What’s With the Flaying?

Culture and Media

Very often, Indian newspapers have the word flaying’ in their headlines. E.g today’s Rediff article: BJP flays Sonia’s silence’ on Nanavati report. The Dictionary.com website defines flaying as:

1. To strip off the skin or outer covering of. 2. To strip of money or goods; fleece. 3. To whip or lash. 4. To assail with stinging criticism; excoriate.

The papers mean #4 when they say flay, not #1, the way I understand the term, and which is how most people, I think, understand the term. As far as I can remember, it was not a popular term till the eighties. Whence its popularity? Maybe there is a whole S and M level to public discourse that I am unconscious of. Think of it. A national obsession with twatcha,” the skin that needs to made fair and lovely.’ The brides who are homely but wheatish’ in complexion. Tales of British colonial brutality that often involve whipping with hunters.’ My own experience in school with corporal punishment for not doing homework. Brides being killed with attacks on their twatcha” with kerosine and a match. The resurgence in separatist violence in the eighties in the Punjab and Kashmir. I wonder what the connections are.