Is it discriminatory?
I am a regular subscriber of The Daily Star. Recently my attention has been drawn to a letter in which the writer has criticised a Bangla ad telecast on the BTV. In fact, much has been said about the subject. The dispute is revolving around the use of the word 'chelera' in the advertisement. One has pointed out that it is a discriminatory word and it is biased towards the male. Another person has supported him. Etymologically speaking the word 'chelera' in Bangla doesn't mean only the boys. Because in spoken Bangla 'chele' means both 'beta chele' (male children) and 'meye chele' (female children). Moreover the motto of the advertisement is to delineate that drastic development in medicare facilities has happened in our country and so we don't need to go outside the country for better treatment. Improved medicate service is available in our country too. Without being too much obsessive with words we should rather grasp the theme that it wants to express.
People who are working in the judiciary know that in Section 8 of the penal code 'he' means both 'he' and 'she'. That means the word 'he' includes the male and female persons. The penal code came into operation in 1860. My personal opinion is that we must give up an idiosyncratic attitude towards everything and must grasp the real meaning of a word or term by reading between the lines.
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