QUOTE Reading and singing, which I have heard from a house while passing the jungle in the dark of the night, was a proof of what Christianity is spiritually doing among them.” END of QUOTE

Reading and singing as been successfully used by all those who want to organise people. Yet, the English Missionaries were working for the development and recruitment of the lower castes. It was good for the lower castes. And a danger to all others who did not join. That is how it works out in feudal languages. For, the newly formed group becomes another highly regimented group with its own routes of command and levels. And this group develops its own codes for self-preservation and aggrandisement. The outsiders remain outsiders.

QUOTE We acknowledge,” said she, “that Christianity is a good religion, because formerly the Pulayars and Pariahs were afraid of demons: they used to spend all their earnings in time of harvest for offerings to their terrible demons — but now a great change is seen. They also used to steal our property, but do not do so now; and we must acknowledge that it is your religion that has produced such good results.” END of QUOTE

The word Demon might be inappropriate. I think the word is used to describe their gods. As to being honest, there is no further record of converted Christians alone being honest. When they went into disconnection with the English missionaries, they had to live and act as per the social codes of the region. That is of appropriating whatever can be appropriated, if no law is there to block them. Everyone, including persons who were Hindus, Muslims as well as Christians did steal forest wealth, after the departure of the British rule.

QUOTE At one time when a small proportion of respectable Syrian Christians were admitted into the service of the Sirkar through the influence of Colonel Munro, it was quite ridiculous to see them standing at the appointed distance professedly superintending the measurement of grain and the writing of accounts, outside the gate of the sacred enclosure. END of QUOTE

There is a wider information that has to be mentioned here. In Malabar district, there was no discrimination based on Castes for public appointment. However, to get into the higher echelons of the officialdom, I think, good English background was necessary. One Choorayi Kanaran of the Thiyya caste was one of the first persons to get into the officer class. However, he was not allowed to sit on a chair at the table to do his work by his seniors who were of the higher caste. For, giving him a higher location would amount lifting all his relatives to a higher location in the local feudal vernacular. It was the English District Collector of Malabar Henry Coonoly who found this going on. He ordered Kanaran to be given his due table and chair.

The further extension of the incident is that even though Kanaran got an elevation, it is quite doubtful if he would extent the same elevation to any of this own servants or other socially lower placed position in his own caste. Here replacing the English Collector by a native Collector wouldn’t help the other lower placed natives. This problem has been in the Christian church also. The native feudal language priest is quite a different entity compared to the English Missionary.

QUOTE “Marvellous,” he says, “has been the effect of Christianity in the moral moulding and leavening of Europe. END of QUOTE

This statement is quite a nonsense. Christianity, a religion born in Asia, got adapted into European culture. However, the moulding each nation had was directly connected to each nations language quality. Human social designs as well as culture is connected to the software that links human beings. Which is language. The quality of England cannot be found elsewhere in Europe, with the possible exception of some areas.

QUOTE But I accept Christian ethics in their entirety. I have the highest admiration for them. Speaking, then, of Christianity as it concerns this world, I repeat that it has effected a wonderful moral revolution in Europe. END of QUOTE

Again the same nonsense. In this case mentioned by a native of the Indian peninsula. Seeing English Christianity, it is believed to be the same as European Christianity. The fact that England threw out European Christianity is not mentioned.

QUOTE The Christian Church should, therefore, be prepared for the intellectual crisis which is fast approaching in India, when the temples shall be forsaken, the national superstitions and religious beliefs abandoned, and society agitated and revolutionized to its very foundation, by the spread of secular knowledge, which may lead to the most disastrous issues of atheism in creed, licentiousness in life, and lawlessness in morals, if the Gospel of Jesus Christ be not in the meantime presented to enlighten and guide the popular mind to right principles of action and obedience to God. It is no longer a question whether the old systems of heathenism will fall, but whether the Christian Church will be able to take up the work in time to prevent the people falling into utter scepticism, atheism, and godlessness. END of QUOTE

“intellectual crisis which is fast approaching in India,”? Well, this is a very debatable point. What are the problems in India? First could be that corruption has become ubiquitous phenomenon in the nation. Everyman who is a government employee is corrupt, brutal, suppressive, arrogant and cunning. However, the others are ideal persons.

