Word of the Day: जन
Today's word of the day is जन (jan), a masculine noun which means "people." It's an alternate term for the more commonly used लोग (loug). Gandhi used जन in creating the term हरिजन (Harijan), which translates literally as "people of god." Gandhi denoted Dalits, or people of the untouchable cast, as हरिजन and the newspaper he published between 1933 and 1948 was called Harijan. I read a good portion of the back issues of Harijan while researching my senior thesis on Partition, and I have to say Gandhi is a rather engaging writer. Which was a very good thing for me, because as I remember Harijan came bound in 42 volumes. With pink covers. Why a publisher would decide the cloth covers for Gandhi's collected newspaper issues should be pink is beyond me. But Harijan was always easy to spot on the library shelf.
