Any word is potentially offensive it just needs to catch on. But follow the governors’ rationale and it becomes absurd. By the standards of today’s offence diviners, we should expect Mr Snow to be unemployed by next week. More recently, in 2009, the Channel 4 news presenter Jon Snow wrote an unsolicited blog apologising ‘more than I can say’ for ‘never check’ the poem in adulthood and ‘affectionately dub’ a young colleague with the name many years before. In 1997, the Independent reported that an Asian fireman won a discrimination case against Gloucestershire Fire Service his workmates nicknamed him Gunga Din and left him in the station to make tea when they went out on call. An internet search for ‘Gunga’ or ‘Gunga Din’ as a term of abuse yields only two results. Kipling’s poem was of its time and… it is no longer appropriate to continue using the name Gunga Din.’ It is pure madness to acknowledge that the naming was entirely benign and yet justify changing it anyway. Such potentially offensive language is against the Dragon’s ethos of inclusivity and diversity. In the final line of the poem he acknowledges the Indian’s worth, saying: ‘You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din!’Īccording to Webb: ‘It is understood that Hum chose Gunga Din as the name given to the boys’ boarding house to highlight the higher ideals of equality, fairness and human dignity these align with today’s core Dragon values of Kindness, Courage and Respect.’ But here’s the twist: ‘Sadly the term “Gunga” has now become derogatory, and even used as a racial slur. Despite being insulted by the soldiers, Din performs his duties until the last, when he is shot while treating our narrator. The poem’s hero is a regimental bhisti (a water-carrier) in the service of the British military in India, whose activities are narrated from the view of a British soldier. The name was originally chosen by ‘Hum’ Lynam, headmaster from 1920 to 1942, from Rudyard Kipling’s 1890 poem. In a letter to Old Dragons, which as an alumnus I received, the chair of governors, Andrew Webb, sets out the wonderful contortions that led the board to the decision. Presumably no consultancy fees were incurred for that name. Why should radical leftists bother destroying institutions when the establishment will do the work for them? The governors of the Dragon, the prep school in north Oxford, have decreed that one of its boarding houses, Gunga Din, shall now be known as Dragon House.
0 kommentar(er)