QUOTE Moreover, through the indirect as well as the direct influence of Christianity, which is at present so largely permeating the country, there is a good deal of inquiry and longing after certainty, and seeking for truth. END of QUOTE

Christianity was not the real direct influence. The real influence was the English rule. In fact, it may be noted that nowhere in British India Christianity get to make any roots. For all the freedoms that is mentioned as the legacy of Christianity was given by the English rule. And much more, actually. Christianity could get to spread only in an area which the English rule left out.

The English East India Company did not takeover Travancore just because of the loyalty shown to them by Marthanda Varma. The English stood by their word. However, it is quite doubtful if Travancore really stood by its commitment over the generations. At times, Travancore kings and officials did want to act superior. Yet, if English supremacy and protection over Travancore had been withdrawn, Travancore would have ceased to exist from that very moment. In fact, Travancore kingdom got extinguished when a fool in England became the Prime Minister there and ditched everyone loyal to England in British-India.

See the last words of King Marthanda Varma to his nephew who was to be next king:

“That, above all, the friendship existing between the English East India Company and Travancore should be maintained at any risk, and that full confidence should always be placed in the support and aid of that honourable association.” Quoted from Travancore State Manual by V Naga Aiya

QUOTE A general conviction prevails amongst many of the people that Christianity is destined ultimately to conquer. END of QUOTE

It was indeed a very wrong notion that Rev. Matteer derived due to his isolation from the realities of British- India. In British India, for anyone to experience the newfound freedom, there was no need to convert to Christianity. In fact, the converted Christians who now run the Christian Church have resorted to a population boom programme. It is seen mentioned that the Church leaders have commanded their regimented followers to have more children. At least three. This is the ultimate effect of a nonsense called democracy on populations who do not have the refinement to use such a great idea. The Muslims had been using this idea to ‘spread’ their religion. In fact, their programme of spreading the religion was to sponsor a baby boom.

Now the Christian church has taken the same idea in India. Now, it is only a matter for the Hindus also to wake up to the situation. As it is in India, most urban areas have become civic nightmares for the lower financial class people. If all of these crazy, megalomaniac religious leaderships go in for a competition, then it will be a very dangerous world for the posterity to live in. Many will rush into English nations. As to the English nations, they in their total gullibility would sponsor the immigrants and end up with their own nations turning into squalor pools.

QUOTE “To-day, when passing by your schoolroom, I heard the children sing their sweet and instructive lyrics with great delight. We Sudras, regarded as of high caste, are now becoming comparatively lower; while you, who were once so low, are being exalted through Christianity. I fear,” he added, “Sudra children in the rural districts will soon be fit for nothing better than feeding cattle.”” END of QUOTE

Actually it does not need a great deal of work to teach children good English and singing. However, it might require Englishmen to sponsor such a refinement.

QUOTE Then, while at work and resident in the midst of the native population, it was scarcely possible for them, as Englishmen, to witness the cruel oppressions practised on the poor without indignantly exposing them to public reprehension, and occasionally even interfering by petition, publication, or other legal means, for the redress of grievances and the amelioration of the condition of the people, and more especially for the protection of those who placed themselves under their instruction, and sought liberty to observe Christian rules and worship and ordinances END of QUOTE

This has nothing to do with Christianity. When the English were ruling India, all the terrible privations and sufferings were very much noted. And in fact, there were occasions when some visiting Englishmen from England really blamed the English rulers here for all this terribleness. There was one writer who expressed the shock that a geographical area with so much natural wealth and resources should have such poverty. He mentioned that there is some deep error in the administration. However, the fact is that the error was in the native languages of the place.

