony. To understand the decline, we have to look at the 19th century and the arrival of the British colonial administration. Specifically, an Irish civil servant and linguist named George Abraham Gerson. Gerson seems like a very complicated figure in this narrative. On one hand, the sources give him a lot of credit. He essentially throws Methili a lifeline when it was drowning in Hindi assimilation. He did. In 1881, Gerson published a systematic grammar of Methili and later compiled a Mathalie Christamathie, which was a collection of literary texts. He provided the rigorous academic framework necessary to prove to the colonial government that Mathalie was a distinct language with its own morphology and history, not merely a corrupted dialect of Hindi. Which is foundational, right. Without Grierysen, the later fights for constitutional recognition would have had no legal or academic leg to stand on. True. But the parallel history introduces a massive caveat here. Grierysen was a colonial administrator. He didn't wander the villages talking to farmers. His informants, the people who guided his understanding of the language and curated the texts he analyzed, were almost exclusively elite upper-caste Brahmin scholars. So the colonial gaze essentially legitimized one very specific, highly privileged version of Methili while ignoring everyone else. Exactly. The so-called new awakening of Methili in the 19th century was fundamentally skewed. To see this bias in action, we just need to look at two poets from that exact same era. On the elite side, the official history celebrates Chandaha. He was attached to the court of the Maharaja of Darbhanga, right? Yes. Chandaha wrote the myth of Basha Ramayana. It was a monumental work and it proved that Mithili could sustain a grand, classical, epic narrative. The mainstream canon treats him as the ultimate savior of modern Mithili. But the parallel history points to a completely different poet writing at the exact same time. Fetcheryl. Who was Fetcheryl and what was he writing about? Fetcheryl was producing literature from below. Specifically, he wrote the Akali Covet. This was visceral, devastating poetry documenting the horrific agrarian suffering during the famine of 1873 to 1874. Oh, wow. Yeah. While the court poets were writing epics about gods, Fetcheryl was writing about the raw reality of colonial misrule, systemic poverty, and literal starvation. And let me guess, the elite historians didn't find his topics very refined. They completely ignored him. Fitzgerald's famine versus never entered the mainstream canon because they were uncomfortable. They didn't fit the epic or devotional aesthetics preferred by the establishment. His work remained unpublished and uncelebrated until Grierson actually included it in his Christomathy. And even then, it was treated more as an ethnographic curiosity than high literature. It's the museum analogy all over again. You put the pristine court-sponsored Ramayana in the glass display case, and you shove the screaming, starving reality of the farmers down into the basement. And the most frustrating part is that this exclusion didn't end with the Victorians. It carried right over into independent India, orchestrated by the Sahitya Academy. India's National Academy of Letters. They formally recognized Mothili in 1965. For the mainstream Orthodox historians, this was the ultimate triumph. It meant state funding, national awards, and prestige. But the parallel movement refers to the Academy's reign over Mantholy as a festival of shame. They do not mince words. Festival of shame. Why are they so angry at the National Academy? Because they view the Academy's Mathili advisory boards as having been completely captured by elite conservative caste organizations. The parallel historians argue that these boards used state power to suppress subaltern literature and distribute patronage only within their own closed circles. And they don't just allege this, right? They brought the actual receipts. They did. Between 2011 and 2014, two researchers, Vinid Uttpal and Ashish Anjinghar, filed a series of write-to information requests. For our listeners who might not be familiar, an RTI in India is a legal mechanism that forces government bodies to release their internal data. It's a major anti-corruption tool. Very powerful tool. So they demand the data on who is getting the state-funded translation and publication assignments for Mathili. What did they actually find? The RTI data revealed that over 90% of the Sahecha Academy assignments went directly to friends, relatives, and close associates of the 10-member advisory board. 90%. Think about that in modern terms. Imagine if the Academy awards were funded by taxpayer money, and 90% of the Oscars were just handed out to the judges, nephews, and cousins. It's staggering. And meanwhile, how many assignments went to authors representing the parallel subaltern tradition? Zero. It was a perfectly closed loop. It was an institutional mechanism of obscurantism designed to keep Mithili as an exclusive elite domain. And perhaps the most glaring victim of this gatekeeping wasn't even some obscure poet. It was Hari Mohan Shah. Let's talk about him because the way the academy treated him is just mind-blowing. He was arguably the most popular modern Mithili writer of the 20th century, correct? Undoubtedly in 1933 Hari Moran Shah published a brilliant biting satirical novel called Kanyadan It viciously attacked conservative marriage customs the dowry system and the hypocrisy of the Bomenical Orthodoxy Wow, it was a massive bestseller. Everyone read it. He was shaking the foundations of the establishment from the inside. Yes But when the