There is a language, which transcends all languages. Profanities are not a language in themselves, but they are understood across bhashas and add further edge to any expression, as they have to the already sharp commentary that has emerged in these protests. Pithy defiance has been sometimes laced with profanities, and it is now suddenly drawing ire from sanskari quarters. Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) chairperson, Shashi Shekhar Vempati, not satisfied at the prospect of chopping films and possibly OTTs, has waded in. “An appalling revelation over the past few days is the manner in which a section of current and former media personalities have glorified and celebrated the mouthing of gender-demeaning profanities by young adults many perhaps even legal minors.”Also read: In Photos | Writings on the Wall for Modi, BJP and the NationA former diplomat was offended by what “young girls” were saying about the honourable prime minister. Other offended handles are mostly political ones, using being “appalled” to somehow block the dam that has burst and is now upon our screens, feeds and phones but most importantly, embedded in our imagination.The carefully cultivated image of the only face of the Bharaitya Janata Party (BJP) is plastered on every conceivable place, be it petrol pump billboards, ads for women’s day, ration kits, vaccine certificates or government websites. Modi, if sources of news reports are to be believed, considers reel-making as the way out of the gigantic crisis confronting him.After the protests were called off, NDMC workers paint the walls at the protest site at Jantar Mantar on July 26, 2026 as protestors wrote slogans and made graffitis. Photo: PTI.The big challenge for the government is to salvage thousands of crores of public money sunk on Modi’s and his party’s publicity. In the last parliament session, official data revealed that the BJP-led Union government’s advertising expenditure between 2014-15 and 2024-25 was Rs 5987.46 crore, that is Rs 1.5 crore a day. This is excluding what BJP state governments, PSUs, other entities and big industrialists to cough up in lavish advertising. Davids and Dianas are in a direct face off with this multi-crore Goliath. The drive now is to somehow try and reverse the tide and shame Gen Z for using words starting with M, C, B and Fs which they are using as catapults.The Wire is a news portal where we would hesitate to elaborate on most of the M, C, B and Fs. A meeting would be necessary if a quote is very important and the F word needs to be fully spelt out. *, &, # and ^ are useful, as we usually choose to mask (but not omit) those evocative but sharp phrases. So why is it important to come out in defence of “young girls” and others, saying it as they are feeling it?Also read: Public Anger Forced Dharmendra Pradhan’s Exit. BJP Praises Him as a Hero AnywayThere is a natural course down the ages, of how words, once considered unprintable, over time start making it into the public space and escape the whisper or *&# * zone. Also to be considered is the context, where those words are acceptable – edgy, sharp and expressive beyond what others may consider appropriate. One such place is at the barricades, and in movements. Protests are meant to be angry and to expect Sanskrit shlokas at such a place would be ridiculous. Then there is the context of punching up or down – who is being called names – that decides if it is acceptable. If you are punching down to someone less powerful, then it is not acceptable. But if those being targeted are more powerful than you, many more spoken words are appropriate. The students were mocking Modi, evidently the most powerful person in the country, and that gives them a far greater leeway than if they were talking to a cab driver. “Hello Modi thoda sa darr gaye kya (are you a little sacred)?” reads a graffiti. Photo: Special Arrangement.The Supreme Court recently ruled that mother-f@*&^r would not be a cause for a concern. A bench of Justices Sanjay Karol and Vipul M. Pancholi held on July 18 that abusive language and vulgar expletives, however offensive or uncivil, “will not amount to obscenity unless they are lascivious, appeal to prurient interests, and have the tendency to deprave or corrupt those exposed to them.” The court made the observation while partly allowing the appeal of a man who was convicted for obscenity for using the words “motherf***ker”, “son of a wh*re” and other expletives during an altercation over a land dispute.A land dispute is seen as enough reason to be outraged and forgive the use of “gender-demeaning profanities” by the top court of the land. Surely, a protest by people who are articulating how powerless they feel as their lives are blighted by leaked papers, a corrupt shiksha mafia and zero jobs is cause for more agitation for lakhs than a mere land dispute. Ironically, the persons who feel most unheard are being heard only after they have been able to push their messages in the most direct, assertive and brusque manner. The BJP’s public discourse vs “young girls” with placardsAlt News’ Pratik Sinha has rightly noted that the concern about “gender-demeaning profanities” (GDPs) by the CBFC chief is limited to GDPs post-2014. But