The lower placed person is like dirt, and there is sympathy for him or her. In fact, his or her improvement is seen as a threat by the upper placed persons. When the lower placed persons improve, they try to suppress the others. This is the error here. However, when the Englishmen left and still the terrible poverty and privations continued, no one is concerned. People simple parrot that the ‘British looted India’ and are satisfied that they themselves are not responsible for the poverty. Government officials more or less loot the complete financial resources of the nation by means of unbelievable pay, pension and perks. Yet, not even one person is ready to take up this for questioning.

QUOTE they witnessed Christianity elevating the first and each successive generation of converts in education, social status, and personal worth END of QUOTE

In the ultimate count, it is just improving their own group. Not what the English rulers accomplished in British India. For instance, in Tellicherry the English rule bestowed English education to all. Yet, it had its own pitfalls. The upper castes simply had to keep away, from the despoiling effect of being placed along with the lower castes.

QUOTE Our successes have thus created a caste prejudice against the native Christians. END of QUOTE

Naturally in feudal languages, when one section goes up, the other sections go down. Neither Matteer nor any native-English speaker in current day England is aware of this terrible fact. When feudal language speakers go up, the native-Englishmen slowly would shift into squalor and dirt, in the feudal languages. Then the successes of the feudal language speakers would create some kind of ‘prejudice’ against them. Poor gullible England!

QUOTE Along their whole course, from Quilon to Trevandrum, Pareychaley, Neyoor, and Nagercoil, they found Christian congregations scattered all over the country-fruitful oases in a spiritual desert-and were received with demonstrations of the utmost affection and gratitude from the native converts, who know how much they owe to the British churches who have sent them the Gospel with all its civilizing and elevating influences. END of QUOTE

QUOTE They addressed an eager and attentive audience of some two thousand persons in the great church at Nagercoil, where they also administered the holy communion to a thousand church members. To the address of welcome presented to them, there was appended a cheque for a hundred rupees for the purchase of a chair for the use of the chairman of the Board of Directors in London, that they might never forget the Christians of Travancore. END of QUOTE

QUOTE They laid the foundation of a new chapel to be built at native cost, opened a new reading-room and caste girls’ school, and greatly cheered and animated the people by their kind words and earnest exhortations to increased faithfulness, devotion, and activity in the service of our Lord and Master. It was a more than royal progress to these representatives of English Christianity, everywhere surrounded with prayerful and loving hearts. END of QUOTE

The above mentioned three quotes reflect not just what happened in Travancore. It is rather the real spirit of appreciation that rang all over the Indian subcontinent as the English side went on tumbling down each and every feudal overlords and kings in the various places. No modern insipid Indian historian mentions that it was not the England army that overwhelmed the feudal ruling classes of the peninsula, but the lower classes of the place assembling under the leadership of the English.

QUOTE Christian missions have certainly not failed in India, where there is now (exclusive of Burmah and Ceylon, and in addition to Roman Catholic and Syrian Christians) a Protestant Christian community of 417,373 souls, which may be expected at the present rate of increase to number nearly a million in another decade. END of QUOTE

Retrospectively speaking, this endeavour only created a new group, with its own private aims. Not exactly what the English rule did elsewhere in the subcontinent.

QUOTE to lay the foundations of a Christian Church in India, which shall be the admiration of the world a hundred years hence; to train the future teachers and preachers, the future fathers and mothers and citizens of India; to help the poor and needy; to rescue the perishing; to proclaim liberty to the captives of sin, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound. END of QUOTE

Rev. Matteer’s aim was messed up by a very wrong understanding of the place. Poverty, low quality social system etc. were not the creations of any religion. Christianity cannot wipe it out in India. It has been able to create only one more selfish, self-centred group. Christian education was good to the extent that it was directly connected to England. Without this link, it was just another feudal language group with its own mediocre aims.

In my childhood I studied in a school which I think had Cambridge University Certification syllabus. The academic year was from January to December. English systems were slowly getting erased in the school ambience. I did experience the vanishing of the last of the quality English speaking priests. Then came a new breed of priests. They looked different and crude compared to the earlier persons. Even though they could speak English, they were basically crude local Travancore vernacular speaking persons. Words such as Nee \o, Eda FSm etc. which in the earlier period was only used by the menial classes of the school on the students, were now seen used by these new managers on the students.

