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Maithili’s_Stolen_History_and_Digital_Rebellion.m4a

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Part 1 · VIDEHA MITHILA MAITHILI DISCUSSION CRITICISM SERIES PART 1

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1. 0:00–0:02I mean, I want to start today with a bit of thought experiment.
2. 0:02–0:04Oh, okay. Let's hear it.
3. 0:04–0:08Right. So imagine for a second that you make this massive discovery about your own history.
4. 0:09–0:13Like you find out that the entire timeline of literature you were taught in school,
5. 0:13–0:19the canonical texts, the authors you had to write essays about, all those foundational myths
6. 0:19–0:24of your culture was actually, you know, a highly curated, heavily filtered list.
7. 0:24–0:24Wow.
8. 0:24–0:29Yeah. And I don't just mean it was a little biased. I mean, imagine finding out that this
9. 0:29–0:35This list was specifically designed, like deliberately engineered over centuries to exclude 90% of
10. 0:35–0:36the population.
11. 0:36–0:38That is, that's a lot to take in.
12. 0:38–0:39Right.
13. 0:39–0:45And that the real history, like the raw unfiltered voice of the people is actually hiding right
14. 0:45–0:46now.
15. 0:46–0:50Like it locked away in secret genealogical black books or it's buried in texts scattered
16. 0:50–0:51across international borders.
17. 0:51–0:52Oh wow.
18. 0:52–0:56And it's currently being kept alive in, you know, underground digital archives.
19. 0:56–1:00I mean, it sounds like the plot of a dystopian literary thriller.
20. 1:00–1:01It really does.
21. 1:01–1:05Something out of a cyberpunk novel where hackers are trying to save the past.
22. 1:05–1:10But that is exactly what is happening in the real world right now with Mathili literature.
23. 1:10–1:16It is a genuinely staggering situation when you actually pull back the curtain.
24. 1:16–1:20We are looking at a literary tradition that spans well over millennium carrying the
25. 1:20–1:22voices of millions of people.
26. 1:22–1:26And yet the narrative of that tradition, like who gets to claim it, who gets to
27. 1:26–1:33define it is currently at the center of a massive ongoing struggle. It's a struggle for truth and
28. 1:33–1:37representation. It is literally a battle over memory itself.
29. 1:37–1:41Which brings us to the monumental stack of source material sitting in front of us today for this
30. 1:41–1:46deep dive. We are unpacking a massive text. It's called A Parallel History of Mehwah and
31. 1:46–1:52Mathilia Literature. Specifically, we're looking at Tomaji, which spans volumes one through 100.
32. 1:52–1:57It's huge. Yeah, it was edited by Gegendra Thakur. And to put it simply, this text acts as the
33. 1:57–2:02manifesto of what is known as the Videa parallel literary movement. It's essentially the counter
34. 2:02–2:06narrative to everything the establishment has claimed for the last century. Exactly. And,
35. 2:06–2:10you know, to really grasp the gravity of this counter narrative, we first need to physically
36. 2:10–2:13and culturally orient ourselves for a second. Sure, way to groundwork. So,
37. 2:13–2:18Mathili is an ancient Indo-Aryan language. If you look at a map, it's spoken in the
38. 2:18–2:24the Methila region. This is this fascinating geographic and cultural area bounded by the
39. 2:24–2:30Himalayas to the north and the Ganges River to the south. Today it spans parts of modern-day India,
40. 2:30–2:36specifically the state of Bihar and the Terai region of Nepal. And this is a reason that have
41. 2:36–2:42been synonymous with intense intellectual pursuit since the Vedic age. We're talking way back.
42. 2:42–2:46Way back. We're talking about the land where ancient philosophers sat down to meditate on
43. 2:46–2:51on the very foundations of logic, law, human existence.
44. 2:51–2:54It is not a fringe dialect.
45. 2:54–2:56It is a foundational pillar
46. 2:56–2:58of South Asian intellectual history.
47. 2:58–2:59So we are dealing with a language
48. 2:59–3:02that has incredibly deep ancient roots.
49. 3:02–3:05And the mission of our conversation today
50. 3:05–3:07is to unpack this parallel history
51. 3:07–3:10that Gijendra Thakur and the Videra Movement are presenting.
52. 3:10–3:13We wanna understand how it's actively
53. 3:13–3:15challenging the official history.
54. 3:15–3:20And when we say official, we mean the narrative that has been maintained, funded, promoted
55. 3:20–3:25by mainstream institutions like the Sahecha Academy, which is India's National Academy
56. 3:25–3:26of Letters.
57. 3:26–3:27Right, the big gatekeepers.
58. 3:27–3:28Exactly.
59. 3:28–3:34We're going to explore hidden identities, suppressed feminist voices, subaltern heroes,
60. 3:34–3:39the literal theft of a physical alphabet, and a modern digital rebellion.
61. 3:39–3:42But before we jump into all of that, we should probably set some ground rules.
62. 3:42–3:44Yeah, that's really important.
63. 3:44–3:48Before we dive into the deep end, we need to acknowledge that the source text we are looking
64. 3:48–3:52at today makes some incredibly heavy, intense claims.
65. 3:52–3:53They really do.
66. 3:53–4:00They discuss historical caste politics, systemic institutional bias, deliberate social engineering,
67. 4:00–4:02active suppression of marginalized voices.
68. 4:02–4:05So for anyone listening, it's important to note that our job today isn't to pick
69. 4:05–4:11a side or endorse a specific political stance or referee these historical controversies.
70. 4:11–4:12Right.
71. 4:12–4:13We're not the judges here.
72. 4:13–4:14Exactly.
73. 4:14–4:19is simply to open up this massive archive and objectively explore the claims the parallel
74. 4:19–4:25movement is making. We want to show you exactly how the Vedeja movement constructs its argument,
75. 4:25–4:28without taking sides on the underlying social debates.
76. 4:28–4:33I love that. We are here to read the map, not to draw the borders. So to everyone listening,
77. 4:33–4:39put on your detective hat. We are unraveling a literary mystery and like any good mystery,
78. 4:39–4:42you have to start at the scene of the crime,
79. 4:42–4:43or, well, in this case,
80. 4:43–4:45the very foundation of the language itself.
81. 4:45–4:46Right.
82. 4:46–4:47Because before we can understand
83. 4:47–4:49who was erased from the history books,
84. 4:49–4:51we have to understand how Mythile started
85. 4:51–4:55and the actual physical script it was originally written in.
86. 4:55–4:56To find that starting line,
87. 4:56–4:58we have to go back to the linguistic roots of Mythile,
88. 4:58–5:01which are deeply embedded in Mygadie Procret.
89. 5:01–5:02Stop right there, because I know
90. 5:02–5:03if I hear Mygadie Procret,
91. 5:03–5:06my eyes might glaze over if I don't know linguistics.
92. 5:06–5:08What exactly is a Procret?
93. 5:08–5:09That's a great question.
94. 5:09–5:16So, think of Sanskrit as the highly formalized, perfected elite language of ancient India.
95. 5:16–5:19It was the language of the gods, the rituals.
96. 5:19–5:21Sanskrit literally means perfected or polished.
97. 5:21–5:22Okay, so high status.
98. 5:22–5:23Right.
99. 5:23–5:28The Prakrits, on the other hand, were the natural, unpolished, everyday vernaculars spoken
100. 5:28–5:30by the common people.
101. 5:30–5:34Magadhi Prakrit was the specific vernacular spoken in the eastern part of the Indian
102. 5:34–5:35subcontinent.
103. 5:35–5:38It was actually the court language of the ancient Marian Empire.
104. 5:38–5:39Wow.
105. 5:39–5:44And between the 8th and 11th centuries, this massive Magadi prakret began to fracture and
106. 5:44–5:47evolve into distinct regional languages.
107. 5:47–5:52As a result, Monthalie stands as a senior foundational member of the Eastern Indo-Aryan language
108. 5:52–5:53family.
109. 5:53–5:58It developed right alongside an inconstant conversation with Bengali, Asimese, and Odia.
110. 5:58–5:59Okay, that makes perfect sense.
111. 5:59–6:02It's like Latin fracturing into Italian, Spanish, and French.
112. 6:02–6:04We all share this common DNA.
113. 6:04–6:05Exactly.
114. 6:05–6:08And the source material points to a specific set of texts that represent this early
115. 6:08–6:13fractured stage, something called the chariapadas. I was reading about these and they seem wild.
116. 6:13–6:18What are they? Oh, the chariapadas are an incredible collection of mystical songs composed roughly
117. 6:18–6:24between the eighth and twelfth centuries. They were written by Vajrayana Siddhas. Siddhas.
118. 6:24–6:29Yeah, these were essentially Buddhist monks wandering tantric mystics with names like
119. 6:29–6:35Kanapada, Luipada, and Saraha. Now, here is where the split in the historical narrative
120. 6:35–6:42really begins. Okay, lay it on me. The official institutional history often overlooks these texts
121. 6:42–6:48or they treat them merely as a shared pre-Methy-ly linguistic curiosity, like a sort of proto-language
122. 6:48–6:52fossil that eventually branched off. Right, the official stance is sort of like, oh, those are
123. 6:52–6:56just interesting ancient grammar examples. Let's move on to the real literature. Yeah.
124. 6:56–7:02But the parallel history seems to treat the Chariapadas as the holy grail. Why? Because
125. 7:02–7:07Because the parallel movement reclaims these 50-odd chariapadas as the very first instance
126. 7:07–7:12of subaltern democratic resistance in the language, and to understand why, you have to
127. 7:12–7:14look at how they were written.
128. 7:14–7:18These mystical songs were composed in something called San Diabascha, which translates to
129. 7:18–7:20twilight language.
130. 7:20–7:21Twilight language?
131. 7:21–7:25I mean, that sounds incredibly poetic, but what does it actually mean in practice?
132. 7:25–7:29It is a proto-vernacular that relies entirely on dual meanings.
133. 7:29–7:34an intentional metaphorical language where the surface meaning might describe an ordinary
134. 7:34–7:40everyday activity like a boatman rowing a boat or a woman weaving a basket.
135. 7:40–7:45But the hidden, the twilight meaning is a complex instruction on tantric meditation
136. 7:45–7:46and spiritual liberation.
137. 7:46–7:47Oh, I see.
138. 7:47–7:48It's almost like a code.
139. 7:48–7:53It reminds me of how certain folk songs or spirituals in American history had a surface
140. 7:53–7:57meaning about escaping to the north, but were disguised as religious hymns so the
141. 7:57–7:59authorities wouldn't catch on.
142. 7:59–8:04That is a phenomenal analogy and it gets right to the heart of the social context here.
143. 8:04–8:08These wandering Buddhist monks were writing entirely outside the sedentary, cast-bound
144. 8:08–8:10Sanskrit order of their time.
145. 8:10–8:11Because the elites controlled everything else.
146. 8:11–8:12Exactly.
147. 8:12–8:16The orthodox elite controlled the temples, the rituals, the Sanskrit texts.
148. 8:16–8:22But these monks were mobile, they were non-sectarian, and their twilight language explicitly criticized
149. 8:22–8:26caste distinctions and the pomposity of elite rituals.
150. 8:26–8:30They were essentially saying, you don't need a Brahmin priest and a Sanskrit manual to reach
151. 8:30–8:31enlightenment.
152. 8:31–8:34You can find it in the everyday work of the common person.
153. 8:34–8:39So while the official history brushes these off as just ancient grammar, the parallel history
154. 8:39–8:42says, no, look at the mechanics of what they're doing.
155. 8:42–8:45This is the original DNA of Mithili.
156. 8:45–8:50It was born as a language of the common people actively pushing back against the elites.
157. 8:50–8:51Precisely.
158. 8:51–8:55The scholars in the parallel tradition argued that the linguistic features of these occult
159. 8:55–9:01songs reflect the lived experience of the common folk. I call this D'Isila Viana or the language of
160. 9:01–9:06the people. Deloiana, got it. For the parallel movement, Maithili didn't start in a pristine
161. 9:06–9:12king's court. It started in the dirt on the roads with mystics using the vernacular as a vehicle
162. 9:12–9:18for spiritual and social liberation. That reframes everything. It gives the language this inherent
163. 9:18–9:22rebellious momentum right out of the gate. But what's fascinating is that it wasn't just the
164. 9:22–9:27the words themselves that were contested. It was the actual physical letters, the alphabet
165. 9:27–9:28itself.
166. 9:28–9:29Yes, the script.
167. 9:29–9:33Let's talk about the theft of the script. Because if I go online right now and look up
168. 9:33–9:39modern Mathili, it's mostly written in Devanagari, which is the exact same script as for Hindi
169. 9:39–9:43and Sanskrit. But the sources say that's a modern imposition.
170. 9:43–9:48That is correct. Historically, for over a thousand years, Mathili was written in
171. 9:48–9:52its own distinct script called Tirhuta. It's also known as the Lakshara.
172. 9:52–9:53Ruta.
173. 9:53–9:56Right. And this script evolved directly from the
174. 9:56–10:01ancient Brahmi script by the 7th century. Visually, it is stunning. It is an
175. 10:01–10:05incredibly ornamental script. If you look at it, it shares
176. 10:05–10:09significant structural and aesthetic similarities with the Bengali script.
177. 10:09–10:13And it was used extensively throughout Northeastern India, stretching all the
178. 10:13–10:14way into Tibet and Nepal.
179. 10:14–10:18And the sources mentioned that this wasn't just one monolithic alphabet system.
180. 10:18–10:21There were actually different scripts for different parts of daily life,
181. 10:21–10:23which totally blew my mind. How did that work?
182. 10:23–10:26It was a highly compartmentalized functional system.
183. 10:26–10:29Tjuhuta was the high register script.
184. 10:29–10:32It was reserved for academic, cultural, and religious affairs,
185. 10:32–10:36including the meticulous genealogical records we'll discuss later.
186. 10:36–10:40But you wouldn't use Tjuhuta to write a grocery list or a trade receipt.
187. 10:40–10:42Like it was too fancy for that.
188. 10:42–10:50Exactly. For the day-to-day business of the masses administration, trade bookkeeping people
189. 10:50–10:52used a completely different script called K-Thi.
190. 10:52–10:53K-Thi, okay.
191. 10:53–10:58And if you were operating in the royal courts of Nepal, you would use the Nwari script.
192. 10:58–11:04That is so deeply specialized. So how on earth did a culture with three distinct functioning
193. 11:04–11:10specialized scripts end up just adopting Devanagari? Like how did that transition happen?
194. 11:10–11:17The shift to Devanagari happened primarily in the 20th century, and it was driven by a combination of technological convenience and political expansionism.
195. 11:17–11:18Huh, bureaucracy.
196. 11:18–11:19Always.
197. 11:19–11:22Institutional historians often celebrate this switch, actually.
198. 11:22–11:25They argue it was a practical move toward Pan-Indian unity.
199. 11:25–11:30In the early days of printing, the printing presses primarily had Devanagari-type faces,
200. 11:30–11:33because Hindi was the dominant language being pushed for national administration.