Sahitya Academy began giving out their prestigious annual awards for Missile literature, they steadfastly ignored him In fact, the sources point out an incredible detail. In 1967, the academy actually chose to leave the Mathili Award completely blank, unrewarded, rather than give it to Haramohan Chah. That is just petty. How does a National Literary Institution justify refusing to acknowledge the most widely read author in the language? They justify it under the guise of protecting classical standards. Haramohan Chah was deemed too dangerous, too irreverent. By denying him recognition, the establishment sent a chilling message to all writers. If you critique the social hierarchy, if you make the elite uncomfortable, you will be erased from the official record, regardless of your talent or popularity. Okay, so if you are a subaltern writer or a satirist or anyone outside that 10-member boards inner circle, the front door is locked, the government academies are shutting you out. What do you do? You build your own house. Exactly. entirely new house. And that brings us to the final act of this story, the modern resistance. To build their own house, the parallel movement first had to reclaim the demographic reality of the region. They focused on what they call the throbbing human heart of the mice elite tradition. Meaning what exactly? This means bypassing the written elite manuscripts entirely and centering the vast folk literature preserved orally by Dalits and lower castes. Because Because realistically they are the demographic majority. Exactly. And the scale of this oral literature is just breathtaking. We were talking about massive epics. The mainstream ignores them because they aren't written down in classical verse, but these epics are the literal lifeblood of the culture. The sources mention a few of these. There's Salhasa, which is the story of a guardian spirit revered by the Dusada community. There's Dina Badri, preserved by the Musahar community, which is this powerful tale of brothers resisting bonded labor. So let's dive in to just one of them to understand the scale. Talk to me about Lorica. Lorica is a sprawling, heroic epic that celebrates Yadava's strength and chivalry. It is an incredibly complex narrative involving love, war, and social honor. But what is truly staggering is the performance itself. This isn't a poem you read in a book over an hour. The Loric Gita is a living performance that can take up to 36 hours to sing. 36 hours? That's not a poem. That's an entire television season delivered from memory. It's a communal event. It is a living, breathing language, existing completely outside of the control of state academies. The singers are the true custodians of the language. And the parallel movement isn't just looking backward at ancient epics, either. They are championing contemporary writers, who are tackling modern harsh realities. Writers who the mainstream actively tried to ignore. Yes, writers like Bishan Thakur, he pioneered a parallel Dullet Theater. mainstream Mithili theater often relied on light slapstick or historical romances. Which is pretty standard. Yeah. But Bishan Laker's work is described by the movement as a necessary slap on the face of that elite theater, bringing the stark violence of cast realities straight to the stage. And then there is Jagdish Prasad Mandal. Mandal is a pivotal figure. He writes from deeply within the sub-ulchern experience. His novel, Pangu, which eventually forced the Academy to reluctantly recognize him much later in 2021, it represents a seismic shift. Because of what he writes about. Exactly. He doesn't write romanticized pastoral stories about village life. He writes about the crippled agricultural system, the exploitation of farmers, and the raw, unvarnished struggles of modern rural economics. And we absolutely cannot forget the women writers. If you look at the official mainstream anthologies curated by the elites, women are virtually invisible. The parallel history has done immense work to unearth and highlight a deeply suppressed canon of female voices. They highlight contemporary playwrights like Viparani, critical scholars like Runghadi Devi, and they promote the first major anthology of Mathilli women poets titled Ejoriak on Gavimor. But unearthing these voices is only half the battle, right? How do you distribute them? If the Sahithi Akademi controls the funding in the printing presses, how do you get Jagdish Prasad Mandala or the Lorica Epic into the the hands of the actual people. Right. Well, in the 21st century, the Vedea movement found the ultimate loophole, the internet. The digital rebellion of the Vedea movement is arguably their most consequential achievement. They launched their efforts initially around 2000. And by 2004, Vedea became a massive e-journal. They realized that digital spaces have no gatekeepers. Yeah. You don't need a corrupt advisory board to approve your publication if you own the server yourself. The scale of what they accomplished digitally is almost hard to comprehend. According to the sources, they didn't just publish new articles, they went to war for the archive. They digitized thousands of out-of-print Mathili books. And they went further back than books. They located and transcribed 11,000 ancient palm leaf manuscripts. Wait, 11,000? Yes, 11,000. Manuscripts containing the old suppressed Terhuda script. They brought the twilight language and the old genealogies right into the digital light. And they didn't stop at just scanning things. They engaged in like high level digital diplomacy. They lobbied the Unicode Consortium, which is the international body that decides which text characters appear on our computers