Every republic has a grammar. Its nouns tell us who belongs, its verbs reveal what the state believes it may do, and its silences often say more than its slogans. In Delhi this week, two women journalists say that grammar was reduced to a surname.

Shaheen Khan and Nafisa Khan had gone to Saket to cover the inauguration of a hospital wing attended by Union Home Minister Amit Shah and Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta. They say they were detained, taken to a police station and beaten after trying to ask questions. Their more incendiary allegation is that the assault worsened once officers discovered they were Muslim.

There is a peculiar cruelty in the allegation because “Khan” travelled across centuries before arriving at a Delhi police station. Once a title of rank across the Turkic, Mongol and Persianate worlds, it became across South Asia an ordinary part of countless names. A word history had stripped of political meaning appears, in the reporters’ telling, to have acquired a new one: evidence of who they were.

During the Modi years, India’s public vocabulary has changed. “Infiltrator” is no longer only a border-security term. “Bulldozer” no longer describes only a machine. “Conversion” can move from theology into criminal law. “Cow” can become a pretext for vigilantism. “Waqf” can become an electoral weapon.

During the Modi years, India’s public vocabulary has........

© Daily Times