34 Gadgetries of degrading

The other wider experiences are that of making one’s servant accost another person and speak to him, make him sit and eat or drink with him, and even to touch him. Even in touching, there is specific non-verbal encodings connected to placing their hands on the shoulder in different ways and manners, to signify varying levels of intimacy, sameness or even subordinating.

People use their lower-most subordinates to thus enfeeble another social competitor. If the social competitor does not understand the wider codes inside these sly techniques, he or she is in for deep trouble.

For, equality with just another human being is not a likeable thing in feudal language social systems. What is specifically desired is equality with a socially accepted superior.

Only totally foolish people like the native-English of the USA etc. allow any other person to establish a feeling of ‘equality’. Equality is not something that has to be enforced. If two persons are equal, there is no need to mention or establish it. It is a reality.

Only in the case of really un-equal persons do an issue of enforcing an equality be required. And there is actually no need for establishing any equality in English. For, there are no codes of inequality in English communication, as understood in feudal languages.

All one has to do is to remain in one’s own location where one is at ease and comfort, without barging into other’s locations, where one is not welcome. All talk of racism, apartheid, repulsion etc. will vanish. Racism basically comes from the repulsion towards unwelcome persons who barge in. If the barging in person has quality people with him, all he has to do is to set up a quality social group, which is attractive. If he and his people cannot do this, and does not have the mettle to create a quality group, then he and his people will barge into locations which are attractive, but where they are unwelcome.

However, the above talk will not take me on the required pathway. So I am leaving that here.

Coming back to the codes of touch, in feudal language communication systems, it does have an eerie effect. In English, there is no way to understand the issues.

Even now, there is an unspoken tendency to give a different plate, glass etc. to specific classes who are deemed to be ‘lower’, as per the codes in the feudal languages. That is, to give a different lower quality plates and other utensils, to those whom the language defines as Aval (lower he, him), Aval (lower she, her), USS (lower he or she) etc.

At the same time, the utensils meant for the use of those whom the feudal languages define as Avar (higher he and she), Adheham (higher he and she), UNN (higher he and she) are of higher and different quality. The very using of these by the former will be deemed to have sullied the quality of the utensils.

There is this incident told by my mother. Though from a lower caste, due to the extremely powerful input of English education given by the English rule in her locality, she could quite easily manage to extrude a higher stature demeanour. At around age 23, she got a job as a Sub Registrar (officer cadre) in the erstwhile Malabar district of the Madras presidency. At that time, her caste was not given backward caste grade, and hence, there was on caste-based reservation for getting government jobs for her.

The higher, more refined castes had their own agonies with the gradual tumbling down of social stricture. It was not felt much among the English-educated in nearby locations. However, in distant areas where the quaint quality of English education had not spread, there was sincere agony in the minds of the erstwhile higher castes.

One day, my mother had to go for a House Register (Land partition/sale registration is done in the home of the concerned party. They do not have to come to the Sub Registrar office.). It was a Brahmin household.

Instead of allowing her to go inside their house, she was taken to an outhouse. She was given drinking water in a low quality glass which was quite easily understood as that for the lower castes. I do not want to follow this incident more, for it could end up in a discussion on a different theme.