201. 11:33–11:34So it was just easier.
202. 11:34–11:40It was much cheaper and easier to just print mathily in Devanagari rather than cast custom
203. 11:40–11:42Chirhuda typefaces.
204. 11:42–11:48Furthermore, there was a strong desire for administrative convenience within the Hindi-speaking belt.
205. 11:48–11:52If everything was in Devanagari, the regional administrators could read it easily.
206. 11:52–11:54Okay, I can see the bureaucratic logic there.
207. 11:54–11:59It's cheaper, it's easier to mass produce, but the parallel movement views this as a
208. 11:59–12:01devastating cultural loss, don't they?
209. 12:01–12:03It's not just a font change to that.
210. 12:03–12:04Oh, absolutely not.
211. 12:04–12:08To the Vidaea movement, it is a direct assault on their cultural sovereignty.
212. 12:08–12:13The parallel history emphasizes that the decline of the T'huta script actively facilitated what
213. 12:13–12:16they call the dialectization of Mthli.
214. 12:16–12:20Dialectization, meaning turning a distinct language into just a subcategory of something
215. 12:20–12:21else.
216. 12:21–12:22Exactly.
217. 12:22–12:26By forcing Mthili into the Davenigari script, it stripped away the unique visual identity
218. 12:26–12:31that tied Mthila to its Eastern sister languages like Bengali and Asimis.
219. 12:31–12:33Because now it just looks like Hindi.
220. 12:33–12:37Right. Once it looked exactly like Hindi on the page, it made it incredibly easy for
221. 12:37–12:44Hindi-centric institutions and politicians to dismiss Mithili as merely a rural dialect
222. 12:44–12:48of Hindi rather than acknowledging it as an independent thousand-year-old language
223. 12:48–12:50with its own rich history.
224. 12:50–12:55Let me try an analogy here. It's like taking a beautifully complex piece of jazz music
225. 12:55–13:00with all its syncopation and unique rhythms and forcing musicians to only write it down
226. 13:00–13:02using basic classical European notation.
227. 13:02–13:04That's a great way to look at it.
228. 13:04–13:06Right, because, yes, you can technically capture the notes,
229. 13:06–13:09but you lose the original soul, the swing,
230. 13:09–13:11and the cultural context of the music.
231. 13:11–13:12And once it's written in classical notation,
232. 13:12–13:14classical institutions can just claim
233. 13:14–13:17it's a messy version of their own music.
234. 13:17–13:20It forces you to ask, does changing the physical alphabet
235. 13:20–13:22truly change the soul of a culture?
236. 13:22–13:24According to the parallel history,
237. 13:24–13:26the answer is a resounding yes.
238. 13:26–13:29When you lose the script, you lose the physical connection
239. 13:29–13:31to your ancestor's manuscripts.
240. 13:31–13:35The visual aesthetics of T'Hurta contain the history of the region's interactions with
241. 13:35–13:38Tibet, Nepal, and Bengal.
242. 13:38–13:42Devanagari erased those visual borders and artificially pulled Mathili into the Hindi
243. 13:42–13:44Heartland sphere of influence.
244. 13:44–13:49So we have a language that started as a rebellious chant of the common people, getting visually
245. 13:49–13:53sanitized and homogenized by modern printing presses and bureaucrats.
246. 13:53–13:54Basically, yes.
247. 13:54–13:58But here is where the plot thickens, because if the very alphabet of the language was
248. 13:58–14:04suppressed, what happened to its greatest historical figures? If you control the text, you control
249. 14:04–14:05the heroes.
250. 14:05–14:06True.
251. 14:06–14:11This brings us to a part of the source material that genuinely made me reread the page twice.
252. 14:11–14:13We need to talk about the myth of the single Vigipati.
253. 14:13–14:18Ah, yes. This is perhaps the most explosive and contentious claim in the entire parallel
254. 14:18–14:19history archive.
255. 14:19–14:20Let's get into it.
256. 14:20–14:25To understand the magnitude of this scholarly intervention, we must first understand the
257. 14:25–14:30mainstream icon that is being challenged. In the official institutional history of
258. 14:30–14:35Mothili literature, the Diopati decor is the undisputed giant. He lived roughly
259. 14:35–14:40between 1350 and 1450. Right, if you take a class on this, he is the guy, he's like
260. 14:40–14:43the Shakespeare of Mothili. Without a doubt, the official history reveres him as a
261. 14:43–14:48devout, upper-caste, Mothil Brahmin court poet who flourished under the
262. 14:48–14:53patronage of the Oranwar dynasty. He is famously celebrated as the Abhinava
263. 14:53–14:57Jayadeva, the new Jayadeva. And why is he called that? This title was given to him because he wrote
264. 14:57–15:03the Padavali, which is this incredibly famous collection of sensuous, deeply devotional love songs
265. 15:03–15:08about the divine romance of Radha and Krishna. So the mainstream picture is this highly elite,
266. 15:09–15:14stylized scholar hanging out in a wealthy royal court, perfectly synthesizing high
267. 15:14–15:20Sanskrit aesthetics with a vernacular melody. He is the ultimate establishment success story.
268. 15:20–15:24That is the official narrative that has been taught for decades, but the Vadeha movement
269. 15:24–15:27drops a massive scholarly bomb on this narrative.
270. 15:27–15:27I'm ready.
271. 15:27–15:33The parallel history argues, through extensive textual analysis, that mainstream historians
272. 15:33–15:39have conflated two entirely different people into one mythic composite figure.
273. 15:39–15:45I am still trying to wrap my head around this. They took two distinct historical human beings
274. 15:45–15:48and just merged them into one mega-poet.
275. 15:48–15:49Yes.
276. 15:49–15:53How does the parallel history break this down? Who is person number one?
277. 15:53–15:57According to the parallel research, person number one was indeed an elite scholar named
278. 15:57–16:03Vidyapati Thakura. This man was deeply embedded in the courtly life and wrote extensively in Sanskrit
279. 16:03–16:08and Avahata. Wait, what is Avahata? Avahata is a transitional literary language. It's the bridge
280. 16:08–16:13between the late practice we discussed earlier and the early modern vernaculars. It was still
281. 16:13–16:19quite formal and elite. Okay. This Sanskrit and Abhahara scholar wrote complex didactic texts
282. 16:19–16:25like the Purusha Pariksha, which is a heavy treatise on ethics, morality, and political realism.
283. 16:25–16:29He was a highly educated Brahmin writing for other highly educated elites. Okay, so that's the
284. 16:29–16:34Latin scholar in the castle. So who's person number two? The parallel history asserts that
285. 16:34–16:40this elite Sanskrit scholar is distinctly different from the much earlier genuine vernacular poet
286. 16:40–16:44who actually composed the famous Padavali love songs in Mahili.
287. 16:44–16:48The folk singer. Yes, the folk singer. The parallel tradition argues that the
288. 16:48–16:51author of the Padavali was a deeply populist figure.
289. 16:51–16:55This poet explicitly chose to write in D'Isila Viana the raw language of the
290. 16:55–17:00people specifically to bridge the gap between the elite and the masses.
291. 17:00–17:03Wow. The poetry is full of local idioms,
292. 17:03–17:07earthy metaphors, and a deeply transsectarian humanist spirit.
293. 17:07–17:12And crucially, the parallel history states that the actual cast of this vernacular Padavali
294. 17:12–17:17poet remains historically uncertain. He was almost certainly not the elite orthodox brahmin
295. 17:17–17:21that later Hagiographers have claimed him to be. Wait, I need to fully digest this.
296. 17:21–17:26You're telling me it's like if future historians looked back at our era and they found the writings
297. 17:26–17:30of a highly educated conservative political philosopher and the songs of an underground,
298. 17:30–17:35anti-establishment folk singer. Right. And because they share a similar first name,
299. 17:35–17:40or because the elite wanted to claim the folk songs. They just decided, yep, these are the same guy.
300. 17:40–17:44He was a conservative philosopher who just really liked writing folk songs on the weekend.
301. 17:44–17:46That's exactly the claim.
302. 17:46–17:52They retroactively make the folk songs seem respectable by attributing them to the elite scholar.
303. 17:52–17:57That is an excellent way to frame it. The parallel movement claims that modern institutions
304. 17:57–18:02specifically groups like the Chetna Samedi and the Moffilla sans-critique parochad have
305. 18:02–18:06deliberately invested the poet with castiest attire
306. 18:06–18:08to reinforce Brahminical dominance
307. 18:08–18:09over the cultural narrative.
308. 18:09–18:12Castiest attire, that's a powerful phrase.
309. 18:12–18:13It is.
310. 18:13–18:16By merging the subversive populist folk poet
311. 18:16–18:19with the conservative moralizing Sanskrit scholar,
312. 18:19–18:22the establishment essentially neutralized the threat
313. 18:22–18:23of the vernacular poetry.
314. 18:23–18:25They murdered the transsectarian,
315. 18:25–18:27humanist spirit of his songs,
316. 18:27–18:30turning a populist hero into a safe, priestly icon
317. 18:30–18:32who upholds the social hierarchy.
318. 18:32–18:34It's brilliant in a terrifying way.
319. 18:34–18:36It allows the elite to say, look,
320. 18:36–18:38even the greatest vernacular poetry
321. 18:38–18:40was produced by one of our Brahman scholars.
322. 18:40–18:43It is genuinely wild to think about
323. 18:43–18:47how easily history can be retroactively branded
324. 18:47–18:50by whoever controls the academies in the printing presses.
325. 18:50–18:54You can literally steal a culture's greatest voice
326. 18:54–18:56by just changing his biography.
327. 18:56–18:57Exactly.
328. 18:57–18:58And I know the Vidae movement
329. 18:58–19:00doesn't just argue this in academic papers.
330. 19:00–19:03They actually have a specific visual symbol for this rebellion.
331. 19:03–19:05I saw it in the sources, it's fascinating.
332. 19:05–19:08Yes, to visually contest this appropriation,
333. 19:08–19:10the movement promotes a specific sketch
334. 19:10–19:13created by the artist Panaklao Mandal,
335. 19:13–19:16who is actually a Videha Samman award recipient.
336. 19:16–19:17Okay.
337. 19:17–19:18This sketch depicts what they call
338. 19:18–19:20the subaltern Vidyapati.
339. 19:20–19:22It shows a populist, commoner figal.
340. 19:22–19:26He doesn't have the heavy, stylized elite ornamentation
341. 19:26–19:28you usually see in the official portraits
342. 19:28–19:29commissioned by the academies.
343. 19:29–19:30was a completely different vibe.
344. 19:30–19:31Completely.
345. 19:31–19:34It is a visual rejection of the sectarian labels placed
346. 19:34–19:35upon him.
347. 19:35–19:38It's a way of visually saying this poet belongs to the people,
348. 19:38–19:39not to the court.
349. 19:39–19:42So we've got a stolen physical script
350. 19:42–19:44and we've got a stolen historical poet.
351. 19:44–19:48And all of this begs a massive structural question.
352. 19:48–19:51How does an elite group maintain this level
353. 19:51–19:54of granular historical control over centuries?
354. 19:54–19:56I mean, it's one thing to spin a story,
355. 19:56–20:01But to enforce who gets remembered, who gets erased, and who belongs to what cast over hundreds of years,
356. 20:01–20:04requires insane organization.
357. 20:04–20:05It requires a massive database.
358. 20:05–20:06Right.
359. 20:06–20:11And that brings us to the next major revelation in the source material, the Pangee Records,
360. 20:11–20:14and what the movement calls the honor killing of Gangesh Upadya.
361. 20:14–20:19If you want to control the social hierarchy of a society over centuries, you have to control the data.
362. 20:19–20:21You have to control the records.
363. 20:21–20:28In the 14th century, a highly sophisticated, incredibly complex system of genealogical record keeping was established in Mithla.
364. 20:28–20:31This system is known as the Ponjipur Band.
365. 20:31–20:33What exactly did these records track?
366. 20:33–20:35They tracked bloodlines.
367. 20:35–20:42These records were meticulously maintained by specific genealogists from the Mathille-Brahman and Kayasta communities.
368. 20:42–20:47The primary purpose of the Ponjipur Band system was to track lineages to prevent forbidden marriages,
369. 20:47–20:53But practically it functioned as an absolute mechanism to maintain caste purity and enforce social stratification.
370. 20:53–20:54Wow.
371. 20:54–21:01It recorded who married whom, who was born to whom, and it created a permanent written hierarchy of social status.
372. 21:01–21:05I would imagine that the mainstream historians absolutely love the Pongee system.
373. 21:05–21:07It sounds like an archivist's dream.
374. 21:07–21:08Oh they do!
375. 21:08–21:16Institutional historians such as the famous M.M. Parmeswar Ha celebrate the Pongee system as a monumental social achievement.
376. 21:16–21:19They view it as a marvel of ancient data management,
377. 21:19–21:21a brilliant bureaucratic invention that preserved
378. 21:21–21:24the cultural distinction and intellectual purity of mythola
379. 21:24–21:26through centuries of political upheaval.
380. 21:26–21:29But true to form, the parallel history
381. 21:29–21:31looks at these exact same genealogical records
382. 21:31–21:34and sees something very different, something much darker.
383. 21:34–21:36The parallel history denounces the Ponzi system
384. 21:36–21:39not as a marvel of preservation,
385. 21:39–21:42but as a weapon of brumenical patriarchy
386. 21:42–21:43and social exclusion.
387. 21:43–21:49Their research into these genealogical files suggests that the system was not objective.
388. 21:49–21:52It was heavily manipulated to serve the powerful.
389. 21:52–21:53Manipulated how?
390. 21:53–21:54Can you give me an example?
391. 21:54–21:55Certainly.
392. 21:55–22:00The parallel scholars argue that certain elite subcasts, which hold massive social power
393. 22:00–22:06today like the Stratrias, did not even exist in the original medieval records.
394. 22:06–22:10The parallel research indicates that these hyper-elite classifications were artificial
395. 22:10–22:14creations retroactively written into the records around the year 1800.
396. 22:14–22:20Wait, they just invented a higher caste level in 1800 and wrote it into the ancient books? Why?
397. 22:20–22:25Because the 1800s coincided with the British permanent settlement era. It was a time when
398. 22:25–22:28land titles and revenue collection rights were being permanently assigned by the colonial
399. 22:28–22:34government. Oh, follow the money. Exactly. By retroactively creating these elite lineages,
400. 22:34–22:39powerful families could consolidate land, prestige, and political power under the
401. 22:39–22:42the guise of ancient divine bloodlines.
402. 22:42–22:45It's social engineering disguised as ancient history.
403. 22:45–22:46That is staggering.
404. 22:46–22:48It's literally forging the database
405. 22:48–22:51to get a better seat at the colonial table.
406. 22:51–22:52And the Videha movement didn't just
407. 22:52–22:54write an essay complaining about this.
408. 22:54–22:56They actually leaped the documents.
409. 22:56–22:57Yes.