There was a quality change. I heard them discussing changing the school curriculum to Kerala Board. For, they were at ease in that system. The other, refined, connected-to-England system was not within their mental ambience.

The wider aspects

Now let us go into the wider aspects of the contents.

Apart from the Christians, this book does lend a lot of information on all the others here.

Let us start with the Nairs.

Nairs

There are items in this book and many other books like the Travancore State Manual, Castes and tribes of Southern India &c. which would not be liked by the members of the Nair caste. The issue springs from the word Sudra. In an age when the geographical area of Malabar, Cochin and Travancore was cut off from the other parts of the peninsula due to difficulties in travelling, this word seems to have been used with no qualms. Sudras are the lowest of the four layer Caste system, which is mentioned as Chaturvaryna of the Aryans. It was generally believed that the north Indians were Aryans and the south Indians Dravidians. The chocolate coloured Hindi film heroes did also help in this feeling that some kind of superior looking individuals were inhabiting the north Indian areas. This belief has slowly worn down with the fraud known as currency exchange value difference making some of the southern states become quite rich and leading to the destitution of the north Indian states. Now the rich folks in the south also can claim superior looks.

As to the word Aryan, it has its own confusion. The term Aryan was used as the defining identification of the Germans, and I think Hitler claimed Aryan racial superiority. If that claim is tenable, then there is no scope from the north Indian claim. It might be true that the German language might have some link with Sanskrit, for it also has feudal codes as found in Sanskrit.

However, I do not know if the Germans do lay any claim on Vedic literature. With the formation of British-India, the East India Company officials did take a lot of interest in searching for ancient literature mentioned in the geographical region. This action directly led to the discovery of various literary works from various household libraries. For instance, I did find this quote in the preface to the English translation of Kama Sutra written by a person named Vatsyayana.

QUOTE: It may be interesting to some persons to learn how it came about that Vatsyayana was first brought to light and translated into the English language. It happened thus. While translating with the pundits the ‘Anunga runga, or the stage of love,’ reference was frequently found to be made to one Vatsya. The sage Vatsya was of this opinion, or of that opinion. The sage Vatsya said this, and so on. Naturally questions were asked who the sage was, and the pundits replied that Vatsya was the author of the standard work on love in Sanscrit literature, that no Sanscrit library was complete without his work, and that it was most difficult now to obtain in its entire state.

The copy of the manuscript obtained in Bombay was defective, and so the pundits wrote to Benares, Calcutta and Jeypoor for copies of the manuscript from Sanscrit libraries in those places. Copies having been obtained, they were then compared with each other, and with the aid of a Commentary called ‘Jayamangla’ a revised copy of the entire manuscript as prepared, and from this copy the English translation was made. END of QUOTE

Though no patriotic Indian would like this information, the truth is that it was the English officials of the East India Company who more or less brought out the various Sanskrit literatures including the Vedas into the proximity of the public. They searched out these books from various sources and had them translated. Otherwise in a geographical area where it was forbidden for even the lower ranks of the four castes to even hear the reading of the Vedas, it is quite inconceivable how it would come out. Basically the issue is that if the lower man in a feudal language social system improves, he would use his knowledge to bring down the stature of the upper placed man, and place him in the lower indicant positions. That is from Avar അവർ, Oar ഓര്, or Adheham അദ്ദേഹം or UNN ഉൻ to that of Avanഅവൻ, Oan ഓൻ or USS ഉസ്സ്.

Only the English were stupid enough to give literatures kept hidden by the superior persons to the lower persons. Even now, all people take care to see that the information that they possess is not given to their lower ranks. Only in English nations does information get disseminated without concern of what the other side would do with it. And the results are also very clearly visible. Knowledge and information which were in the possession of England is now in the hands of the feudal classes of the feudal language nations. However, from the other side no information, other than useless ones get returned.

