Delkaria ?
ByIAN STEPHENS*
INDIA is not what she was. I mean this in no loose conversational sense, nor (still less) disparagingly; but as a statement of geographical fact. Large bits of her, to East and West, were lopped off five years ago to make Pakistan, bits containing together nearly 76,000,000 people, that is to say about 33 per cent. more than the total population of this island of Britain. No, India is not what she was.
But, though different, she carries the same name. This causes continual 'muddle and stress. Speakers, writers and the unfortunate gentlemen whose job it is to make headlines wrestle unavailingly for terms to circumvent the difficulty. How should we describe the -unit that was, but is not ? The India of the British Raj ? Pompous, and obviously far too long. British India ? Heavens, no ! That formerly meant merely the provinces, as contrasted with the Princely States. The old India, Imperial India, undivided India—none of them wholly right, all of them lengthy. Contrariwise, we may take our pick of the new India, independent India, republican India, residual India, Pandit Nehru's India; all, alas, flawed also. And where does Pakistan come in ? Undoubtedly much exciting news and valuable comment about the two countries which were brought into existence five years ago gets waste- paper-basketed merely because of misgiving or bewilderment in British minds about terms.
And there is worse. Not only are commentators and publicists here put in a muddle. Feelings overseas are con- tinually hurt at the point where, in a new-born State, they are most sensitive—national existence. Because the new India still calls herself India, having kept the old name, that which has 'become non-India, I mean Pakistan, repeatedly finds her- self getting no mention at all. Used vaguely and thoughtlessly in the pre-1947 sense, the old term is freely applied to both countries. Pakistan willy-nilly thus becomes embodied within her rival; and what could be more repugnant to the smaller when both, since creation, have remained so unfriendly as to * Editor of The Statesman, Calcutta, 1943-1951. be almost at war ? Letters still stream forth eastwards from Britain, amidst the mild tut-tutting doubtless of postal sorters,. but certainly to the fury of their Pakistani recipients, addressed to So-and-So, at Such-and-Such place, " Pakistan, India."
None of this would have happened had the new India, Pandit Nehru's India, chosen at birth, as was generally expected until late in gestation, to be called Hindustan. Touchy Pakistanis suspect the whole thing as a plot, a long-range Brahmanical cleverness from Delhi, part of the bigger country's basic dis- belief in their capacity or right to survive, of its sense of outrage that their country should even temporarily have come into being. The two States, however, recently entered their sixth year of life, amidst hearty expressions of goodwill from Britain and elsewhere. Can anything be done, by fresh forms of words, to set this vexed matter to rights, thus both assuaging hurt Pakistani feelings, and relieving Western speakers' and writers' perplexities ?
I think so, though the suggested remedy is incomplete. The term India, meaning the new India, independent India, seems to have come to stay. As a substitute Hindustan, neat though it would be, could not well be forced now into common parlance, contrary to India's choice, without causing reason- able offence. Nor would Bharat catch on here, officially enshrined though it is in the Indian Constitution as a term alternative to India. British eyes would boggle at the h; moreover Pakistani newspapermen, by habitually erasing India from incoming cables and substituting Bharat, popping it even into the mouths of people who have never heard the word, have spoilt it, using it obviously with derisive intent. No; so far as India, meaning the new India, republican India, is concerned, Pakistanis must, I fear, regard themselves as having been diddled.
But what of the wider geographical area, that which, in the British days, was India, but is now by no means wholly so ? Must we continue to endure, as the best available term, not the Indian sub-continent—for that dangerously begs the question— but " the Indo-Pakistani sub-continent " ? Emphatically I would say no. It has twenty-eight letters; what could be more uncouth ? The title of this article has only eight.
The British public is not bad at swallowing new terms. Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and other bizarre but minor novelties emerged in my boyhood all bristly from the remains of the Austro-Hungarian Empire; yet I soon watched my elders mouthing them without a qualm. St. Petersburg officially became Petrograd, then not much later Leningrad; we dutifully complied with both changes. Iran subsequently slipped into ready use, though perhaps never quite ousting Persia. Thailand admittedly has proved a bother, but merely because it altered itself back and forth three times. Brno might have been obediently uttered but that, for us, it is unpronounceable. We have lately stomached Benelux and Nato.
Still nearer our mark we may interestedly observe Indonesia, Australasia, Malaya, all of them terms fairly recent in origin, and coined to describe composite geographical areas. In Northern Europe is another one. We speak easily of Scandinavia—five syllables; might we not find Delkaria easier still ? The Delkarian peninsula, to my eye, spells itself more prettily than the Iberian. How pleasant it would have been to read, on August 11th, shortly before the national anniversaries of India and Pakistan, that " a new service of Comet jet aircraft has been opened, flying to Delkaria and Ceylon." Instead, both the B.B.C. in its morning news-bulletin, and The Times in its second leader, announced that the Comet had set forth " for India and Ceylon "—omitting Pakistan, the third member of the Commonwealth concerned, though Karachi was a scheduled stopping-place as well as Bombay. Because of such clumsiness there were once more gnashings of teeth among the affronted representatives of 76,000,000 people, both on the spot and at Pakistan House, Lowndes Square. Why Delkaria in particular ? So clear have been- the clues that perhaps I need not specify. But I would add, in offering the new word, that its undertones, in both English and Hindustani, have singular charm. Del, besides meaning Delhi, India's capital, suggests in English delicious, delight, or in Hindustani the word for heart; similarly kar, besides meaning Karachi, suggests caress, or, in Hindustani, the word for do or deed, implying health and vigour. None of the alternatives imaginable to me can be claimed to approach it in merit. Indo- Pakistania, Pakind, Indipak : all atrocious, in length, in order or in adjectival form. Delkaria has brevity, its adjective looks well, it possesses happy connotations, it puts the two countries in correct priority, yet impartially gives them an equal number of letters—three each for luck, and a couple more for fun.
Its adoption into popular usage in Britain, throughout the Commonwealth, in the U.S.A., and (look at the term !) in "the Indo-Pakistani sub-continent" itself might, I believe, really do a little to lessen ill-will and misunderstanding. I venture therefore to commend it—from the heart—for I worked in Delkaria with enjoyment and sympathy for over twenty years.
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