410. 22:57–23:00This is where the digital age meets medieval history.
411. 23:00–23:03In 2009, Gijendra Thakur and the Videha movement
412. 23:03–23:06digitally released what they call the Dushan Pungi.
413. 23:06–23:08Which translates to the Black Book, right?
414. 23:08–23:12exactly the black book. These are the suppressed, hidden genealogical records.
415. 23:13–23:18They digitized and published the files that exposed the messy, complicated secrets that
416. 23:18–23:23elite historians had actively tried to hide to maintain the illusion of their perfect social
417. 23:23–23:28hierarchies. And there is one specific story from this black book that absolutely stopped me in
418. 23:28–23:32my tracks when I was reading the sources. It's the case of Gangesh Upataya set the stage for
419. 23:32–23:39us. Who is this guy? Ganesh Upataya is a towering intellectual figure from the 12th century.
420. 23:39–23:43If you study Indian philosophy, you know his name. He is globally recognized as the founder
421. 23:43–23:49of the Navya Nyaya School of Hindu Philosophy. Just briefly, what is Navya Nyaya?
422. 23:49–23:55It translates to new logic. It is a highly complex, rigorous system of logic and epistemology.
423. 23:55–24:00It deals with how we acquire valid knowledge through perception, inference, comparison,
424. 24:00–24:04testimony. It is incredibly dense mathematical philosophy.
425. 24:04–24:05Okay, so he's a heavyweight.
426. 24:06–24:09Oh, absolutely. His masterwork, the top mission to money is
427. 24:09–24:12studied by scholars from Oxford to Tokyo. In the official
428. 24:12–24:16institutional history of myth, Ganga Shupathaya is the ultimate
429. 24:16–24:20pristine symbol of Mayfield intellectualism. He is the
430. 24:20–24:22proof of their divine, high-caste intellectual
431. 24:22–24:23superiority.
432. 24:23–24:27He is the patron saint of their academic prestige. But then
433. 24:27–24:29the douche in Ponzi, the black book gets published on the
434. 24:29–24:33internet, what did the leaked records reveal about the great Gangesh?
435. 24:33–24:38The suppressed records revealed two highly controversial polluting facts about his life.
436. 24:38–24:42First, the records stated that Gangesh married a woman referred to as a Charm Kareene.
437. 24:42–24:44What does that mean in this context?
438. 24:44–24:49A Charm Kareene is a woman from the Leather Tanning or Cobbler cast.
439. 24:49–24:54In the Orthodox Bremenical Hierarchy of the time, this cast was considered severely polluting.
440. 24:54–24:55Oh, I see.
441. 24:55–25:00the greatest Brahmin philosopher to marry an untouchable cast woman was unthinkable to
442. 25:00–25:05the orthodox elite. Second, the genealogical records showed a biological impossibility regarding
443. 25:05–25:11his birth. Genghis was recorded as being born five years after the death of his father.
444. 25:11–25:16Whoa. Okay, so the founder of their entire pristine intellectual legacy was of illegitimate
445. 25:16–25:21birth and married way outside his caste to a marginalized woman.
446. 25:21–25:28But what the parallel history focuses on isn't just the facts themselves, but the active modern cover-up of those facts
447. 25:28–25:35Right the parallel research documents how a very prominent 20th century institutional historian named Romanov jaw
448. 25:35–25:42discovered these records and then deliberately concealed these facts from other historians and the public the sources literally call this an
449. 25:42–25:47Honor killing of his legacy. That is a brutal term, but I have to ask why
450. 25:47–25:55Why? Why would a modern 20th century historian, living in the 1900s, care so much about who
451. 25:55–26:00would 12th century philosopher married that they would actively destroy or hide historical
452. 26:00–26:01documents?
453. 26:01–26:06Because, as the parallel history argues, ancient purity myths are absolutely required
454. 26:06–26:11to justify modern institutional power. You have to remember the foundation of their
455. 26:11–26:12authority.
456. 26:12–26:13Right. The bloodline.
457. 26:13–26:17If the greatest philosopher in the history of misla, the literal bedrock of their
458. 26:17–26:22intellectual prestige was the product of an irregular birth and a subaltern crosscast marriage,
459. 26:22–26:28it completely dismantles their core narrative. Their narrative claims that intellectual superiority
460. 26:28–26:33is inherently tied to biological upper caste purity. If Gangesh wasn't pure, then brilliance
461. 26:33–26:37can come from anywhere. Exactly. And if brilliance can come from anywhere, the elite have no divine
462. 26:37–26:42right to control the institutions. Wow, it's the ultimate threat to their monopoly. They
463. 26:42–26:48hid the truth to protect the brand. By exposing these secrets, the parallel movement isn't
464. 26:48–26:53just gossiping about a 12th century philosopher. They are dismantling the sacred biological
465. 26:53–26:57basis upon which modern institutional Mothili identity is built.
466. 26:57–27:01That is the crux of the argument. It shows that the history was curated to serve a
467. 27:01–27:05very specific, exclusionary modern agenda.
468. 27:05–27:10Okay, this is a perfect time to shift gears. We've seen how tightly the elite control
469. 27:10–27:15the heartland of Mathieu in India. They controlled the script, they rebranded the poets, and
470. 27:15–27:19they literally forged the bloodlines. But because the control on the heartland was so
471. 27:19–27:22incredibly rigid, something fascinating happened.
472. 27:22–27:23The diaspora.
473. 27:23–27:27Yes. The most vibrant innovations in the Mathieu language actually happened when it
474. 27:27–27:30escaped. When the language crossed the borders, it exploded.
475. 27:30–27:32Let's talk about the trans-regional diaspora.
476. 27:32–27:38This diaspora is a major glaring blind spot in institutional historiography. You see,
477. 27:38–27:43After the Muslim conquest of the Tirhid region in the 14th century, many Mayfield scholars,
478. 27:43–27:48artists, and dramatists fled north to the relative safety of the Nepal Valley.
479. 27:48–27:53And there they found sanctuary under the Mala dynasty, a royal lineage that ruled the region
480. 27:53–27:57from roughly 1201 to 1779.
481. 27:57–28:02And from what I read, Mayfield didn't just survive as a refugee language in Nepal.
482. 28:02–28:03It absolutely flourished, right?
483. 28:03–28:05It became the dominant culture.
484. 28:05–28:08It didn't just flourish, it became the pinnacle of high culture.
485. 28:08–28:12After the Mala Kings, Maitrely was not treated as a regional dialect.
486. 28:12–28:15It was an elite cosmopolitan court language.
487. 28:15–28:17It was afforded equal status to Sanskrit.
488. 28:17–28:22It became the language of sophisticated education, royal correspondence, and most importantly
489. 28:22–28:25it became the undisputed language of the theater.
490. 28:25–28:28Give us some tangible examples of what was actually happening in these Nepali courts.
491. 28:28–28:30Who was writing these plays?
492. 28:30–28:34You had a culture where the kings themselves were not just patrons of the arts, but
493. 28:34–28:36incredibly prolific writers.
494. 28:36–28:40in Juggerthama, for example, wrote a famous play called the Hargari Viva Natak.
495. 28:40–28:46Okay. It's a fascinating text that integrates classical Shiva Parvati religious themes with
496. 28:46–28:51the vibrant, entertaining dynamics of court drama. And then you have Kewlupatindramala,
497. 28:51–28:58who was an absolute powerhouse. He single-handedly composed 26 full-length plays in Mathuli.
498. 28:58–29:0526 plays. Yes. For a period of about 150 years, Mathuli drama completely replaced Sanskrit drama
499. 29:05–29:11for all practical purposes in the major cultural centers of Kathmandu, Patan, and Buktipur.
500. 29:11–29:14It was a golden age of theatrical production.
501. 29:14–29:18So if this is undeniably a massive golden age for the language, why is the parallel movement
502. 29:18–29:19so frustrated about it?
503. 29:19–29:21Shouldn't everyone be celebrating this?
504. 29:21–29:25They are frustrated because of how this era is categorized and claimed today.
505. 29:25–29:29The parallel history points out that modern scholars and nationalist institutions often
506. 29:29–29:35wrongly label this entire era of output as purely Nepali or Noori literature, effectively
507. 29:35–29:41erasing its mathyly linguistic roots. They strip the mathyly identity out of it to serve modern
508. 29:41–29:47nationalist narratives. To make matters worse, modern Indian academies like the Sahecha Academy
509. 29:47–29:55back in Delhi often refuse to recognize or award modern Nepalese mathyly writers. They treat them
510. 29:55–30:00as foreigners, as outsiders to their own mother tongue simply because they live across a modern
511. 30:00–30:05political border. That isn't furiating. You have a language that built the theatrical culture of
512. 30:05–30:10a neighboring country. And modern institutions basically say sorry your passport is wrong,
513. 30:10–30:14your literature doesn't count. Exactly. But the language didn't just go north to Nepal,
514. 30:14–30:19it went east too. And this is where we get into what the sources call the mongrel languages.
515. 30:19–30:25What happened when Mathili hit Assam in Bengal? When Mathili traveled east, it acted as a pan-Eastern
516. 30:25–30:31donor language. It provided the linguistic staple for artificial hybrid literary languages that
517. 30:31–30:34completely changed the religious and cultural landscape of eastern India.
518. 30:34–30:39Okay, let's start with Assam. How did Mathili influence Assimi's culture?
519. 30:39–30:44In the 15th and 16th centuries, Assam experienced a massive cultural and religious renaissance led
520. 30:44–30:50by the great reformer Srimanta Sankargeva. Sankargeva created a unique dramatic tradition
521. 30:50–30:56known as the Ankiya-naat. These were one act plays meant to propagate Vaishnava devotion,
522. 30:56–31:01the worship of Vishnu and Krishna among the masses. But here is the fascinating part.
523. 31:01–31:07He didn't write these plays in pure asemmys. He wrote them in an artificial literary language
524. 31:07–31:12called Brajavali. And what exactly is the recipe for Brajavali? It is essentially medieval
525. 31:12–31:18Mithili mixed with minor asemmys vocabulary and morphology. The history behind it is quite
526. 31:18–31:23beautiful. Srimanta Sankar Deva had traveled extensively through Mithila during a long pilgrimage.
527. 31:23–31:29He observed their vibrant theater, he heard the Mithili language, and he was deeply inspired by how
528. 31:29–31:33effectively it conveyed emotion and devotion. So you took it back with him.
529. 31:33–31:37He essentially took that linguistic framework back to Assam, infused it with local elements,
530. 31:37–31:42and used it to enlighten his own people. It's like he heard a style of music in another country,
531. 31:42–31:47brought it home, translated a few of the lyrics, and created a massive new genre.
532. 31:47–31:48That's a perfect way to describe it.
533. 31:48–31:53And what about Bengal? Because this is where the cultural impact gets really famous.
534. 31:53–31:57In Bengal, you have the creation of a similarly hybrid language called Brajabuli.
535. 31:58–32:03It started because Bengali students were constantly traveling to Mithila to study philosophy.
536. 32:03–32:08Mithila was the intellectual hub. While they were there studying dry logic,
537. 32:08–32:14they absorbed the incredibly popular sensuous Mothilli love songs of Vidyapati.
538. 32:14–32:19they loved them. They took these songs back to Bengal where they became a massive hit.
539. 32:19–32:23They took the folk songs back to the dorms. Exactly. And those songs eventually became
540. 32:23–32:28liturgically central to the Gaudiya Vaisnava religious movement, which was led by the famous
541. 32:28–32:34mystic Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. So Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, this massive religious figure in Bengal,
542. 32:34–32:38is essentially singing these Mathili songs during his ecstatic trances.
543. 32:38–32:44Yes. And because Chaitanya revered these songs, soon every Bengali poet wanted to write their
544. 32:44–32:49own devotional songs in that exact same style. But they weren't native Mepheli speakers.
545. 32:49–32:50Right, so they faked it.
546. 32:50–32:56So they created Brajibuli, an artificial hybrid tongue, modeled heavily on Mepheli,
547. 32:56–33:01but inflected with Bengali grammar and pronunciation. It became a massive cultural
548. 33:01–33:07phenomenon. The great Bengali poets like Govinda Dasa composed thousands of verses in this hybrid
549. 33:07–33:10language. It was the absolute height of literary fashion.
550. 33:10–33:15It was so popular that there's even an incredible story about Revengerenath Tagore, right?
551. 33:15–33:15Yeah.
552. 33:15–33:18The Nobel Laureate. When I read this in the sources, I laughed out loud.
553. 33:18–33:23It is a brilliant historical anecdote. In 1884, at the height of the Bengal Renaissance,
554. 33:23–33:27a young Revengerenath Tagore composed a collection of beautiful lyrics
555. 33:27–33:32called the Banusinga Thakur Padavali. He wrote them entirely in Brajabuli,
556. 33:32–33:36this artificial, Mathili Bengali hybrid. But he didn't publish them under his own name.
557. 33:36–33:36No.
558. 33:36–33:43He initially passed them off as the newly discovered lost manuscripts of an ancient medieval poet named Bonusinga.
559. 33:43–33:48He essentially trolled the entire literary establishment with a fake ancient Mathili manuscript.
560. 33:48–33:52He did. It was a hoax, but he eventually confessed.
561. 33:52–33:58However, it perfectly illustrates the lingering prestige and vitality of this Mathili-based language.
562. 33:59–34:03Even in the modern colonial era, a genius like Tagore felt that the highest form of
563. 34:03–34:07romantic devotional poetry had to be written in this
564. 34:07–34:11Methili-inflected style. I just love that. To use another modern analogy,
565. 34:11–34:16Methili was like the open source code of medieval Indian literature.
566. 34:16–34:21Everyone in Bengal, Assam, and Nepal was taking the Methili code, tweaking it
567. 34:21–34:23with their local language and building incredible new
568. 34:23–34:27cultural software on top of it. Absolutely. But if this impact was so
569. 34:27–34:31massive, how does the official history handle it? It often downplays it by
570. 34:31–34:36fragmenting it into separate provincial narratives. The official histories of Bengal and Assam naturally
571. 34:36–34:40absorbed these developments as their own local achievements. Meanwhile, the official Orthodox
572. 34:40–34:46history of Methili often overlooks these hybrid forms as mongrel derivations, impure variations,
573. 34:46–34:50not worthy of serious study. Unbelievable. The parallel history, however, insists that these
574. 34:50–34:55trans-regional languages are the ultimate proof of Methili's true historical role.
575. 34:55–35:00It wasn't just a regional dialect, it was a civilizational lingua franca that connected
576. 35:00–35:02the entire eastern subcontinent.
577. 35:02–35:04Okay, we have to fast forward a bit because while
578. 35:04–35:09Methili was thriving abroad as this grand transregional theatrical language,
579. 35:09–35:14things were getting very dark back home. We are entering the era of colonial modernity,
580. 35:14–35:19famines, and satirical rebellion. What was happening in Mithila as the British colonial
581. 35:19–35:22apparatus really took hold in the 19th century.