Now coming back to the Vedas, citizens of India have been taught to claim the Vedas as a creation of their own ancestors. This is also utter nonsense. In the sense that the real quality of the people who lived here are seen in this book. Most of them real slaves. Not the fake slaves of the USA. The rest of the people crude slaves masters at various social levels.

Vedas might contain huge and powerful mantras. Mantras, if true, might be powerful software codes that link to the codes of reality and life. However I do not know how many Indians has seen a Vedic text. How many can read it unless they take deliberate lessons to study it? Even Sanskrit is an unknown language to almost all people in India. [It is true that some states in India have now claimed Sanskrit as the state language, and there are universities teaching the language. These actions do not make it a natural language here.] Even though I have talked to one or two persons who claim to be Vedic scholars, I do not think that they know who wrote the Vedic texts or by what machine it was written. Or what is the exact machinery by which the mantras work. [CHECK my book]

As to the history of the geographical area known as the Indian subcontinent, it is not one of an intelligent development of political systems. It was just a mess of social and political activity, with continuous political instability. Each king’s death in each kingdom created political upheavals. In England a very powerful system connected to primogeniture was set up. Such a thing was never seen in any of the kingdoms of Indian subcontinent. Even in Travancore, this was not done till the advent of the East India Company supremacy in the Subcontinent.

In spite of all this mediocrity, the people here now are indoctrinated by the national academicians to parrot everything good in the world as really connected to ‘India’.

“Not just ‘Zero’, but even democracy was discovered by us!” No one dares to ask what this zero that was discovered is, and how it was used. And how many people in this area knew about this great ‘zero’.

People whose ancestors were literally slaves who couldn’t dress properly, couldn’t sit on a chair, couldn’t address their master class by name, and who were addressed and referred to by the pejorative part of indicant words codes, and who probably are part of some populations from some part of the globe, all claim that their ancestry to the Vedic period, which is supposed to have existed some more than 7000 years back, in a geographical area which is beyond the frontiers of the India, the nation. As technology improves, it has become easy to appropriate anything and include it within one’s own claims.

A direct link to the Vedic culture, if such a thing did really exist in the area beyond the north-western border of India, is quite difficult to find. For, even within a small period of 400 years, a person becomes directly linked to around 200000 people living at that time. If this be the case, imagine the number of persons he or she would be directly connected to some 7000 years back. The fact is that human looks has much to do with the language and social culture. Even an Englishman if brought up in Indian feudal language systems, at its pejorative (Inhi, Nee, Avan, Oan, Aval, Oal) level, would fast acquire an inferior Indian look within one or two generations. An example of this phenomenon can be seen in the life history of James Scurry.

Now coming back to the Sudra issue, it is like the police Shipai (Indian police constable). Most of them belong to the lowly English educated group. They are generally from the vernacular ‘education’ background. In vernacular ‘education’, which is not actually education, they have been addressed as Nee, and referred to as Avan, Aval, Avattakal, eda, edi, enthada, enthadi etc. or their equivalent words in the respective language. Before their equally uneducated teacher class, they cringe and look shy, show cumbersome respect and get up when the teachers enter the class.

The teachers understand that they can literally treat the slap the students and also make them act like their servants. When these students become police constables, this is the typical way they behave to the public and expect the public to behave. The public also who have been trained in the same schooling system, cringe, cower, act shy, show cumbersome ‘respect’, stand up when they enter &c.

In any small time location, the police constables are small-time feudal lords, eking respect and grandeur in the local society, small-time shops, road corners &c. The constable can carry a lathi (beating stick) and at times guns. When one moves in the companionship of police constables, one becomes very much aware of the huge ‘respect’ he or she is able to garner.

People show homage by handing over bribes and other articles of homage. One wouldn’t know of the smallness of the hierarchical status of a constable unless one comes across the other varying levels, above him or her, in the police hierarchy. Naturally, the police constables in Kerala state do have a very inflated feeling about their status. For, pay is good, and much above an ordinary man can earn. There other bribes and many other facilities.