what has been the example set from the top? The nation has heard Modi himself invoke “jersey cow”, even “vidhwa (widow)” when referring to the Congress parliamentary party (CPP) chief, Sonia Gandhi. His “50-crore ki girlfriend” line for Sunanda Pushkar Tharoor like the dark, “Oh Didi” for Mamta Banerjee (this as recently as 2021) are only some examples from a rich lexicon. BJP’s minister V.K. Singh regularly called journalists “presstitutes” but the likes of Vempati never objected to it. The BJP’s discourse which demeaned those less powerful happened with BJP chief ministers referring to Muslims marrying more than one wife in the debasing language of “breeding” children, which was normalised under this 12-year regime. Several pro-government online trolls, including many accounts followed by senior elected BJP leaders, often issue death and rape threats and are now recognised as a global menace. A good reason why Gen Z, which was a young child when this government came to power 12 years ago, has swum in that soup and is nonchalant about going a step further, minus the implied violence. The role of big media with screechy debates as the background noise in many homes, with the belligerence of top editors, can rightly be considered to be a factor to push people to eventually the abuse zone. What is the sanskari word zone boundary?Ravish Kumar, in a thoughtful show last week spoke of the death blows the youth movement had dealt to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh-BJP (RSS-BJP) brand of Hindi. By manufacturing a stilted, sterile and deliberately impoverished dictionary, on Doordarshan, on All India Radio, used as names of bills, other public messaging and continuous publicity drives, a near-parody of Hindi is now trotted out. It is the sterile language of upper-class Brahminism. Maxing the Sanskrit component in phrases used, with no English equivalent, is done deliberately to convey that this is a Hindi connected to Hindutva, not to Hindustani or what people use in their daily lives. This stilt and starch is not always peaceful. The erasure of Urdu, Persian, English, Braj, Avadhi, Maithili, Bhojpuri and Bundekhandi from Hindi used by the government itself is an act of violence. Using only Sanskrit-inspired words, to gaslight a nation not conversant with Sanskrit, is offensive to the country’s majority. The counter to such boxing-in and alienation from Gen Z is complete defiance and a robust pushback.Words versus deedsWords are measured by what they mean and imply. If, for instance, lynchings are done in language which is deemed free of ‘abuse’, as traditionally understood, it does not make it superior to profanity-laced posters held by laughing youngsters, whose presence made central Delhi a safe space for so many women, persons of other genders, for the many hours the crowd held there. Sociologist Saroj Giri said as much to G. Sampath, “The filthiest language was on display at Jantar Mantar, but that did not undermine the safety of the place for women/minorities – the only threat to their safety was from state apparatus. This is also something to be studied, understood.”There was a drive to shield the prime minister’s ‘image’ when the khi-khi reels which were viral online earlier this year were taken down, as was The Wire’s animation video because it laughed, as cartoons do, directly at the prime minister’s actions. This protest saw those online avatars come offline and become scrawled or painted as placards.Also read: The Modi Government Failed to Gauge the Unique Role of the Indian Entrance ExamA suitable comparison can emerge from the very morally useful ‘words versus deeds’ framing. Through the Trans Bill the government has enacted a supremely gender-demeaning law, by which people cannot even self-identify their gender. Which “gender-demeaning profanity” in the youth movement can match that low? A graffiti on a wall in New Delhi reads, “Kya socha tha darjayenge? Modi hain? (What did you think we will get scared? Is Modi there?)”. Photo: Special Arrangement.How much worse could the freshly appointed education minister, Pralhad Joshi do with words, than when he said in 2022, “I don’t find anything wrong with it” as he batted for the release of Gujarat 2002 rape survivor Bilqis Bano’s rapists, that too on Independence Day? RSS and BJP workers greeted the convicted rapists and murderers with garlands and sweets back home. No “gender-demeaning profanity” or neem ka patta kadwa hai, Narendra Modi… could match that. Or when those convicted of lynchings of Muslims were garlanded by BJP minister Jayant Sinha in Jharkhand. None.The purity of the language which protects the vilest of deeds is far worse than the most abusive language by a younger generation deployed in the service of the right cause. If parliament and media functioned as they are meant to, the language would have remained parliamentary and polite. When the angry youth speaks and those in power refuse to hear them, that is when they are compelled to take to the streets and their language becomes the language of the streets. And as the events this week has shown, to quote Bhagat Singh in a different context, that is the only language the deaf can hear. Let’s hope Modi’s ears are all perked up now.