582. 35:22–35:27The 19th century in Mithila was a period of extreme painful contrast. On one hand,
583. 35:27–35:33you had this institutional elite revival led by upper caste scholars in the wealthy courts of
584. 35:33–35:38the Darbhangaraj. They were writing refined, sanskritized poetry. Right, the elites doing
585. 35:38–35:42their thing. But on the other hand you had the brutal devastating reality of the peasantry suffering
586. 35:42–35:48under colonial taxation and misrule. And this brings us to a vital subaltern voice, the famine
587. 35:48–35:53poetry of Fatah Rillo. I am so glad we are talking about him. The sources describe his work
588. 35:53–35:57as literature from below. What was he writing about?
589. 35:57–36:05In 1873 and 1874, a horrific famine struck the region. It was a catastrophic event.
590. 36:05–36:11Fetturil composed what is known as the Akali Kovit. This is visceral, devastating poetry,
591. 36:11–36:15documenting the literal starvation and suffering of the common people.
592. 36:15–36:15Wow.
593. 36:15–36:20He wasn't writing about abstract theology or divine love. He was writing about the agrarian
594. 36:20–36:26crisis, the hoarding of grain, the apathy of the rulers, and the raw mechanics of colonial misrule.
595. 36:26–36:30It is a vital historical document written in raw Mathilli verse.
596. 36:30–36:33But if I'm understanding the pattern of the institutional history correctly,
597. 36:33–36:37the official establishment canon completely ignored him because he wasn't writing about
598. 36:37–36:43polite society. Almost entirely. The establishment canon heavily preferred to focus on the religious,
599. 36:43–36:47refined poetry of writers like Chandaha, who was undertaking a massive,
600. 36:47–36:50of the Bethlehem translation of the Ramayana at the time,
601. 36:50–36:52the elite wanted literature that elevated
602. 36:52–36:54their divine status, not literature
603. 36:54–36:56that highlighted the starving peasants at their gates.
604. 36:56–36:59In fact, Fitzgerald's brilliant famine poetry
605. 36:59–37:01was largely unpublished and ignored
606. 37:01–37:03until a foreign colonial officer
607. 37:03–37:04actually took an interest in it.
608. 37:04–37:08And that brings us to George Abraham Greerson.
609. 37:08–37:10This guy is such a fascinating paradox
610. 37:10–37:11in the history of this language.
611. 37:11–37:13He's an Irish civil servant,
612. 37:13–37:15but he becomes a pivotal figure from Athele.
613. 37:15–37:18Greerson is indeed a paradox.
614. 37:18–37:20He was an Irish colonial administrator
615. 37:20–37:23and a brilliant linguist stationed in the region
616. 37:23–37:24in the 1880s.
617. 37:24–37:27He undertook the massive unprecedented task
618. 37:27–37:30of formally codifying the Mothili language.
619. 37:30–37:32He published the Mothili Christomathy,
620. 37:32–37:34which was a collection of literature,
621. 37:34–37:37and he wrote a systematic grammar of the language.
622. 37:37–37:38That's huge.
623. 37:38–37:38It was.
624. 37:38–37:41Most importantly, he vehemently argued
625. 37:41–37:42to the British government that Mothili
626. 37:42–37:45was a distinct independent language.
627. 37:45–37:49He effectively saved it from being completely swallowed by Hindi expansionists who were aggressively
628. 37:49–37:54lobbying to classify Mathili as a mere dialect to consolidate political power.
629. 37:54–37:55So he's the hero.
630. 37:55–37:59He used the colonial bureaucracy to save the language from Erasure.
631. 37:59–38:03He provided the intellectual and bureaucratic armature for its survival.
632. 38:03–38:05Yes, that is undeniable.
633. 38:05–38:10But the parallel history points out the severe paradox of his intervention.
634. 38:10–38:15He saved it, but he saved it through a rigid, colonial, institutional lens.
635. 38:15–38:17What does that mean in practice?
636. 38:17–38:20How do you save a language but hurt it at the same time?
637. 38:20–38:22Because of how he codified it.
638. 38:22–38:27When Greerson compiled his grammar and dictionaries, he relied heavily on the learned Brahmanas
639. 38:27–38:30of the region as his primary informants.
640. 38:30–38:34The codification process inherently sanitized the language.
641. 38:34–38:39He formalized the high-caste vocabulary as the standard, and often condemned or
642. 38:39–38:45marginalized the rural lower caste variations as uncouth or corrupt. It was a linguistic revival,
643. 38:45–38:50but it locked the language into the official hierarchical structure of the British era permanent
644. 38:50–38:55settlement. It formalized the language, but it also formalized who was in charge of defining
645. 38:55–39:00what was correct, Mathili. It's like standardizing a language by only listening to the professors
646. 39:00–39:03at Oxford and telling everyone in Yorkshire they are speaking incorrectly. That's a great
647. 39:03–39:10comparison. And that tension between the official stuffy rule makers and the actual living writers
648. 39:10–39:16leads us directly to one of the most brilliant figures in modern Mathili. We have to talk about
649. 39:16–39:23Harmo Anha. Harmo Anha, who lived from 1908 to 1984, is a titan of modern literature. He represents
650. 39:23–39:29the satirical turn in Mayfili. He is arguably the most widely read Mathili writer of the entire
651. 39:29–39:3020th century.
652. 39:30–39:32Satire is such a powerful tool.
653. 39:32–39:33What was he targeting?
654. 39:33–39:38He used brilliant, razor sharp, hilarious satire to attack the very institutions that considered
655. 39:38–39:40themselves the guardians of the culture.
656. 39:40–39:42He attacked conservative marriage customs.
657. 39:42–39:47He relentlessly mocked the rigid, corrupt, Ponji system we discussed earlier.
658. 39:47–39:51And he exposed Brahmin hypocrisy from within his own community.
659. 39:51–39:52Give me an example of his work.
660. 39:52–39:53What did he write?
661. 39:53–39:55His most famous novel is Kanyadan.
662. 39:55–40:00It's a brilliant comedic and tragic exploration of modern versus traditional values.
663. 40:00–40:05The plot involves a modern English educated boy who gets married to a deeply traditional
664. 40:05–40:06uneducated village girl.
665. 40:06–40:11Through this clash, Jahas skewers the absurdity of the arranged marriage system and the pretensions
666. 40:11–40:16of both the traditional Orthodox elite and the newly westernized classes.
667. 40:16–40:21He also wrote incredible satirical character sketches in a book called Katar Kakak Tarang,
668. 40:21–40:27Or the main character basically philosophizes while intoxicated, tearing down orthodox religious
669. 40:27–40:29hypocrisies.
670. 40:29–40:35His work shook the foundations of orthodoxy because it was so accessible and so funny.
671. 40:35–40:38He was writing the books that people actually wanted to read.
672. 40:38–40:40He was a massive bestseller in his language.
673. 40:40–40:45So naturally, the Sahithya Academy and the National Academy of Letters rewarded him
674. 40:45–40:47with all their biggest literary prizes.
675. 40:47–40:48Right.
676. 40:48–40:50Because they exist to promote the best literature.
677. 40:50–40:53You would think so, but quite the opposite.
678. 40:53–40:57This is one of the most glaring, undeniable examples of institutional suppression the parallel
679. 40:57–40:59history points to.
680. 40:59–41:04The Sahija Academy's advisory board for Mathili was heavily dominated by conservative elite
681. 41:04–41:09organizations and they deliberately consistently refused to give Harmohan Shah their award
682. 41:09–41:10for his groundbreaking fiction.
683. 41:10–41:13They literally blackballed their most popular author.
684. 41:13–41:14Absolutely.
685. 41:14–41:18The most shocking instance occurred in 1967.
686. 41:18–41:20Harimahantah was the obvious eligible choice
687. 41:20–41:22for the national award that year.
688. 41:22–41:24But the academy literally preferred to leave
689. 41:24–41:28the 1967 award unrewarded entirely.
690. 41:28–41:30They officially declared no winner from a Thile that year
691. 41:30–41:32rather than give it to Harimahantah.
692. 41:32–41:33You are kidding me?
693. 41:33–41:34No, it's true.
694. 41:34–41:37They set a longstanding template of awarding
695. 41:37–41:40dry academic philosophy texts
696. 41:40–41:42or conservative religious poetry
697. 41:42–41:45rather than progressive critical modern literature.
698. 41:45–41:46That is just incredible.
699. 41:46–41:50They literally preferred to give no award to anyone rather than hand a trophy to the guy
700. 41:50–41:52who was making fun of their orthodoxy.
701. 41:52–41:53But you know what?
702. 41:53–41:58It proves that humor and satire are sometimes the most dangerous weapons against the establishment.
703. 41:58–42:02You can argue with the dry philosophical treatise all day, but when an entire society
704. 42:02–42:05is laughing at you because it's a satirical novel, the elite panic.
705. 42:05–42:10And that panic resulted in the deliberate marginalization of one of their greatest literary
706. 42:10–42:11assets.
707. 42:11–42:17The parallel history views the treatment of Hari Mohan Ha as definitive proof that institutional
708. 42:17–42:22recognition, historically, strengthens the hands of obscurantist elements who prefer a
709. 42:22–42:27dead, pristine, prestigious language over a living, critical, and messy one.
710. 42:27–42:30Which perfectly sets up the modern era.
711. 42:30–42:34Because what happened to Hari Mohan Ha in the 1960s wasn't a one-off mistake.
712. 42:34–42:38It became the structural blueprint for how official institutions would operate for
713. 42:38–42:40the next half century.
714. 42:40–42:44Let's look at the modern institutional exclusions and the rise of subaltern voices.
715. 42:44–42:47The pattern of exclusion definitely continued.
716. 42:47–42:51But the Vedeja Movement didn't just rely on historical anecdotes or literary theory to
717. 42:51–42:52prove this bias.
718. 42:52–42:56They used modern legal tools to expose the mechanics of the academy.
719. 42:56–42:57Okay this sounds juicy.
720. 42:57–43:02Between 2011 and 2014, researchers associated with the parallel movement, specifically
721. 43:02–43:08Vanit Upal and Ashish Anjanhar, filed extensive right to information or RTI, requests
722. 43:08–43:11regarding the Sahitya Academy's internal operations.
723. 43:11–43:13The Right to Information Act is basically
724. 43:13–43:15India's Freedom of Information Act.
725. 43:15–43:17You can legally force the government
726. 43:17–43:18to show you their paperwork.
727. 43:18–43:20So what did the data actually show?
728. 43:20–43:22What was the smoking gun?
729. 43:22–43:24The RTI Exposé revealed a staggering,
730. 43:24–43:27mathematically undeniable level of nepotism and exclusion.
731. 43:27–43:31The data showed that over 90% of the Sahitya Academy's
732. 43:31–43:33translation assignments, publication grants,
733. 43:33–43:35and travel funds went directly to the friends,
734. 43:35–43:39relatives and close associates of the 10-member advisory board.
735. 43:39–43:4090%.
736. 43:40–43:42Yes, 90%.
737. 43:42–43:46Meanwhile, authors associated with the parallel democratic tradition,
738. 43:46–43:48the ones writing about the actual struggles of the common people,
739. 43:48–43:50received zero assignments.
740. 43:50–43:55The parallel movement understandably describes this as a festival of shame.
741. 43:55–43:55Wow.
742. 43:55–44:00They argue it was a systematic booty distribution system that utilized taxpayer funds
743. 44:00–44:04to keep Mathili literature as the exclusive private domain
744. 44:04–44:06of a small interconnected elite.
745. 44:06–44:0890% to friends and family.
746. 44:08–44:11That is not a national literary academy.
747. 44:11–44:15That is a private VIP club operating on public funding.
748. 44:15–44:17So who was being locked out of the club?
749. 44:17–44:19Who does the parallel history
750. 44:19–44:23consider the true ignored masters of modern Mayfilly?
751. 44:23–44:26The Védéa archive identifies several towering figures
752. 44:26–44:28who were systematically ignored by the official machinery
753. 44:28–44:31for decades because their work challenged the status quo.
754. 44:31–44:34For example, there is Rajde O'Mandal,
755. 44:34–44:35whom the Parallel Movement considers perhaps
756. 44:35–44:38the greatest living poet of Maitreley,
757. 44:38–44:41representing the true, raw, subaltern voice.
758. 44:41–44:41Okay.
759. 44:41–44:42Then there is Bechand Thakur,
760. 44:42–44:45who is recognized as the greatest living Maitreley dramatist.
761. 44:45–44:48What kind of plays does Bechand Thakur write?
762. 44:48–44:50Thakur created a parallel Dalit theater.
763. 44:50–44:52His plays confront brutal realities,
764. 44:52–44:53cast violence, untouchability,
765. 44:53–44:56and the exploitation of the lowest classes.
766. 44:56–44:59The Parallel Movement calls his intense, realistic work
767. 44:59–45:02a necessary slap on the face of the slapstick,
768. 45:02–45:05Trivial, highly stylized theater that usually gets official government funding.
769. 45:05–45:08And what about the novelists?
770. 45:08–45:11The sources highlighted a writer named Jagdish Prasad Mandal.
771. 45:11–45:12Yes.
772. 45:12–45:15Jagdish Prasad Mandal is a deeply pivotal figure.
773. 45:15–45:20His novel, Pungu, represents a major subaltern breakthrough in My Thilly Pros.
774. 45:20–45:24Pungu roughly translates to crippled or paralyzed.
775. 45:24–45:25Heavy toggle.
776. 45:25–45:26Very heavy.
777. 45:26–45:30Instead of romanticizing the glorious past of Mithila, his novel meticulously documents
778. 45:30–45:36the crippled agricultural system. He writes about the raw, harsh, unforgiving realities
779. 45:36–45:41of lower caste, rural oppression, debt cycles, and the physical toll of agricultural labor.
780. 45:41–45:42So no sugarcoating.
781. 45:42–45:46Not at all. Because his work was so confronting, he was ignored by the establishment for a
782. 45:46–45:51very long time. Though the sheer weight of his contribution forced them to finally
783. 45:51–45:56award him the Sahiti Academy Award in 2021, decades into his career.
784. 45:56–45:59It's incredible how long it takes for the truth to break through the bureaucracy,
785. 45:59–46:02It's not just men from marginalized castes being excluded.
786. 46:02–46:08The sources are brutally clear about the total systemic suppression of women writers in the official narrative.
787. 46:08–46:11The silencing of women is profound and systematic.
788. 46:11–46:19According to the source material, women writers are virtually absent from official mainstream anthologies compiled by the Academy.
789. 46:19–46:24The RTI data confirmed they were almost entirely excluded from academic translation assignments.
790. 46:24–46:25It's just wild.
791. 46:25–46:30The parallel tradition has worked tirelessly to recover and amplify these voices.
792. 46:30–46:34They highlight playwrights like V. Parani, whose work deals with gender dynamics and social
793. 46:34–46:35expectations.