If they are reminded that in the Indian police hierarchy, they are actually shipais, it might trigger a homicidal violence in their mood.

In most areas of Travancore and Malabar areas, this might be the exact status of the most Nairs, in the days before caste hierarchy was abolished statutorily. Not everyone. For there were solitary Nairs who occupied quite high official ranks, apart from their natural social hierarchy.

If the information that Nairs are Sudras is mentioned, there have been Nairs who went into a homicidal mood. However, this mood is also just a mistake. For, the feudalism of the Indian Subcontinent is not an elite feudalism, as one might mention the feudalism in England. [English feudalism can be quite different from European feudalism due to the planar nature of English language]. In this Subcontinent, the feudalism is a kind of making the lower man a piece of shit, kind of feudalism.

A lower caste man moving along with the higher caste man would not get rubbed with any kind of higher quality, from the higher caste man. For example, a Thiyya individual of Tellicherry moving with a Nair man in the pre-British rule time, would not get any of a improvement in his information, personal quality or derive anything positive. He would be quite affably addressed as a Inhi ഇഞ്ഞി, and referred to an as Avan അവൻ, eda എടാ &c. and questioned by words like Enthada, and his family would be referred to as Ayittingal ഐറ്റിങ്ങൾ. He and his wife would be Thiyyan തീയ്യൻ and Thiyyathi തീയത്തി mentioned more in suppressive manner. He would have to sit on the floor and even the small children in the Nair household would give him commands using the lower indicant word of Inhi, ക്ട്ടാ, ഇഞ്ഞി ആട്ന്ന് രണ്ട് തേങ്ങ് ഉരിക്ക്. When seen from this social context, there is no such parallel in English feudalism.

It may be mentioned in passing that even though caste has been statutorily removed, the feudal system continues. The new higher feudal classes are the government employees, with the peons more or less acting as the Nair component. In many places, they stand at the access point to meeting a higher official (lord). The common man is now the lower castes, treated in the same manner as the lower castes of yore. In the typical manner of the lower castes of yore, the common man cannot unite, for they are kept in a position of disunity and mutually competing social levels by the officialdom using varying levels of indicant words.

Now, the fact remains that Nairs are Sudras. This the way Nairs have been defined in almost all pre-India formation time books. It is found that even Nairs did use the word Sudra to define themselves. For, it only defined them as a part of the Aryans, while others were outside the Aryan fold. However, with the formation of India, the word Sudra was found quite unacceptable.

For, it connected them to the section of people who are identified as Sudras in the northern part of the peninsula. Moreover in school education, the Sudras are mentioned as the lowest castes, which is mistake. Sudras are not the lowest castes. They are just the lowest of the four level Aryan chathurvarnya systems. There are plenty of lower castes below them.

In Travancore State Manual, there is mention of one Ramunni Menon who was not given the Diwanship in Travancore kingdom, on account of his being a Sudra.

Now, there is no doubt that the Nairs would feel quite agitated by this kind of information. They sincerely do not like to be mentioned as Sudras in current days. As is usual with everyone in this peninsula, they also want a fabulous antiquity and caste link. They want to be identified as Kshatriayas. However, this Kshatriaya claim is quite terrible one, considering that even the claims of the royal families are in doubt as per the information in this book. It may be mentioned that Matteer has no partiality towards any caste here. So his contentions and observations are dependable to that extent.

I do remember two young research scholars from the USA doing a doctoral work on the Nairs here. They seemed to have found the Aryan address for Nair. This part of their research finding came as a series of articles in an English Newspaper. The moot point would why should a doctoral research work come out as a newspaper article, unless there is some vested interest in promoting an idea.

Apart from the mistakes in their findings, one can also contemplate on the quality of the so-called PhD theses. Most of the doctoral degrees now been given out like cinema tickets are at best usage-able as tissue paper. In times of desperation. Quality-wise they have no more worth.

Yet, there is a silver lining in the midst of this dark shadow for them. I will come to this silver lining after giving quotes from this book about their Sudra lineage.