10. A candid view of the uncanny outside [Part 1]

I am entering into a slightly fiercer area. Even though, I wanted to go directly into the theme of what happens in England (or in any other English social system) to feudal language speakers, I thought it better to first touch upon what is the reality outside.

There is the much mentioned colonial exploitation by England. Every school textbook would speak of it. However, what was the reality? For example, the Indian subcontinent. What was the reality there? Was it a case of one solid population crushed down by the English army, enslaved and the national resources stolen with quiet equanimity?

There is a reality about non-English feudal language nations which is not known inside England. I think I will take the first step on one theme from the Indian subcontinent.

There are basically three new nations that have sprung up in this landmass, which got the name ‘India’ from people who were not from this land. Pakistan, India & Bangladesh.

Let me extrapolate from the new nation of India.

There are around 1250000000 people in this nation currently. Of them there is a small percentage, quite few, who are landlords, in a very unclean sense of the word. Then there are again a few percentages of business men, of varying levels, most at the very bottom of feudal language social system. Then a minute percentage of foreign employees, who are generally fabulously rich due to the duplicity involved in currency rate depreciation. For instance, 1 GBP is near to near to 100 Rupees. And the people connected to this, actively campaign to bring it down further. The financial benefits diffuse to the family members of the foreign earners.

Then comes the most powerful group. The government employees. They are around 1 to 2 % of the population. That is around, 25000000 people. That is around 2% of the population. This minute group more or less swallows up the whole national resources of the nation. And most of them aim to send their children to English nations. Whether English nations can accommodate all of them might be the moot question in the emerging future. Currently the people who represent India in online debates and other events with grave jingoist emotions belong to the minute group.

Around 90% of the population live in very meagre conditions. Of them around 70% are at the total bottom.

The average income of an average person in India would be between2000/- to 15000/- rupees per month (20 GBP to 150 GBP). There is basically no social security scheme or pension schemes for this group, other than some meagre amounts to a few of them.

The government employee salary starts from somewhere near to15000/- to around 125000 per month, for 13 months a year. Plus an innumerable lists of other benefits, including an astronomical pension, which again has so many other cunning lootings.

If one were to get acquainted with a government employee, it would literally be like getting connected to a feudal lord.

Over the years, the government employees’ salary and perks have expanded to really astronomical levels. In fact, it literally rose to towering heights during the BPO revolution in India. At that time, the middle level government salaries were 20000 to around 40000 and the top around 60000/-. However, suddenly there appeared on the economic scene a minute group of Call centre employees, and other software related workers, who had salaries touching 30000/- to 75000/-.

Since I was intimately connected to the bureaucracy, I was quite aware of the disquiet this created. For, persons whose jobs were seen as quite ordinary and entitled to around Rs. 3000 to 12000per month were suddenly getting salaries that were right above the government employees. In a matter of months, things were amended and in the last decade there were two explosive raising of government salaries. Now the perks are totally of the astronomical levels.

Now, this is a way to maintain social discipline. For, the language is feudal, and the government employees, starting from the peons, are considered to be divine cows. Their social heights have to be maintained in the language. Very specific words of ‘respect’ are assigned in the social communication for them.

If any group of Indian feudal language persons are made to create any social system anywhere, this is essentially the design that would form naturally.

A picture that speaks a thousand words

See this video of a group of modern day Indian government employees. Some few decades back, people of this quality would never go beyond the level of menial workers. Especially in areas which had direct British rule. Even though in this contrived scene in the video, they are seen diligently writing something in a manner similar to Indian nursery school kids, the reality is quite different.

These government employees would be quite coy and helpful, and respectful to those they presume to be their seniors. In fact, they would be like the personification of great kindness, compassion, civility, humility, grace, politeness etc. However, to a common man, their first consideration would be to terrorise him or her, with distasteful words, creating bottlenecks, blocking the movement of official papers, rank discourtesy. That is the only way that they can force a common man to extend ‘respect’.

To the ordinary citizens, these officials act as a very organised ferocious beast, which sees any complaint against anyone of them as an attack on them whole. In this context see this quote from the writings of Col. Munro, who in the late 1800s was appointed as the Diwan of Travancore state for a few years. This is what he saw of the Travancore state bureaucracy:

QUOTE No description can produce an adequate impression of the tyranny, corruption and abuses of the system, full of activity and energy in everything mischievous, oppressive and infamous, but slow and dilatory to effect any purpose of humanity, mercy and justice. This body of public officers, united with each other on fixed principles of combination and mutual support, resented a complaint against one of their number, as an attack upon the whole. END of QUOTE.

This is the actual scene from times immemorial to current day. However, there are means to tame this beast. I will speak of this technique later. As to the common man, he himself also a part of this scheme of things, in which there are locations where he is the superior to various others. Acting out the same cantankerous pose.

Second aspect of the social living is the issue of social communication. There are differing words to be used to the higher persons. This word codes naturally convert into a compulsive need for obeisance and servitude to the official classes.

At the same time, the higher classes (officials as well as the social superiors/positional superiors) are compelled to act out a draconian pose. Otherwise, the lower man would go in for impertinence.

However, the fact is that there are different hierarchies (mutually incompatible) in the languages system.

For instance, in my home, almost everyday the electric power supply gets interrupted many times. The Internet connection also goes into disconnection on a periodic level of around 2 to 3 weeks. The issue is basically minor technical defects. These defects can be rectified for once and for all, if a dedicated group of personnel work on it. However, this is not really possible.