794. 46:35–46:41They champion poets like Sosmeeta Pathak and scholars like Arunthadi Divi, who specifically
795. 46:41–46:45researched and documented the historical women scholars of Mathila whose names had been
796. 46:45–46:46erased.
797. 46:46–46:49And the Vidae movement actually published their own anthologies to fix this, right?
798. 46:49–46:50They did.
799. 46:50–46:54parallel movement published in champion anthologies like a jury on guide you more
800. 46:54–47:00this was a landmark publication it is the first major anthology exclusively
801. 47:00–47:05dedicated to modern mathili women poets it was a direct physical rebuke to the
802. 47:05–47:09all-male anthologies produced by the establishment and beyond the novelists
803. 47:09–47:13the playwrights in the poets writing in modern script there's a whole other
804. 47:13–47:18layer that the official Academy ignores the oral tradition what the
805. 47:18–47:22sources beautifully call the throbbing human heart of folk literature.
806. 47:22–47:28Yes. While official institutional histories focus almost exclusively on Kings,
807. 47:28–47:32Brahmin court poets and printed manuscripts, the parallel history
808. 47:32–47:35strongly centers on the epic folk heroes.
809. 47:35–47:39These are massive, complex narratives preserved entirely through the oral
810. 47:39–47:43memory of the lower castes. For instance, you have the epic of LaRica,
811. 47:43–47:45who is the great folk hero of the Yadava community.
812. 47:45–47:50His epic song is so vast it takes 36 hours to sing continuously.
813. 47:50–47:5236 hours? That is Homeric.
814. 47:52–47:56It is exactly like the Iliad or the Odyssey in its cultural function.
815. 47:56–48:00You also have the epic of Salhasa, who is the guardian spirit and hero of the Dusada community.
816. 48:00–48:05And the story of Dina Badri, two brothers who are the heroes of the Mushakar community,
817. 48:05–48:09known for their resistance against bonded labor and uppercast landlords.
818. 48:09–48:10These are huge stories.
819. 48:10–48:11Massive.
820. 48:11–48:18These epics represent a living mephilly that exists completely independently of printed textbooks,
821. 48:18–48:21university syllabi, or state academies.
822. 48:21–48:23I have to point out the massive irony here.
823. 48:23–48:29The official institutions claim their entire purpose is to save and promote the language.
824. 48:29–48:34But by ignoring the women, ignoring the working class, ignoring the Dalai dramatists,
825. 48:34–48:38and completely dismissing the massive oral epics of the marginalized communities,
826. 48:38–48:44They are essentially amputating 90% of the body just to save the head.
827. 48:44–48:46That's a very striking way to put it, but yes.
828. 48:46–48:54I mean, you cannot logically claim to represent a language when your official record silenced almost everyone who actually speaks it in the real world.
829. 48:54–49:00That is the exact core critique of the parallel movement, and it brings us to a crucial modern turning point in our narrative.
830. 49:00–49:06When the physical institutions lock their doors to you, when the physical printing presses are controlled by a small advisory board
831. 49:06–49:08that only publishes their friends,
832. 49:08–49:10and when the official history books erase your ancestors,
833. 49:10–49:11what do you do?
834. 49:11–49:13How do you fight back when they control
835. 49:13–49:14all the physical infrastructure?
836. 49:14–49:16You build a new house.
837. 49:16–49:18And if you are operating in the 21st century,
838. 49:18–49:21you build that house in the digital realm
839. 49:21–49:24where the old gatekeepers have no jurisdiction.
840. 49:24–49:27Welcome to the final act of our deep dive,
841. 49:27–49:30the Vedeja Movement and the Digital Counter Archive.
842. 49:30–49:32The digital era of May the Literature
843. 49:32–49:36represents a true structural democratization
844. 49:36–49:42of the language. And what is most impressive is that it started incredibly early. The Videha movement
845. 49:42–49:48didn't wait for modern social media. They established Megali's very first internet presence way back in
846. 49:48–49:54the year 2000 using platforms like Yahoo Geo Cities. I remember Yahoo Geo Cities. That is ancient
847. 49:54–50:00internet history. It was pioneering work. By 2004 they had launched a dedicated blog and by 2008
848. 50:00–50:05it formally evolved into the Videha Fortnightly International e-journal edited by Gajendra
849. 50:05–50:10They realized very early on that the internet could bypass the physical academy in New Delhi.
850. 50:10–50:14The scale of what they've achieved online according to the source material is just staggering.
851. 50:14–50:18It's not just a blog where they post opinions. Tell us about the actual archiving work they're doing.
852. 50:18–50:24It is a monumental act of digital preservation and it is fundamentally an act of resistance.
853. 50:24–50:30The Videha movement has digitized thousands of Mithili books, making them available for free online,
854. 50:30–50:33completely bypassing the physical gatekeepers.
855. 50:33–50:34That's amazing!
856. 50:34–50:36But they went much further than modern books.
857. 50:36–50:42They painstakingly transcribed 11,000 ancient palm leaf manuscripts that were originally
858. 50:42–50:44written in the T'Ruida script.
859. 50:44–50:47Wow, they rescued the Stolen script.
860. 50:47–50:48Yes!
861. 50:48–50:51And they ensured its survival in the modern age.
862. 50:51–50:57They pushed for and successfully established the T'Ruida Unicode Standard in 2014.
863. 50:57–51:00Explain why the Unicode Standard is such a big deal.
864. 51:00–51:04Unicode is the international standard that allows computers to process text.
865. 51:04–51:08Before 2014, you physically could not type the original Terhuda script on a computer
866. 51:08–51:09or a smartphone.
867. 51:09–51:11It didn't exist in the digital world.
868. 51:11–51:12So it was invisible online.
869. 51:12–51:13Right.
870. 51:13–51:16By getting it into the Unicode standard, they ensured that the original alphabet of
871. 51:16–51:20the language can now be typed, displayed, and preserved globally forever.
872. 51:20–51:24Furthermore, they created the first Mathili Braille site, and they are actively translating
873. 51:24–51:27massive amounts of Mathili works into English.
874. 51:27–51:29To reach a wider audience.
875. 51:29–51:30Yes.
876. 51:30–51:35doing this to present a true representative review of the literature to the global academic
877. 51:35–51:41community rather than letting the Sahitya Academy's heavily curated biased lists define
878. 51:41–51:43Mathili literature to the outside world.
879. 51:43–51:47They literally created a parallel Sahitya Academy online.
880. 51:47–51:50I really even give out their own awards now, the Vadeha's Saman, right?
881. 51:50–51:51They do.
882. 51:51–51:55They award prestigious prizes in literature, art, music, and drama.
883. 51:55–52:01They have successfully created a completely alternative, democratic ecosystem of recognition.
884. 52:01–52:05And this digital clean slate hasn't just preserved the past.
885. 52:05–52:07It has fundamentally altered the future.
886. 52:07–52:11Because writers are no longer afraid of being rejected by conservative advisory boards,
887. 52:11–52:14it has allowed radically new types of literature to flourish.
888. 52:14–52:15I love this.
889. 52:15–52:18Give us an example of this new unbridled fiction.
890. 52:18–52:21What are people writing now that the gatekeepers are gone?
891. 52:21–52:26As writers no longer have to pass a purity test, they can explore previously untouchable
892. 52:26–52:28social terrains.
893. 52:28–52:33A prime example highlighted in the Parallel history is a novel called Suppimani Jinki.
894. 52:33–52:38The Parallel archive cites this as the very first methililiterary work to vividly and
895. 52:38–52:42empathetically explore the struggles of the third gender or other sex.
896. 52:42–52:48How does the novel approach such a modern, complex topic in a traditional language?
897. 52:48–52:51It approaches it brilliantly by reclaiming traditional imagery.
898. 52:51–52:57The novel uses the ancient concept of Artinari Shor, which is the androgynous composite deity
899. 52:57–53:02of Lord Shiva and Parvati, to advocate for a dignified, recognized life for transgender
900. 53:02–53:04individuals within the culture.
901. 53:04–53:05That is beautiful.
902. 53:05–53:08It blends ancient theology with urgent modern human rights.
903. 53:08–53:12This is a narrative that the traditional institutional guard obsessed with patriarchal purity would
904. 53:12–53:15likely never have touched, funded, or published.
905. 53:15–53:18So the internet didn't just act as a museum to save the old manuscripts.
906. 53:18–53:24It actively provided a safe space for the most marginalized modern voices to bypass the old
907. 53:24–53:25VIP club entirely.
908. 53:25–53:30It gave them a platform where their words couldn't be filtered, edited, or suppressed by an advisory
909. 53:30–53:31board.
910. 53:31–53:32Exactly.
911. 53:32–53:36The locus of literary power has permanently shifted from the physical academy buildings
912. 53:36–53:38to the decentralized internet.
913. 53:38–53:43The Vedea movement has built a living archive that cannot be burned, hidden in a drawer,
914. 53:43–53:45or restricted by caste gatekeepers.
915. 53:45–53:47Okay, we are coming to the end of our deep dive.
916. 53:47–53:51I want to pull all the threads together here because this isn't just an academic argument
917. 53:51–53:54about old books and poetry awards.
918. 53:54–54:00The sources make it crystal clear that this literary battle has massive real-world political
919. 54:00–54:03consequences for the millions of people living in this region.
920. 54:03–54:04It absolutely does.
921. 54:04–54:07You cannot separate the literature from the politics.
922. 54:07–54:13The history of Mathili literature is inextricably linked to the historical political demand
923. 54:13–54:16for a separate autonomous Mathila state.
924. 54:16–54:21In the 1940s, leading up to and following Indian independence, there was a very strong political
925. 54:21–54:24movement for statehood based on linguistic grounds.
926. 54:24–54:27But that movement failed, why?
927. 54:27–54:32The parallel history turns to the work of the renowned sociologist T.K. Uman to explain
928. 54:32–54:33this.
929. 54:33–54:38Uman observed that the movement failed for a very specific, tragic reason.
930. 54:38–54:42Because the Mathilli region was so heavily dominated, both economically in terms of land
931. 54:42–54:46and culturally in terms of literature by a tiny Brahmin elite. The lower castes, the
932. 54:46–54:51working classes, and other marginalized groups actively feared that forming a separate Mathili
933. 54:51–54:52state would be a disaster for them.
934. 54:52–54:55Great. They were afraid of their own linguistic state.
935. 54:55–55:00Yes. They feared that a new state would merely cement and formalize that elite monopoly
936. 55:00–55:06into permanent political law. They actively opposed the statehood movement because the
937. 55:06–55:11official version of Mathili identity completely excluded them. Why would they vote for
938. 55:11–55:14a state that doesn't even acknowledge their existence in its history books.
939. 55:14–55:20Wow. That is the ultimate tragedy. The elite's desperate desire to keep the literature pure,
940. 55:20–55:26to keep the awards for themselves, and to hide the messy, diverse reality of their culture
941. 55:26–55:30literally cost them their political autonomy. They lost a state because they wouldn't share
942. 55:30–55:33the language. Precisely. And that is why the Parallel Literature
943. 55:33–55:37Movement is so profoundly important. It isn't just about getting different books published
944. 55:37–55:42settling scores about the 12th century. It is a fundamental grassroots attempt to prove that
945. 55:42–55:48Mathiliy belongs to everyone. The Dalit dramatists, the women poets, and the polydiaspora, the third
946. 55:48–55:53gender of the farmers. By uniting the literature, by acknowledging all the subaltern voices,
947. 55:53–55:58they are taking the first absolutely necessary step to uniting the people. You simply cannot
948. 55:58–56:03demand political sovereignty or cultural respect if your foundation is built on the deliberate
949. 56:03–56:06exclusion of your own people.
950. 56:06–56:08This has been an absolutely unbelievable journey.
951. 56:08–56:13We just explored how an entire linguistic universe was shaped, hidden, and reborn.
952. 56:13–56:17We've seen how physical alphabets were stolen for convenience, how historical heroes were
953. 56:17–56:22rebranded to protect the elite, how genealogical records were weaponized, and how the Internet
954. 56:22–56:25finally provided a path to liberation.
955. 56:25–56:29It is a profound, sprawling reminder that the history of literature is never just about
956. 56:29–56:30words on a page.
957. 56:30–56:35The books we read are always physical manifestations of a history of power, resistance, and the
958. 56:35–56:37ongoing daily struggle for cultural dignity.
959. 56:37–56:40Which brings me right back to where we started today.
960. 56:40–56:45I asked you to imagine that the history you were taught was a highly curated list.
961. 56:45–56:49Well, as you finish listening today, I want you to look at the books on your own shelf.
962. 56:49–56:52Look at the news you consume today or the historical narratives you take for granted
963. 56:52–56:54in your own country.
964. 56:54–56:57Think about the heroes you were taught to revere.
965. 56:57–56:59Who curated that reality for you?
966. 56:59–57:02Who was sitting on the advisory board of your history?
967. 57:02–57:06Who decided which voices were respectable enough to print and which were uncouth and needed
968. 57:06–57:08to be silenced?
969. 57:08–57:13And more importantly, what Dushanpange, what hidden black book of suppressed history, is
970. 57:13–57:17waiting to be digitized, leaked, and exposed in your own culture?
971. 57:17–57:20Think about that as you go about your day.
972. 57:20–57:22Keep questioning the official story, and we'll catch you on the next deep dive.

