India, June 19 -- Ah, the grand circus of politics has a new act in town-the "Language Tug-of-War"! And once again, the Marathi Manoos is sitting in the stands, watching his so-called guardians juggle interests, dance to Delhi's tunes, and occasionally throw him a half-eaten vada pav of cultural tokenism.

One day it's Marathi pride; the next day it's "Hindi is our national language, so learn it, love it, live it." And all this while the Marathi-medium school kid is still figuring out why he's learning trigonometry in English and prayers in Sanskrit while politicians debate his third language like it's a toss-up on a game show: "Aur aapki teesri bhasha ke liye aapka option hai. Hindi, ya phir. good luck finding 19 more students!"

Let's b...