and smartphones. And they got the T'Ruida script officially standardized in 2014. That is a profound act of reclaiming linguistic sovereignty. By getting T'Ruida into Unicode, they ensure that the ancient script could not be permanently erased by the dominance of Devan Agari. Anyone anywhere in the world can now type in the original script of mythola. They generated a million pages over a hundred million words of Mathili corpus online They initiated massive translation projects into English to bypass the Hindi language gatekeepers entirely and take their literature straight to a global Audience it's an incredible story. It's a staggering triumph of grassroots organization But as we wrap up this massive story I want to ask the ultimate so what question the geopolitical implications exactly we spent this entire time talking about 12th century philosophers poetic identity theft and digitized palm leaves why does any of this literary history matter to the actual physical political reality of the region today because in south asia language and political power are inextricably linked historically there was a very strong political movement demanding a separate autonomous mytholus state within India based entirely on their distinct linguistic identity. But that statehood movement ultimately failed. Why? According to the sociological thesis of T.K. Uman, which the parallel movement cites heavily, it failed because of caste dynamics. The majority of the population, the subaltern castes, the deletes, the yadavuz, they looked at the people leading the statehood demand and who did they see. Let me guess. They saw the exact same elite, brahminical orthodoxy that controlled the Pange records and the Sahita academy. Ah, so the working class majority essentially looked at the proposed new state and said why on earth would we fight for a new political border when the people who will run that state are the exact same people who currently use the language to oppress us. Precisely. They feared a separate state would merely formalize and enforce a brahminical monopoly over political and economic resources. And this is the profound strategic genius of the Vidae movement. Because they realize that you can't build a state on an exclusive history. Yes. By constructing a parallel inclusive history, one that honors the Dalit epics like Loreca, the women writers, the rebel mystic monks, and the trans-border diaspora, the Vidae movement is actively attempting to build a broad democratic cultural base. The underlying theory is that true linguistic and political autonomy can only be achieved when the entire demographic feels ownership over the cultural identity. Now we need to be very clear for our listeners here. We are analyzing the mechanics of a historical movement. We are not endorsing the political demand for a separate myth of the state, nor are we taking sides in the immensely complex, real world caste politics of the region today. Absolutely. We're packing the sociological thesis presented in our source text about why cultural movements either succeed in rallying a population or fail because they are too exclusionary. It is a phenomenal case study. It proves that arguing over medieval poetry and ancient scripts isn't just academic naval gazing. It is the very real work of socio-political state building. And that brings us to the end of our journey today. We have traveled through a thousand years of cultural warfare. We started with the coded twilight language of rebellious monks. We opened the black book of genealogies to see how historical figures were stripped of their true identities. We really covered a lot. We watched a Nobel laureate fake a medieval language. And we saw a modern digital rebellion bypass a corrupt academy to scan 11,000 palm leaves onto the internet. The parallel history of mythology literature is not just a catalog of books. It is a testament to survival. It is an incredible triumph. But you know, as I look at how the Vadea movement secured this history, I am left with a very unsettling thought about the future. Oh, what's that? Think about the medium of survival. We've seen how the parallel movement brilliantly used the internet, servers, websites, Unicode, to outmaneuver the institutional gatekeepers. They realized they couldn't get their books into the state-funded brick and mortar libraries, so they built a digital library. Yeah. But this introduces a terrifying new vulnerability. How so? I mean, the internet is forever, right? Is it? If a culture's true, unedited heritage now exists primarily on independent, decentralized digital servers. What happens if the funding for those servers dries up and they go dark? Oh, wow. What happens in 50 years when the specific digital formats they use to encode those 11,000 palm leaves become obsolete and unreadable by new technology? Yeah, this, yeah. The physical palm leaves survived for centuries in the physical world. by moving the parallel history to the cloud to escape the gatekeepers. Have they permanently secured their heritage or have they simply transferred it to a medium that is infinitely more fragile? That is a haunting question. You escape the locked basement of the museum but you move into a digital cloud that could evaporate with a single server crash. Something for all of us to really mull over as our own lives become increasingly digital. Thank you all so much for joining us on this deep dive. The next time you walk into a grand museum or read an official historical account. Remember to ask yourself whose voices were erased to make this story look so clean. Keep questioning the narrative and we'll see you next time.

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