Plain text

I mean, I want to start today with a bit of thought experiment. Oh, okay. Let's hear it. Right. So imagine for a second that you make this massive discovery about your own history. Like you find out that the entire timeline of literature you were taught in school, the canonical texts, the authors you had to write essays about, all those foundational myths of your culture was actually, you know, a highly curated, heavily filtered list. Wow. Yeah. And I don't just mean it was a little biased. I mean, imagine finding out that this This list was specifically designed, like deliberately engineered over centuries to exclude 90% of the population. That is, that's a lot to take in. Right. And that the real history, like the raw unfiltered voice of the people is actually hiding right now. Like it locked away in secret genealogical black books or it's buried in texts scattered across international borders. Oh wow. And it's currently being kept alive in, you know, underground digital archives. I mean, it sounds like the plot of a dystopian literary thriller. It really does. Something out of a cyberpunk novel where hackers are trying to save the past. But that is exactly what is happening in the real world right now with Mathili literature. It is a genuinely staggering situation when you actually pull back the curtain. We are looking at a literary tradition that spans well over millennium carrying the voices of millions of people. And yet the narrative of that tradition, like who gets to claim it, who gets to define it is currently at the center of a massive ongoing struggle. It's a struggle for truth and representation. It is literally a battle over memory itself. Which brings us to the monumental stack of source material sitting in front of us today for this deep dive. We are unpacking a massive text. It's called A Parallel History of Mehwah and Mathilia Literature. Specifically, we're looking at Tomaji, which spans volumes one through 100. It's huge. Yeah, it was edited by Gegendra Thakur. And to put it simply, this text acts as the manifesto of what is known as the Videa parallel literary movement. It's essentially the counter narrative to everything the establishment has claimed for the last century. Exactly. And, you know, to really grasp the gravity of this counter narrative, we first need to physically and culturally orient ourselves for a second. Sure, way to groundwork. So, Mathili is an ancient Indo-Aryan language. If you look at a map, it's spoken in the the Methila region. This is this fascinating geographic and cultural area bounded by the Himalayas to the north and the Ganges River to the south. Today it spans parts of modern-day India, specifically the state of Bihar and the Terai region of Nepal. And this is a reason that have been synonymous with intense intellectual pursuit since the Vedic age. We're talking way back. Way back. We're talking about the land where ancient philosophers sat down to meditate on on the very foundations of logic, law, human existence. It is not a fringe dialect. It is a foundational pillar of South Asian intellectual history. So we are dealing with a language that has incredibly deep ancient roots. And the mission of our conversation today is to unpack this parallel history that Gijendra Thakur and the Videra Movement are presenting. We wanna understand how it's actively challenging the official history. And when we say official, we mean the narrative that has been maintained, funded, promoted by mainstream institutions like the Sahecha Academy, which is India's National Academy of Letters. Right, the big gatekeepers. Exactly. We're going to explore hidden identities, suppressed feminist voices, subaltern heroes, the literal theft of a physical alphabet, and a modern digital rebellion. But before we jump into all of that, we should probably set some ground rules. Yeah, that's really important. Before we dive into the deep end, we need to acknowledge that the source text we are looking at today makes some incredibly heavy, intense claims. They really do. They discuss historical caste politics, systemic institutional bias, deliberate social engineering, active suppression of marginalized voices. So for anyone listening, it's important to note that our job today isn't to pick a side or endorse a specific political stance or referee these historical controversies. Right. We're not the judges here. Exactly. is simply to open up this massive archive and objectively explore the claims the parallel movement is making. We want to show you exactly how the Vedeja movement constructs its argument, without taking sides on the underlying social debates. I love that. We are here to read the map, not to draw the borders. So to everyone listening, put on your detective hat. We are unraveling a literary mystery and like any good mystery, you have to start at the scene of the crime, or, well, in this case, the very foundation of the language itself. Right. Because before we can understand who was erased from the history books, we have to understand how Mythile started and the actual physical script it was originally written in. To find that starting line, we have to go back to the linguistic roots of Mythile, which are deeply embedded in Mygadie Procret. Stop right there, because I know if I hear Mygadie Procret, my eyes might glaze over if I don't know linguistics. What exactly is a Procret? That's a great question. So, think of Sanskrit as the highly formalized, perfected elite language of ancient India. It was the language of the gods, the rituals. Sanskrit literally means perfected or polished. Okay, so high status. Right. The Prakrits, on the other hand, were the natural, unpolished, everyday vernaculars spoken by the common people. Magadhi Prakrit was the specific vernacular spoken in the eastern part of the Indian subcontinent. It was actually the court language of the ancient Marian Empire. Wow. And between the 8th and 11th centuries, this massive Magadi prakret began to fracture and evolve into distinct regional languages. As a result, Monthalie stands as a senior foundational member of the Eastern Indo-Aryan language family. It developed right alongside an inconstant conversation with Bengali, Asimese, and Odia. Okay, that makes perfect sense. It's like Latin fracturing into Italian, Spanish, and French. We all share this common DNA. Exactly. And the source material points to a specific set of texts that represent this early fractured stage, something called the chariapadas. I was reading about these and they seem wild. What are they? Oh, the chariapadas are an incredible collection of mystical songs composed roughly between the eighth and twelfth centuries. They were written by Vajrayana Siddhas. Siddhas. Yeah, these were essentially Buddhist monks wandering tantric mystics with names like Kanapada, Luipada, and Saraha. Now, here is where the split in the historical narrative really begins. Okay, lay it on me. The official institutional history often overlooks these texts or they treat them merely as a shared pre-Methy-ly linguistic curiosity, like a sort of proto-language fossil that eventually branched off. Right, the official stance is sort of like, oh, those are just interesting ancient grammar examples. Let's move on to the real literature. Yeah. But the parallel history seems to treat the Chariapadas as the holy grail. Why? Because Because the parallel movement reclaims these 50-odd chariapadas as the very first instance of subaltern democratic resistance in the language, and to understand why, you have to look at how they were written. These mystical songs were composed in something called San Diabascha, which translates to twilight language. Twilight language? I mean, that sounds incredibly poetic, but what does it actually mean in practice? It is a proto-vernacular that relies entirely on dual meanings. an intentional metaphorical language where the surface meaning might describe an ordinary everyday activity like a boatman rowing a boat or a woman weaving a basket. But the hidden, the twilight meaning is a complex instruction on tantric meditation and spiritual liberation. Oh, I see. It's almost like a code. It reminds me of how certain folk songs or spirituals in American history had a surface meaning about escaping to the north, but were disguised as religious hymns so the authorities wouldn't catch on. That is a phenomenal analogy and it gets right to the heart of the social context here. These wandering Buddhist monks were writing entirely outside the sedentary, cast-bound Sanskrit order of their time. Because the elites controlled everything else. Exactly. The orthodox elite controlled the temples, the rituals, the Sanskrit texts. But these monks were mobile, they were non-sectarian, and their twilight language explicitly criticized caste distinctions and the pomposity of elite rituals. They were essentially saying, you don't need a Brahmin priest and a Sanskrit manual to reach enlightenment. You can find it in the everyday work of the common person. So while the official history brushes these off as just ancient grammar, the parallel history says, no, look at the mechanics of what they're doing. This is the original DNA of Mithili. It was born as a language of the common people actively pushing back against the elites. Precisely. The scholars in the parallel tradition argued that the linguistic features of these occult songs reflect the lived experience of the common folk. I call this D'Isila Viana or the language of the people. Deloiana, got it. For the parallel movement, Maithili didn't start in a pristine king's court. It started in the dirt on the roads with mystics using the vernacular as a vehicle for spiritual and social liberation. That reframes everything. It gives the language this inherent rebellious momentum right out of the gate. But what's fascinating is that it wasn't just the the words themselves that were contested. It was the actual physical letters, the alphabet itself. Yes, the script. Let's talk about the theft of the script. Because if I go online right now and look up modern Mathili, it's mostly written in Devanagari, which is the exact same script as for Hindi and Sanskrit. But the sources say that's a modern imposition. That is correct. Historically, for over a thousand years, Mathili was written in its own distinct script called Tirhuta. It's also known as the Lakshara. Ruta. Right. And this script evolved directly from the ancient Brahmi script by the 7th century. Visually, it is stunning. It is an incredibly ornamental script. If you look at it, it shares significant structural and aesthetic similarities with the Bengali script. And it was used extensively throughout Northeastern India, stretching all the way into Tibet and Nepal. And the sources mentioned that this wasn't just one monolithic alphabet system. There were actually different scripts for different parts of daily life, which totally blew my mind. How did that work? It was a highly compartmentalized functional system. Tjuhuta was the high register script. It was reserved for academic, cultural, and religious affairs, including the meticulous genealogical records we'll discuss later. But you wouldn't use Tjuhuta to write a grocery list or a trade receipt. Like it was too fancy for that. Exactly. For the day-to-day business of the masses administration, trade bookkeeping people used a completely different script called K-Thi. K-Thi, okay. And if you were operating in the royal courts of Nepal, you would use the Nwari script. That is so deeply specialized. So how on earth did a culture with three distinct functioning specialized scripts end up just adopting Devanagari? Like how did that transition happen? The shift to Devanagari happened primarily in the 20th century, and it was driven by a combination of technological convenience and political expansionism. Huh, bureaucracy. Always. Institutional historians often celebrate this switch, actually. They argue it was a practical move toward Pan-Indian unity. In the early days of printing, the printing presses primarily had Devanagari-type faces, because Hindi was the dominant language being pushed for national administration. So it was just easier. It was much cheaper and easier to just print mathily in Devanagari rather than cast custom Chirhuda typefaces. Furthermore, there was a strong desire for administrative convenience within the Hindi-speaking belt. If everything was in Devanagari, the regional administrators could read it easily. Okay, I can see the bureaucratic logic there. It's cheaper, it's easier to mass produce, but the parallel movement views this as a devastating cultural loss, don't they? It's not just a font change to that. Oh, absolutely not. To the Vidaea movement, it is a direct assault on their cultural sovereignty. The parallel history emphasizes that the decline of the T'huta script actively facilitated what they call the dialectization of Mthli. Dialectization, meaning turning a distinct language into just a subcategory of something else. Exactly. By forcing Mthili into the Davenigari script, it stripped away the unique visual identity that tied Mthila to its Eastern sister languages like Bengali and Asimis. Because now it just looks like Hindi. Right. Once it looked exactly like Hindi on the page, it made it incredibly easy for Hindi-centric institutions and politicians to dismiss Mithili as merely a rural dialect of Hindi rather than acknowledging it as an independent thousand-year-old language with its own rich history. Let me try an analogy here. It's like taking a beautifully complex piece of jazz music with all its syncopation and unique rhythms and forcing musicians to only write it down using basic classical European notation. That's a great way to look at it. Right, because, yes, you can technically capture the notes, but you lose the original soul, the swing, and the cultural context of the music. And once it's written in classical notation, classical institutions can just claim it's a messy version of their own music. It forces you to ask, does changing the physical alphabet truly change the soul of a culture? According to the parallel history, the answer is a resounding yes. When you lose the script, you lose the physical connection to your ancestor's manuscripts. The visual aesthetics of T'Hurta contain the history of the region's interactions with Tibet, Nepal, and Bengal. Devanagari erased those visual borders and artificially pulled Mathili into the Hindi Heartland sphere of influence. So we have a language that started as a rebellious chant of the common people, getting visually sanitized and homogenized by modern printing presses and bureaucrats. Basically, yes. But here is where the plot thickens, because if the very alphabet of the language was suppressed, what happened to its greatest historical figures? If you control the text, you control the heroes. True. This brings us to a part of the source material that genuinely made me reread the page twice. We need to talk about the myth of the single Vigipati. Ah, yes. This is perhaps the most explosive and contentious claim in the entire parallel history archive. Let's get into it. To understand the magnitude of this scholarly intervention, we must first understand the mainstream icon that is being challenged. In the official institutional history of Mothili literature, the Diopati decor is the undisputed giant. He lived roughly between 1350 and 1450. Right, if you take a class on this, he is the guy, he's like the Shakespeare of Mothili. Without a doubt, the official history reveres him as a devout, upper-caste, Mothil Brahmin court poet who flourished under the patronage of the Oranwar dynasty. He is famously celebrated as the Abhinava Jayadeva, the new Jayadeva. And why is he called that? This title was given to him because he wrote the Padavali, which is this incredibly famous collection of sensuous, deeply devotional love songs about the divine romance of Radha and Krishna. So the mainstream picture is this highly elite, stylized scholar hanging out in a wealthy royal court, perfectly synthesizing high Sanskrit aesthetics with a vernacular melody. He is the ultimate establishment success story. That is the official narrative that has been taught for decades, but the Vadeha movement drops a massive scholarly bomb on this narrative. I'm ready. The parallel history argues, through extensive textual analysis, that mainstream historians have conflated two entirely different people into one mythic composite figure. I am still trying to wrap my head around this. They took two distinct historical human beings and just merged them into one mega-poet. Yes. How does the parallel history break this down? Who is person number one? According to the parallel research, person number one was indeed an elite scholar named Vidyapati Thakura. This man was deeply embedded in the courtly life and wrote extensively in Sanskrit and Avahata. Wait, what is Avahata? Avahata is a transitional literary language. It's the bridge between the late practice we discussed earlier and the early modern vernaculars. It was still quite formal and elite. Okay. This Sanskrit and Abhahara scholar wrote complex didactic texts like the Purusha Pariksha, which is a heavy treatise on ethics, morality, and political realism. He was a highly educated Brahmin writing for other highly educated elites. Okay, so that's the Latin scholar in the castle. So who's person number two? The parallel history asserts that this elite Sanskrit scholar is distinctly different from the much earlier genuine vernacular poet who actually composed the famous Padavali love songs in Mahili. The folk singer. Yes, the folk singer. The parallel tradition argues that the author of the Padavali was a deeply populist figure. This poet explicitly chose to write in D'Isila Viana the raw language of the people specifically to bridge the gap between the elite and the masses. Wow. The poetry is full of local idioms, earthy metaphors, and a deeply transsectarian humanist spirit. And crucially, the parallel history states that the actual cast of this vernacular Padavali poet remains historically uncertain. He was almost certainly not the elite orthodox brahmin that later Hagiographers have claimed him to be. Wait, I need to fully digest this. You're telling me it's like if future historians looked back at our era and they found the writings of a highly educated conservative political philosopher and the songs of an underground, anti-establishment folk singer. Right. And because they share a similar first name, or because the elite wanted to claim the folk songs. They just decided, yep, these are the same guy. He was a conservative philosopher who just really liked writing folk songs on the weekend. That's exactly the claim. They retroactively make the folk songs seem respectable by attributing them to the elite scholar. That is an excellent way to frame it. The parallel movement claims that modern institutions specifically groups like the Chetna Samedi and the Moffilla sans-critique parochad have deliberately invested the poet with castiest attire to reinforce Brahminical dominance over the cultural narrative. Castiest attire, that's a powerful phrase. It is. By merging the subversive populist folk poet with the conservative moralizing Sanskrit scholar, the establishment essentially neutralized the threat of the vernacular poetry. They murdered the transsectarian, humanist spirit of his songs, turning a populist hero into a safe, priestly icon who upholds the social hierarchy. It's brilliant in a terrifying way. It allows the elite to say, look, even the greatest vernacular poetry was produced by one of our Brahman scholars. It is genuinely wild to think about how easily history can be retroactively branded by whoever controls the academies in the printing presses. You can literally steal a culture's greatest voice by just changing his biography. Exactly. And I know the Vidae movement doesn't just argue this in academic papers. They actually have a specific visual symbol for this rebellion. I saw it in the sources, it's