For, there are various requirements that create blocks to intelligent communication. The problem is the issue of ‘respect’ and the terror of ‘disrespect’. Everyone is under compulsion to extract respect. It is not that they personally need the respect, but the others around should be made to know that he or she had been able to derive it from the other person. Every man is compelled to act out poses that would necessarily make the other man beg for a convenience. However, for a government employee, there is no compulsion to act out a servitude to derive a benefit for a common man. Each link in the communication has a block which is like a valve.

Everyman is distracted by a small change is words of address or referring.

An intimate experience

I will simply mention something that happened in recent weeks to me. Usually I do not allow anyone to use the word ‘Sir’ or its equivalent Indian vernacular word ‘Saar’ [this is actually a derivation of the Persian word ‘Sar’ (headman)] to me. I generally mention that I can be addressed with a ‘Mr.’ prefixed to my name if the relationship if formal. However, in India very few persons would really dare to address a superior or a government official with a ‘Mr.’ prefixed to his name. Such an action would be interpreted as an ‘Eda’ in the vernacular. That is, a You bloody non-entity.

Recently I was working on a particular content development work from an Indian firm. The firm is quite cordial and polite, and the communication is in English. Generally in vernacular communication, the maintenance of to-and-fro politeness is not possible beyond a particular length of time. Due to the fast approaching issue of who is higher and who is lower, in the word codes.

However this firm used to address me with a ‘Sir’ (due to age considerations, I suppose), which was quite a botheration. In Indian feudal languages, each word is connected to a particular set of indicant word levels. In English, there is no such thing. The owners and personnel there were mostly quite young to me, in age.

Once I did mention that I would prefer the use of ‘Mr.’ prefixed to my name. However, it was not affected.

The work I was doing was quite complicated and required a lot of concentration. However, it was a new subject, and I was quite keen to get acquainted with the subject matter.

Even though, I had initiated my contact with this company directly to the company owners, slowly specific managers came into the picture, as the company grew. My connection with this firm is slightly long. When the new managers came into the picture, there would naturally be a hesitation to address a person to whom they were assigning projects with a ‘Sir’. It is natural. However, it was continued. However there was not a bit of ‘Sir’ in my disposition. Especially the way it is understood in India.

When I was doing the complicated work, suddenly one day, the addressing in the conversation was shifted from Sir to that of mere name, by the manager, with whom my formal online acquaintance was long. It is like the modern-day clutter English, wherein words like Mr., Mrs. Miss &c. have more or less vanished with the arrival of the non-pristine-English educated immigrant folks from feudal language nations. However to me there was a lot of wider understanding in this shift. The manager who suddenly shifted to the mere name addressing was not impolite, but more or less claiming to be more in line with the modern clutter-English culture.

In the vernacular Indian feudal languages, this is actually a very powerful tool of despoilment and disarray. It is like this. A person meets a higher positioned individual for some business or otherwise purpose. They get on well at a level of higher indicant word equality in the vernacular wording. After sometime, the higher positioned person slowly assigns the other man to his subordinate. In English there is no problem in this action. However, in feudal languages, there is a huge shift in so many codes and locations.

It is like this: Between the higher positioned person and his subordinate, there are deep hierarchies in various words. When the other individual is made to adjust to the level of his subordinate, he is also slowly going down to a very low level. This kind of techniques have been used in the Indian subcontinent over the centuries, on huge settler populations who arrive from elsewhere.

The newcomers do not really understand the subordination that is being machined by means of connecting them to lower positioned individuals. It is a very treacherous action. The affect gets into total position when the new comers learn the local feudal language. This particular paragraph has much significance for England, as native English speakers gets slowly connected to lower-position persons in a feudal native language speaking business or social set up, right inside England.

The manager in the business concern that was giving me assignments would have his or her own positioning codes, both towards the heights as well as to the depths. When this manager, changes a word to that of some kind of equality, standing in a vertically-placed vernacular platform in his or her office, it does make grave shifts elsewhere.

I was working on around 24 different files in the same project. It was quite complicated. However, this single shift of word from ‘Sir’ to that of mere name, devoid of a Mr. was rankling in my mind. It was not that I was angry, but somewhere I could feel a shift of location in the virtual code arena. This mental situation affected my concentration. I made a grave mistake in my work. I saved one new file on another earlier file, thereby more or less wiping out a whole file, on which I had spent so much time.

I am picking this incident up to mention a very significant problem of feudal language speaking. A simple word or lack of it, a simple gesture or a disinclination to do it, a simple mention of a link to a position or a lack of it, can all create great problems in a feudal language context. I am not saying that these things are not there in English. They might be there, however, in feudal languages, the whole landscape is literally littered with such mines. And of astounding power.

What is the implication for England in this? Well, many years ago, I think around 10 years back I had made a prediction on a UK website that NHS in Britain would slowly erode in quality of service and even go in for a parade of errors. For, I could see the slow entering of feudal language medical staff.

When the BP oil spill happened on the US shores, I once simply asked in a conversation as to whether there were non-English or non-native-British staff working in that rig during the time the accident took place. I think I got a silly answer, more or less rebuking the silliness of my query. However, I do hold my position that there are technological disasters getting encrypted into English social system, as they slowly start adjusting to feudal language speakers. See this also. March of the evil empires. To be continued….