Your first step in approaching this poem is to check out a different poem of hers, the poem that has made her famous - 'Search for my Tongue.' It's a wonderful poem – all about identity, language and the struggle between conforming to your new culture as an immigrant and remaining true to your past and your history: in her imagistic parlance, the clash between the mother and foreign tongues.
It’s a great poem. The same idea is at the core of “A Different History” but the poem (perhaps purposefully) feels less coherent. Bhatt focuses on the dilemma of identity and belonging in “ADH”: however, where the issue is microcosmic and personal in “Search for My Tongue” (relevant to the issues of language for a very specific first-generation immigrant), “ADH” looks at the issue from a more macrocosmic, conceptual, historical perspective (the place of language in literature, history and in the face of colonisation – when one race forcibly occupies another and institutes their own alien culture over the one that previously existed: ie, British Empire colonising India) . If “Search…” was close up, “ADH” is wide angle panoramic.
The two stanzas of the poem are relatively coherent in and of themselves. Stanza 1 begins by transplanting the Greek god of Nature, Pan, to India. It could be a purposeful choice of God by linking the god of nature and fauna to the animalistic polytheism of Hinduism, or a sly pun linking Pan to Pantheism (ie God all around us) and making this literal in the world and beliefs of Hinduism. At any rate, the fundamental idea in Stanza 1 is an appreciation of language and literature and how in some cultures, it is appreciated to the point of veneration and adoration. The Indian example Bhatt gives suggests that part of the reason of this respect for language comes through a belief that language is linked to everything around it: the words of language are written on paper, which came from trees, which links to Pan; the words of language written on paper are considered as art, which is deified through Sarasvati, the Hindu goddess of the arts. Words are not just words: words are religious; words are linked indelibly to the world around us; we do not treat words (and in the poem, symbolised through books) with due care and reverence. Words are important; literature is important. Be more mindful and caring, believes Bhatt. The tone is gently chastising – some might consider slightly mocking to her own culture, but I don’t think I agree – I like the respect that she describes so I tend to err to the side of appreciation rather than cynicism.
The second stanza is more of an awkward rupture, and seems to implicitly take issue with language not as art but as a weapon – and thinking about the British colonising India, there is a real bitterness compared to stanza 1 about how the language that seemed to emblematise everything negative – the language of their oppressors, these alien invaders, taking over everything – has come to be accepted and, worse still, loved. Culturally, we see this not just through art (think about the number of very famous Indian writers who are famous for writing in English, not their Indian dialects: Salman Rushdie, Rohinton Mistry, Vikram Seth, Anita Desai) but also through areas such as sport.The key image in the centre of this stanza absolutely emphasises the negativity at the heart of this stanza, compared to the seeming positivity at the heart of the first: that language can be used to undo, destroy and potentially deceive new generations of others.
So. Language can be artistic and can be something that should be cared for and respected (stanza 1), or language can be something brutal, oppressive and deceitful (stanza 2). Or is it? The positivity of language in stanza 1 could be undermined by the nature of “sin” and its heavy handed and repressive judgement on how we treat language (you won’t get much freedom of speech or freedom of the press if every bit of language has to be treated with a religious reverence). The negativity of language in stanza 2 could be undermined by the provocative rhetorical questions in the first two sentences. Hasn’t every language, historically, been the language of the oppressor at some stage? Is it really words that have this brutalising effect on people, or is it really something else?
What is the point of this poem? There are, as ever, loads of completely feasible alternative interpretations. To me, however, Bhatt is drawing our attention to the ironies of language. My interpretation of this poem is that it is political, and it is angry. The first stanza to me could be interpreted to be the equivalent of the “mother tongue” – the ancient Hindu texts (referenced by Sarasvati, etc). The language of her origins is treated with reverence and respect. In comes the British with their colonialist oppression in the second stanza. The ferociousness of the imagery reflects the aggression of their enforced colonialism and the sadness at its unshakeable deep rootedness – even generations later, the “wrong”/foreign/alien language will not only be present still but, worse yet, “loved” by her grandchildren. There is a terrible irony that the writing of the poem itself is in English – Bhatt is one of those grandchildren, communicating in the “wrong” language. Amid the changes and dynamism of language, and how the language itself changes identity (from unacceptable language of the oppressors to accepted language of the youth), the nature of one’s identity starts slipping away. Who are we? Are we our words, our language, our dialect; our histories, our religions, our beliefs? These ontological questions (ontology is the philosophical branch dealing with the nature of being and existence) are the complex foundations, I think, of this poem.