fascinating. Yes, to visually contest this appropriation, the movement promotes a specific sketch created by the artist Panaklao Mandal, who is actually a Videha Samman award recipient. Okay. This sketch depicts what they call the subaltern Vidyapati. It shows a populist, commoner figal. He doesn't have the heavy, stylized elite ornamentation you usually see in the official portraits commissioned by the academies. was a completely different vibe. Completely. It is a visual rejection of the sectarian labels placed upon him. It's a way of visually saying this poet belongs to the people, not to the court. So we've got a stolen physical script and we've got a stolen historical poet. And all of this begs a massive structural question. How does an elite group maintain this level of granular historical control over centuries? I mean, it's one thing to spin a story, But to enforce who gets remembered, who gets erased, and who belongs to what cast over hundreds of years, requires insane organization. It requires a massive database. Right. And that brings us to the next major revelation in the source material, the Pangee Records, and what the movement calls the honor killing of Gangesh Upadya. If you want to control the social hierarchy of a society over centuries, you have to control the data. You have to control the records. In the 14th century, a highly sophisticated, incredibly complex system of genealogical record keeping was established in Mithla. This system is known as the Ponjipur Band. What exactly did these records track? They tracked bloodlines. These records were meticulously maintained by specific genealogists from the Mathille-Brahman and Kayasta communities. The primary purpose of the Ponjipur Band system was to track lineages to prevent forbidden marriages, But practically it functioned as an absolute mechanism to maintain caste purity and enforce social stratification. Wow. It recorded who married whom, who was born to whom, and it created a permanent written hierarchy of social status. I would imagine that the mainstream historians absolutely love the Pongee system. It sounds like an archivist's dream. Oh they do! Institutional historians such as the famous M.M. Parmeswar Ha celebrate the Pongee system as a monumental social achievement. They view it as a marvel of ancient data management, a brilliant bureaucratic invention that preserved the cultural distinction and intellectual purity of mythola through centuries of political upheaval. But true to form, the parallel history looks at these exact same genealogical records and sees something very different, something much darker. The parallel history denounces the Ponzi system not as a marvel of preservation, but as a weapon of brumenical patriarchy and social exclusion. Their research into these genealogical files suggests that the system was not objective. It was heavily manipulated to serve the powerful. Manipulated how? Can you give me an example? Certainly. The parallel scholars argue that certain elite subcasts, which hold massive social power today like the Stratrias, did not even exist in the original medieval records. The parallel research indicates that these hyper-elite classifications were artificial creations retroactively written into the records around the year 1800. Wait, they just invented a higher caste level in 1800 and wrote it into the ancient books? Why? Because the 1800s coincided with the British permanent settlement era. It was a time when land titles and revenue collection rights were being permanently assigned by the colonial government. Oh, follow the money. Exactly. By retroactively creating these elite lineages, powerful families could consolidate land, prestige, and political power under the the guise of ancient divine bloodlines. It's social engineering disguised as ancient history. That is staggering. It's literally forging the database to get a better seat at the colonial table. And the Videha movement didn't just write an essay complaining about this. They actually leaped the documents. Yes. This is where the digital age meets medieval history. In 2009, Gijendra Thakur and the Videha movement digitally released what they call the Dushan Pungi. Which translates to the Black Book, right? exactly the black book. These are the suppressed, hidden genealogical records. They digitized and published the files that exposed the messy, complicated secrets that elite historians had actively tried to hide to maintain the illusion of their perfect social hierarchies. And there is one specific story from this black book that absolutely stopped me in my tracks when I was reading the sources. It's the case of Gangesh Upataya set the stage for us. Who is this guy? Ganesh Upataya is a towering intellectual figure from the 12th century. If you study Indian philosophy, you know his name. He is globally recognized as the founder of the Navya Nyaya School of Hindu Philosophy. Just briefly, what is Navya Nyaya? It translates to new logic. It is a highly complex, rigorous system of logic and epistemology. It deals with how we acquire valid knowledge through perception, inference, comparison, testimony. It is incredibly dense mathematical philosophy. Okay, so he's a heavyweight. Oh, absolutely. His masterwork, the top mission to money is studied by scholars from Oxford to Tokyo. In the official institutional history of myth, Ganga Shupathaya is the ultimate pristine symbol of Mayfield intellectualism. He is the proof of their divine, high-caste intellectual superiority. He is the patron saint of their academic prestige. But then the douche in Ponzi, the black book gets published on the internet, what did the leaked records reveal about the great Gangesh? The suppressed records revealed two highly controversial polluting facts about his life. First, the records stated that Gangesh married a woman referred to as a Charm Kareene. What does that mean in this context? A Charm Kareene is a woman from the Leather Tanning or Cobbler cast. In the Orthodox Bremenical Hierarchy of the time, this cast was considered severely polluting. Oh, I see. the greatest Brahmin philosopher to marry an untouchable cast woman was unthinkable to the orthodox elite. Second, the genealogical records showed a biological impossibility regarding his birth. Genghis was recorded as being born five years after the death of his father. Whoa. Okay, so the founder of their entire pristine intellectual legacy was of illegitimate birth and married way outside his caste to a marginalized woman. But what the parallel history focuses on isn't just the facts themselves, but the active modern cover-up of those facts Right the parallel research documents how a very prominent 20th century institutional historian named Romanov jaw discovered these records and then deliberately concealed these facts from other historians and the public the sources literally call this an Honor killing of his legacy. That is a brutal term, but I have to ask why Why? Why would a modern 20th century historian, living in the 1900s, care so much about who would 12th century philosopher married that they would actively destroy or hide historical documents? Because, as the parallel history argues, ancient purity myths are absolutely required to justify modern institutional power. You have to remember the foundation of their authority. Right. The bloodline. If the greatest philosopher in the history of misla, the literal bedrock of their intellectual prestige was the product of an irregular birth and a subaltern crosscast marriage, it completely dismantles their core narrative. Their narrative claims that intellectual superiority is inherently tied to biological upper caste purity. If Gangesh wasn't pure, then brilliance can come from anywhere. Exactly. And if brilliance can come from anywhere, the elite have no divine right to control the institutions. Wow, it's the ultimate threat to their monopoly. They hid the truth to protect the brand. By exposing these secrets, the parallel movement isn't just gossiping about a 12th century philosopher. They are dismantling the sacred biological basis upon which modern institutional Mothili identity is built. That is the crux of the argument. It shows that the history was curated to serve a very specific, exclusionary modern agenda. Okay, this is a perfect time to shift gears. We've seen how tightly the elite control the heartland of Mathieu in India. They controlled the script, they rebranded the poets, and they literally forged the bloodlines. But because the control on the heartland was so incredibly rigid, something fascinating happened. The diaspora. Yes. The most vibrant innovations in the Mathieu language actually happened when it escaped. When the language crossed the borders, it exploded. Let's talk about the trans-regional diaspora. This diaspora is a major glaring blind spot in institutional historiography. You see, After the Muslim conquest of the Tirhid region in the 14th century, many Mayfield scholars, artists, and dramatists fled north to the relative safety of the Nepal Valley. And there they found sanctuary under the Mala dynasty, a royal lineage that ruled the region from roughly 1201 to 1779. And from what I read, Mayfield didn't just survive as a refugee language in Nepal. It absolutely flourished, right? It became the dominant culture. It didn't just flourish, it became the pinnacle of high culture. After the Mala Kings, Maitrely was not treated as a regional dialect. It was an elite cosmopolitan court language. It was afforded equal status to Sanskrit. It became the language of sophisticated education, royal correspondence, and most importantly it became the undisputed language of the theater. Give us some tangible examples of what was actually happening in these Nepali courts. Who was writing these plays? You had a culture where the kings themselves were not just patrons of the arts, but incredibly prolific writers. in Juggerthama, for example, wrote a famous play called the Hargari Viva Natak. Okay. It's a fascinating text that integrates classical Shiva Parvati religious themes with the vibrant, entertaining dynamics of court drama. And then you have Kewlupatindramala, who was an absolute powerhouse. He single-handedly composed 26 full-length plays in Mathuli. 26 plays. Yes. For a period of about 150 years, Mathuli drama completely replaced Sanskrit drama for all practical purposes in the major cultural centers of Kathmandu, Patan, and Buktipur. It was a golden age of theatrical production. So if this is undeniably a massive golden age for the language, why is the parallel movement so frustrated about it? Shouldn't everyone be celebrating this? They are frustrated because of how this era is categorized and claimed today. The parallel history points out that modern scholars and nationalist institutions often wrongly label this entire era of output as purely Nepali or Noori literature, effectively erasing its mathyly linguistic roots. They strip the mathyly identity out of it to serve modern nationalist narratives. To make matters worse, modern Indian academies like the Sahecha Academy back in Delhi often refuse to recognize or award modern Nepalese mathyly writers. They treat them as foreigners, as outsiders to their own mother tongue simply because they live across a modern political border. That isn't furiating. You have a language that built the theatrical culture of a neighboring country. And modern institutions basically say sorry your passport is wrong, your literature doesn't count. Exactly. But the language didn't just go north to Nepal, it went east too. And this is where we get into what the sources call the mongrel languages. What happened when Mathili hit Assam in Bengal? When Mathili traveled east, it acted as a pan-Eastern donor language. It provided the linguistic staple for artificial hybrid literary languages that completely changed the religious and cultural landscape of eastern India. Okay, let's start with Assam. How did Mathili influence Assimi's culture? In the 15th and 16th centuries, Assam experienced a massive cultural and religious renaissance led by the great reformer Srimanta Sankargeva. Sankargeva created a unique dramatic tradition known as the Ankiya-naat. These were one act plays meant to propagate Vaishnava devotion, the worship of Vishnu and Krishna among the masses. But here is the fascinating part. He didn't write these plays in pure asemmys. He wrote them in an artificial literary language called Brajavali. And what exactly is the recipe for Brajavali? It is essentially medieval Mithili mixed with minor asemmys vocabulary and morphology. The history behind it is quite beautiful. Srimanta Sankar Deva had traveled extensively through Mithila during a long pilgrimage. He observed their vibrant theater, he heard the Mithili language, and he was deeply inspired by how effectively it conveyed emotion and devotion. So you took it back with him. He essentially took that linguistic framework back to Assam, infused it with local elements, and used it to enlighten his own people. It's like he heard a style of music in another country, brought it home, translated a few of the lyrics, and created a massive new genre. That's a perfect way to describe it. And what about Bengal? Because this is where the cultural impact gets really famous. In Bengal, you have the creation of a similarly hybrid language called Brajabuli. It started because Bengali students were constantly traveling to Mithila to study philosophy. Mithila was the intellectual hub. While they were there studying dry logic, they absorbed the incredibly popular sensuous Mothilli love songs of Vidyapati. they loved them. They took these songs back to Bengal where they became a massive hit. They took the folk songs back to the dorms. Exactly. And those songs eventually became liturgically central to the Gaudiya Vaisnava religious movement, which was led by the famous mystic Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. So Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, this massive religious figure in Bengal, is essentially singing these Mathili songs during his ecstatic trances. Yes. And because Chaitanya revered these songs, soon every Bengali poet wanted to write their own devotional songs in that exact same style. But they weren't native Mepheli speakers. Right, so they faked it. So they created Brajibuli, an artificial hybrid tongue, modeled heavily on Mepheli, but inflected with Bengali grammar and pronunciation. It became a massive cultural phenomenon. The great Bengali poets like Govinda Dasa composed thousands of verses in this hybrid language. It was the absolute height of literary fashion. It was so popular that there's even an incredible story about Revengerenath Tagore, right? Yeah. The Nobel Laureate. When I read this in the sources, I laughed out loud. It is a brilliant historical anecdote. In 1884, at the height of the Bengal Renaissance, a young Revengerenath Tagore composed a collection of beautiful lyrics called the Banusinga Thakur Padavali. He wrote them entirely in Brajabuli, this artificial, Mathili Bengali hybrid. But he didn't publish them under his own name. No. He initially passed them off as the newly discovered lost manuscripts of an ancient medieval poet named Bonusinga. He essentially trolled the entire literary establishment with a fake ancient Mathili manuscript. He did. It was a hoax, but he eventually confessed. However, it perfectly illustrates the lingering prestige and vitality of this Mathili-based language. Even in the modern colonial era, a genius like Tagore felt that the highest form of romantic devotional poetry had to be written in this Methili-inflected style. I just love that. To use another modern analogy, Methili was like the open source code of medieval Indian literature. Everyone in Bengal, Assam, and Nepal was taking the Methili code, tweaking it with their local language and building incredible new cultural software on top of it. Absolutely. But if this impact was so massive, how does the official history handle it? It often downplays it by fragmenting it into separate provincial narratives. The official histories of Bengal and Assam naturally absorbed these developments as their own local achievements. Meanwhile, the official Orthodox history of Methili often overlooks these hybrid forms as mongrel derivations, impure variations, not worthy of serious study. Unbelievable. The parallel history, however, insists that these trans-regional languages are the ultimate proof of Methili's true historical role. It wasn't just a regional dialect, it was a civilizational lingua franca that connected the entire eastern subcontinent. Okay, we have to fast forward a bit because while Methili was thriving abroad as this grand transregional theatrical language, things were getting very dark back home. We are entering the era of colonial modernity, famines, and satirical rebellion. What was happening in Mithila as the British colonial apparatus really took hold in the 19th century. The 19th century in Mithila was a period of extreme painful contrast. On one hand, you had this institutional elite revival led by upper caste scholars in the wealthy courts of the Darbhangaraj. They were writing refined, sanskritized poetry. Right, the elites doing their thing. But on the other hand you had the brutal devastating reality of the peasantry suffering under colonial taxation and misrule. And this brings us to a vital subaltern voice, the famine poetry of Fatah Rillo. I am so glad we are talking about him. The sources describe his work as literature from below. What was he writing about? In 1873 and 1874, a horrific famine struck the region. It was a catastrophic event. Fetturil composed what is known as the Akali Kovit. This is visceral, devastating poetry, documenting the literal starvation and suffering of the common people. Wow. He wasn't writing about abstract theology or divine love. He was writing about the agrarian crisis, the hoarding of grain, the apathy of the rulers, and the raw mechanics of colonial misrule. It is a vital historical document written in raw Mathilli verse. But if I'm understanding the pattern of the institutional history correctly, the official establishment canon completely ignored him because he wasn't writing about polite society. Almost entirely. The establishment canon heavily preferred to focus on the religious, refined poetry of writers like Chandaha, who was undertaking a massive, of the Bethlehem translation of the Ramayana at the time, the elite wanted literature that elevated their divine status, not literature that highlighted the starving peasants at their gates. In fact, Fitzgerald's brilliant famine poetry was largely unpublished and ignored until a foreign colonial officer actually took an interest in it. And that brings us to George Abraham Greerson. This guy is such a fascinating paradox in the history of this language. He's an Irish civil servant, but he becomes a pivotal figure from Athele. Greerson is indeed a paradox. He was an Irish colonial administrator and a brilliant linguist stationed in the region in the 1880s. He undertook the massive unprecedented task of formally codifying the Mothili language. He published the Mothili Christomathy, which was a collection of literature, and he wrote a systematic grammar of the language. That's huge. It was. Most importantly, he vehemently argued to the British government that Mothili was a distinct independent language. He effectively saved it from being completely swallowed by Hindi expansionists who were aggressively lobbying to classify Mathili as a mere dialect to consolidate political power. So he's the hero. He used the colonial bureaucracy to save the language from Erasure. He provided the intellectual and bureaucratic armature for its survival. Yes, that is undeniable. But the parallel history points out the severe paradox of his intervention. He saved it, but he saved it through a rigid, colonial, institutional lens. What does that mean in practice? How do you save a language but hurt it at the same time? Because of how he codified it. When