01. Improving other: the various techniques

02. English manner of improving and its powerful frill elements

03. My stand

One of the starting points in this is an issue of forgetting. There was a situation in my Upper Primary class. I had come from an English background and crudely admitted into the Kerala version of ‘schools’ in class 5. The drastic difference of ambience and teacher features has been mentioned in this writing. So I wouldn’t go into that here.

In the Upper Primary class, I was to find quite a lot of difference in mental focus. I started bringing Enid Blyton books to school and started exchanging it with some students in the upper classes, who were also reading it. So, one of my close associates in the class, who sat with me also became an avid reader of Enid Blyton. However, after some time there was an altercation between us. I casually mentioned that ‘at least you started reading English novels and stories through my companionship’. What he retorted back was quite revealing, and more or less a standard in Indian attitudes.

He said, ‘Even if you hadn’t been there, I would have started reading Enid Blyton’. However, that was not a truth, for I did later in my academic life, understand that among my companions who more or less came from intense Malayalam backgrounds, none did take up reading Enid Blyton or go in for higher English novel readings, unless I purposefully introduced it. I am speaking of individuals who did not have any background links to such things.

Since I did try to insert English speaking wherever possible, many persons who were in close association with me, and yet spoke of me as a some kind of ‘joke’, did improve their English standards beyond their usual possibility.

Now, what does English do? It doth lend a very discernable brightness to the human personality, and a fetterless freedom of articulation. Native speakers of English do not understand this, and feel that English is just another language like other languages. However, that is a very erroneous understanding.

Improving other: the various techniques

There are different ways to improve another person. One is to stand tall above him, and teach him things. He remains at the bottom, yet, improves in certain ways comparative to his competing companions. Actually, he remains in the same personality. This is not really an English manner of improving.

This is the typical method of Indian traditional systems. A lower man attaches himself to a deemed higher person. This association allows him to gain some social level or position, using which he enjoys a certain level of ‘respect’, which can come in the way of such usages, as ‘Sar’, ‘Unn’, ‘Aap’, ‘Thaangal’, ‘Chettan’, ‘Annan’ etc.

He has to remain in close association to the higher man. If he tries to break free from this contact, unless he has made his own powerful group of subordinates who will stick on to him, he is bound to fall back into the wilderness of ‘no-respect’ and pejorative words. This literally means that usages such as ‘Uss’, ‘Thu’, ‘Thum’, ‘Nee’, ‘Avan’ etc. comes back to perch on him, and all higher usages are removed from his personality.

I remember an incident. Many years ago in a north Indian city, I was witness to commencement of a rupture of relationship between a lady and her loyal subordinate. She was running a business, and people called her name with a Maadam suffixed to it. The loyal subordinate became sort of an undesignated manager of hers. He was addressed by many others, by his name with a Saar or Saab suffixed to his name.

This suffixing was gained by him through his attachment to her. When he acted over smart and tried to carve out a fiefdom of him own, the detachment happened. She very pointedly told me that all his titles of Saar and Saab were due to the position she gave him. Without it, he just became a mere name. That is a powerful denuding of a person’s social individuality.

These issues are totally not there in English, in the sense that an association with a higher man doesn’t create any higher indicant word on him nor does his breaking away from the higher man remove any such indicant words from his personality. {Still it must be admitted that in the virtual codes these things do make changes. I cannot go into that here}.

However, the English manner of improving a feudal language speaking man is quite dangerous, and of unpredictable portends. For the individual who is being improved is under the influence and indoctrination of so many others. There is no guru-shikshya relationship.

English manner of improving and its powerful frill elements

Now what is this English manner of improving?

English manner of improving actually aims at the wholesome developing of a social system. In that the persons who learn English more or less gets an opportunity to outgrow the various fetters of their native feudal language that has placed them below many persons, in quite fixed subordinate positions.

That much is good. However, the fact remains that the persons who do improve thus doesn’t usually extend this liberty to persons who are struck under them. What causes the agony of seeing the subordinated persons improve is the fact that everyone is still living in an outwardly feudal language system. In such a situation, when English comes, it moves the subordinated persons to a level of equal dignity with higher persons.

However actually it only has moved the person who is still a subordinate in the native feudal language to a higher plane. In other words, when the communication moves back to the feudal variety, all that is achieved is just the removal of the words of ‘respect’ attached to the higher persons. In other words, the higher persons are pulled into the disreputable levels of ‘no-respect’. Since ‘respect’ is the power code that runs commands, stature, higher earnings etc., a removal of these things could be equivalent to social death.

So generally when persons who live in a feudal-language world learn English, they do not show much haste to share this knowledge with the others. Even if they do strive to teach English to the subordinated class, that English would be only a literal translation of the feudal language codes. It is a substandard variety of English that can be called ‘Coolie English’ or ‘Gandhi English’. For, this type of English carries the same level of insecurity embedded in feudal languages, with regard to the elevation of lower persons.

CHECK Chapter 48 to know about ‘our’ culture.

My stand

However, I took up the stand that this nation would improve if good quality English without any feudal language affliction could be brought in. There are many reasons for this stand of mine. One reason could be that I had an opportunity in life to see the real quality of British intervention in India, without being affected by the nationalistic nonsensical propaganda that fills the textbooks, and the visual and print media.

One reason for this was the very curious issue of one of my parent being part of the Madras State Civil Service from which she moved to the Kerala government service when the state of Kerala was formed. The various information that I received and observed is quite unique in the sense that many people of Kerala and of India do not know these things. They are observations that should have been erased by time. However, some of what I saw, experienced and observed are there in some of my writings. Horrendous India! A parade of façade in verbal codes!

The general version of the British in Indian historical incidences is that of a people who were crooks, and who ravaged the nation and stole the goods. However, my observations, understandings and manifold experiences in this regard was that the British, especially the English version of them, were a very good team of people who took up the issue of improving the natives here. The British persons who were in India did face a lot of seemingly insurmountable problems from various directions and corners.