Greerson compiled his grammar and dictionaries, he relied heavily on the learned Brahmanas of the region as his primary informants. The codification process inherently sanitized the language. He formalized the high-caste vocabulary as the standard, and often condemned or marginalized the rural lower caste variations as uncouth or corrupt. It was a linguistic revival, but it locked the language into the official hierarchical structure of the British era permanent settlement. It formalized the language, but it also formalized who was in charge of defining what was correct, Mathili. It's like standardizing a language by only listening to the professors at Oxford and telling everyone in Yorkshire they are speaking incorrectly. That's a great comparison. And that tension between the official stuffy rule makers and the actual living writers leads us directly to one of the most brilliant figures in modern Mathili. We have to talk about Harmo Anha. Harmo Anha, who lived from 1908 to 1984, is a titan of modern literature. He represents the satirical turn in Mayfili. He is arguably the most widely read Mathili writer of the entire 20th century. Satire is such a powerful tool. What was he targeting? He used brilliant, razor sharp, hilarious satire to attack the very institutions that considered themselves the guardians of the culture. He attacked conservative marriage customs. He relentlessly mocked the rigid, corrupt, Ponji system we discussed earlier. And he exposed Brahmin hypocrisy from within his own community. Give me an example of his work. What did he write? His most famous novel is Kanyadan. It's a brilliant comedic and tragic exploration of modern versus traditional values. The plot involves a modern English educated boy who gets married to a deeply traditional uneducated village girl. Through this clash, Jahas skewers the absurdity of the arranged marriage system and the pretensions of both the traditional Orthodox elite and the newly westernized classes. He also wrote incredible satirical character sketches in a book called Katar Kakak Tarang, Or the main character basically philosophizes while intoxicated, tearing down orthodox religious hypocrisies. His work shook the foundations of orthodoxy because it was so accessible and so funny. He was writing the books that people actually wanted to read. He was a massive bestseller in his language. So naturally, the Sahithya Academy and the National Academy of Letters rewarded him with all their biggest literary prizes. Right. Because they exist to promote the best literature. You would think so, but quite the opposite. This is one of the most glaring, undeniable examples of institutional suppression the parallel history points to. The Sahija Academy's advisory board for Mathili was heavily dominated by conservative elite organizations and they deliberately consistently refused to give Harmohan Shah their award for his groundbreaking fiction. They literally blackballed their most popular author. Absolutely. The most shocking instance occurred in 1967. Harimahantah was the obvious eligible choice for the national award that year. But the academy literally preferred to leave the 1967 award unrewarded entirely. They officially declared no winner from a Thile that year rather than give it to Harimahantah. You are kidding me? No, it's true. They set a longstanding template of awarding dry academic philosophy texts or conservative religious poetry rather than progressive critical modern literature. That is just incredible. They literally preferred to give no award to anyone rather than hand a trophy to the guy who was making fun of their orthodoxy. But you know what? It proves that humor and satire are sometimes the most dangerous weapons against the establishment. You can argue with the dry philosophical treatise all day, but when an entire society is laughing at you because it's a satirical novel, the elite panic. And that panic resulted in the deliberate marginalization of one of their greatest literary assets. The parallel history views the treatment of Hari Mohan Ha as definitive proof that institutional recognition, historically, strengthens the hands of obscurantist elements who prefer a dead, pristine, prestigious language over a living, critical, and messy one. Which perfectly sets up the modern era. Because what happened to Hari Mohan Ha in the 1960s wasn't a one-off mistake. It became the structural blueprint for how official institutions would operate for the next half century. Let's look at the modern institutional exclusions and the rise of subaltern voices. The pattern of exclusion definitely continued. But the Vedeja Movement didn't just rely on historical anecdotes or literary theory to prove this bias. They used modern legal tools to expose the mechanics of the academy. Okay this sounds juicy. Between 2011 and 2014, researchers associated with the parallel movement, specifically Vanit Upal and Ashish Anjanhar, filed extensive right to information or RTI, requests regarding the Sahitya Academy's internal operations. The Right to Information Act is basically India's Freedom of Information Act. You can legally force the government to show you their paperwork. So what did the data actually show? What was the smoking gun? The RTI Exposé revealed a staggering, mathematically undeniable level of nepotism and exclusion. The data showed that over 90% of the Sahitya Academy's translation assignments, publication grants, and travel funds went directly to the friends, relatives and close associates of the 10-member advisory board. 90%. Yes, 90%. Meanwhile, authors associated with the parallel democratic tradition, the ones writing about the actual struggles of the common people, received zero assignments. The parallel movement understandably describes this as a festival of shame. Wow. They argue it was a systematic booty distribution system that utilized taxpayer funds to keep Mathili literature as the exclusive private domain of a small interconnected elite. 90% to friends and family. That is not a national literary academy. That is a private VIP club operating on public funding. So who was being locked out of the club? Who does the parallel history consider the true ignored masters of modern Mayfilly? The Védéa archive identifies several towering figures who were systematically ignored by the official machinery for decades because their work challenged the status quo. For example, there is Rajde O'Mandal, whom the Parallel Movement considers perhaps the greatest living poet of Maitreley, representing the true, raw, subaltern voice. Okay. Then there is Bechand Thakur, who is recognized as the greatest living Maitreley dramatist. What kind of plays does Bechand Thakur write? Thakur created a parallel Dalit theater. His plays confront brutal realities, cast violence, untouchability, and the exploitation of the lowest classes. The Parallel Movement calls his intense, realistic work a necessary slap on the face of the slapstick, Trivial, highly stylized theater that usually gets official government funding. And what about the novelists? The sources highlighted a writer named Jagdish Prasad Mandal. Yes. Jagdish Prasad Mandal is a deeply pivotal figure. His novel, Pungu, represents a major subaltern breakthrough in My Thilly Pros. Pungu roughly translates to crippled or paralyzed. Heavy toggle. Very heavy. Instead of romanticizing the glorious past of Mithila, his novel meticulously documents the crippled agricultural system. He writes about the raw, harsh, unforgiving realities of lower caste, rural oppression, debt cycles, and the physical toll of agricultural labor. So no sugarcoating. Not at all. Because his work was so confronting, he was ignored by the establishment for a very long time. Though the sheer weight of his contribution forced them to finally award him the Sahiti Academy Award in 2021, decades into his career. It's incredible how long it takes for the truth to break through the bureaucracy, It's not just men from marginalized castes being excluded. The sources are brutally clear about the total systemic suppression of women writers in the official narrative. The silencing of women is profound and systematic. According to the source material, women writers are virtually absent from official mainstream anthologies compiled by the Academy. The RTI data confirmed they were almost entirely excluded from academic translation assignments. It's just wild. The parallel tradition has worked tirelessly to recover and amplify these voices. They highlight playwrights like V. Parani, whose work deals with gender dynamics and social expectations. They champion poets like Sosmeeta Pathak and scholars like Arunthadi Divi, who specifically researched and documented the historical women scholars of Mathila whose names had been erased. And the Vidae movement actually published their own anthologies to fix this, right? They did. parallel movement published in champion anthologies like a jury on guide you more this was a landmark publication it is the first major anthology exclusively dedicated to modern mathili women poets it was a direct physical rebuke to the all-male anthologies produced by the establishment and beyond the novelists the playwrights in the poets writing in modern script there's a whole other layer that the official Academy ignores the oral tradition what the sources beautifully call the throbbing human heart of folk literature. Yes. While official institutional histories focus almost exclusively on Kings, Brahmin court poets and printed manuscripts, the parallel history strongly centers on the epic folk heroes. These are massive, complex narratives preserved entirely through the oral memory of the lower castes. For instance, you have the epic of LaRica, who is the great folk hero of the Yadava community. His epic song is so vast it takes 36 hours to sing continuously. 36 hours? That is Homeric. It is exactly like the Iliad or the Odyssey in its cultural function. You also have the epic of Salhasa, who is the guardian spirit and hero of the Dusada community. And the story of Dina Badri, two brothers who are the heroes of the Mushakar community, known for their resistance against bonded labor and uppercast landlords. These are huge stories. Massive. These epics represent a living mephilly that exists completely independently of printed textbooks, university syllabi, or state academies. I have to point out the massive irony here. The official institutions claim their entire purpose is to save and promote the language. But by ignoring the women, ignoring the working class, ignoring the Dalai dramatists, and completely dismissing the massive oral epics of the marginalized communities, They are essentially amputating 90% of the body just to save the head. That's a very striking way to put it, but yes. I mean, you cannot logically claim to represent a language when your official record silenced almost everyone who actually speaks it in the real world. That is the exact core critique of the parallel movement, and it brings us to a crucial modern turning point in our narrative. When the physical institutions lock their doors to you, when the physical printing presses are controlled by a small advisory board that only publishes their friends, and when the official history books erase your ancestors, what do you do? How do you fight back when they control all the physical infrastructure? You build a new house. And if you are operating in the 21st century, you build that house in the digital realm where the old gatekeepers have no jurisdiction. Welcome to the final act of our deep dive, the Vedeja Movement and the Digital Counter Archive. The digital era of May the Literature represents a true structural democratization of the language. And what is most impressive is that it started incredibly early. The Videha movement didn't wait for modern social media. They established Megali's very first internet presence way back in the year 2000 using platforms like Yahoo Geo Cities. I remember Yahoo Geo Cities. That is ancient internet history. It was pioneering work. By 2004 they had launched a dedicated blog and by 2008 it formally evolved into the Videha Fortnightly International e-journal edited by Gajendra They realized very early on that the internet could bypass the physical academy in New Delhi. The scale of what they've achieved online according to the source material is just staggering. It's not just a blog where they post opinions. Tell us about the actual archiving work they're doing. It is a monumental act of digital preservation and it is fundamentally an act of resistance. The Videha movement has digitized thousands of Mithili books, making them available for free online, completely bypassing the physical gatekeepers. That's amazing! But they went much further than modern books. They painstakingly transcribed 11,000 ancient palm leaf manuscripts that were originally written in the T'Ruida script. Wow, they rescued the Stolen script. Yes! And they ensured its survival in the modern age. They pushed for and successfully established the T'Ruida Unicode Standard in 2014. Explain why the Unicode Standard is such a big deal. Unicode is the international standard that allows computers to process text. Before 2014, you physically could not type the original Terhuda script on a computer or a smartphone. It didn't exist in the digital world. So it was invisible online. Right. By getting it into the Unicode standard, they ensured that the original alphabet of the language can now be typed, displayed, and preserved globally forever. Furthermore, they created the first Mathili Braille site, and they are actively translating massive amounts of Mathili works into English. To reach a wider audience. Yes. doing this to present a true representative review of the literature to the global academic community rather than letting the Sahitya Academy's heavily curated biased lists define Mathili literature to the outside world. They literally created a parallel Sahitya Academy online. I really even give out their own awards now, the Vadeha's Saman, right? They do. They award prestigious prizes in literature, art, music, and drama. They have successfully created a completely alternative, democratic ecosystem of recognition. And this digital clean slate hasn't just preserved the past. It has fundamentally altered the future. Because writers are no longer afraid of being rejected by conservative advisory boards, it has allowed radically new types of literature to flourish. I love this. Give us an example of this new unbridled fiction. What are people writing now that the gatekeepers are gone? As writers no longer have to pass a purity test, they can explore previously untouchable social terrains. A prime example highlighted in the Parallel history is a novel called Suppimani Jinki. The Parallel archive cites this as the very first methililiterary work to vividly and empathetically explore the struggles of the third gender or other sex. How does the novel approach such a modern, complex topic in a traditional language? It approaches it brilliantly by reclaiming traditional imagery. The novel uses the ancient concept of Artinari Shor, which is the androgynous composite deity of Lord Shiva and Parvati, to advocate for a dignified, recognized life for transgender individuals within the culture. That is beautiful. It blends ancient theology with urgent modern human rights. This is a narrative that the traditional institutional guard obsessed with patriarchal purity would likely never have touched, funded, or published. So the internet didn't just act as a museum to save the old manuscripts. It actively provided a safe space for the most marginalized modern voices to bypass the old VIP club entirely. It gave them a platform where their words couldn't be filtered, edited, or suppressed by an advisory board. Exactly. The locus of literary power has permanently shifted from the physical academy buildings to the decentralized internet. The Vedea movement has built a living archive that cannot be burned, hidden in a drawer, or restricted by caste gatekeepers. Okay, we are coming to the end of our deep dive. I want to pull all the threads together here because this isn't just an academic argument about old books and poetry awards. The sources make it crystal clear that this literary battle has massive real-world political consequences for the millions of people living in this region. It absolutely does. You cannot separate the literature from the politics. The history of Mathili literature is inextricably linked to the historical political demand for a separate autonomous Mathila state. In the 1940s, leading up to and following Indian independence, there was a very strong political movement for statehood based on linguistic grounds. But that movement failed, why? The parallel history turns to the work of the renowned sociologist T.K. Uman to explain this. Uman observed that the movement failed for a very specific, tragic reason. Because the Mathilli region was so heavily dominated, both economically in terms of land and culturally in terms of literature by a tiny Brahmin elite. The lower castes, the working classes, and other marginalized groups actively feared that forming a separate Mathili state would be a disaster for them. Great. They were afraid of their own linguistic state. Yes. They feared that a new state would merely cement and formalize that elite monopoly into permanent political law. They actively opposed the statehood movement because the official version of Mathili identity completely excluded them. Why would they vote for a state that doesn't even acknowledge their existence in its history books. Wow. That is the ultimate tragedy. The elite's desperate desire to keep the literature pure, to keep the awards for themselves, and to hide the messy, diverse reality of their culture literally cost them their political autonomy. They lost a state because they wouldn't share the language. Precisely. And that is why the Parallel Literature Movement is so profoundly important. It isn't just about getting different books published settling scores about the 12th century. It is a fundamental grassroots attempt to prove that Mathiliy belongs to everyone. The Dalit dramatists, the women poets, and the polydiaspora, the third gender of the farmers. By uniting the literature, by acknowledging all the subaltern voices, they are taking the first absolutely necessary step to uniting the people. You simply cannot demand political sovereignty or cultural respect if your foundation is built on the deliberate exclusion of your own people. This has been an absolutely unbelievable journey. We just explored how an entire linguistic universe was shaped, hidden, and reborn. We've seen how physical alphabets were stolen for convenience, how historical heroes were rebranded to protect the elite, how genealogical records were weaponized, and how the Internet finally provided a path to liberation. It is a profound, sprawling reminder that the history of literature is never just about words on a page. The books we read are always physical manifestations of a history of power, resistance, and the ongoing daily struggle for cultural dignity. Which brings me right back to where we started today. I asked you to imagine that the history you were taught was a highly curated list. Well, as you finish listening today, I want you to look at the books on your own shelf. Look at the news you consume today or the historical narratives you take for granted in your own country. Think about the heroes you were taught to revere. Who curated that reality for you? Who was sitting on the advisory board of your history? Who decided which voices were respectable enough to print and which were uncouth and needed to be silenced? And more importantly, what Dushanpange, what hidden black book of suppressed history, is waiting to be digitized, leaked, and exposed in your own culture? Think about that as you go about your day. Keep questioning the official story, and we'll catch you on the next deep dive.

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