01. The fourth issue

02. Something that cannot bear scrutiny

03. The travails of unintelligent uplifting

04. Novels with skin-deep versus profound understandings

05. Routes and strings of obedience and obeisance

06. The ambivalent codes of benevolent suppression

07. Strings of command and obedience

08. Indicant code switch

09. A curve is the shortest route of direct command in feudal languages

10. AN INCIDENT

11. Redefining the Sepoy Mutiny

12. SEE this quote from WIKIPEDIA

13. How traditional leadership would react

Now how do an English person mix and become comfortable in such a social system, if he or she has to mix? Well, that was also another quandary that the colonial Englishman had to face. He couldn’t work under any ‘Indian’ unless that ‘Indian’ is socially an extremely high personage. In feudal language social systems, even the very having a higher grade person to be under you can be a great social elevation. Lower grade persons would immediately use the lower grade indicant words to exhibit a social seniority over another person very visibly and very powerfully.

The other man, if he is with a higher level of refinement and intellect, would stink and get despoiled. It is a social terror that cannot be imagined in pristine England. However, the very fact that one’s is a companion of an Englishman would ennoble an ‘Indian’ in the eyes of other ‘Indians’.

Even a huge part of the glamour that such persons as Nehru and MK Gandhi had is connected to the fact that they had lived in England and could address the Englishman with his name with or without a Mr. attached. In the case of persons who did terror attacks, such as Bhagat Singh, the glamour is connected to the fact that he had attacked an English official. Had he killed an Indian official, the same amount of glamour wouldn’t be there. However, here again the paradox is that the Englishman is actually a simple man in a liberal-language world, while an ‘Indian’ leader would be a higher person in a feudal language world.

The liberalism that makes the English world attractive is very easy to discern. Just look at a few persons interacting to each other in English. The easy communication that is seen is delightful. However, if the same persons interact in some ‘Indian’ language like Malayalam or Hindi, one would immediately see and feel the tight containers and routes of communication that makes interaction quite tedious, as one has to keep and exhibit his or her position in every word and usage.

Read this story THE POOL by Somerset Maugham to understand the effect of being part of a feudal language social system on a native English speaker.

Now this was the third problem that the colonial Englishman faced. In his language, human beings have the right to dignity and rights to articulation. He has to see that ‘Indians’ are equal to him. However, how he can he equalise himself to ‘Indians’ who exist at varying levels of equality, with a few of them of golden value and most of them at dirt levels? As per his own social codes, the ‘Indian’ who is equal to him can address him with his name with or without a Mr. prefixed. In ‘Indian’ languages being able to address another person with a Mr. prefixed to his name is seen as a rising-above-that-person communication code.

Moreover, the Mr. disappears fast, and the other man soon becomes a ‘mere’ name. {I have experienced this effect and its traumatic after-effects, when I used to correct persons who come addressing me with a Saar. I tell them to address me with my name with a Mr. prefixed. It is taken as a licence to address me with my name with no Mr.} He becomes equal to the level he mixes with, and this can be a maddening affect.

The fourth issue

There is this fourth issue that the colonial British faced. That of there being two extremely different and mutually opposite demeanours for the British rule in ‘India’. The first one was that displayed by the British East India Company. Seen from the modern Indian nationalistic fervour perspective, it was quite a traumatic experience for ‘Indians’. However, the real fact was quite the reverse.

The officials of the East India Company on an average had a very low opinion about the ‘Indian’ ruling classes. They could see through the veneer of their so-called affection for their lower-down depending-classes. The suppression and despoilment that they wreaked on their serfs.

The issue here was that they (East Indian Company) could employ the lower classes, which indirectly led to their (latter’s) mental and physical improvement. The first positive effect was that the lower classes could get to learn English and be on close contact and physical proximity to the native-English speakers.

The very seeing of native-English speakers is a mentally elevating event. This is a thing which most people do know, even though very few people do acknowledge it. Brightness comes into the mind as one gets to see and talk to English speakers. This may quite easily be mistaken for an affinity for the White skin coloured persons. However that is not the exact truth. Because the speakers of such egalitarian and planar languages such as English do induce positive effects into the mind of a person who is in fetters created by feudal language codes.

It is an effect seen and observed in many persons who have had the occasion to be exposed to an English ambience. It is not something a fantastic building or a five star hotel can create, but something that is quite apart from the fabulousness of monetary riches. I have experimented with this and observed this effect in the case of my own daughter as she was brought up in a totally English ambience, away from the sting of feudal codes. I have seen the positive changes that came into other children who were her companions. This all took place when I stoutly kept away from my rich family ambience and lived in surroundings of total penury.

I have also seen the negative effect eroding her positive qualities as she was forcibly put into a rich school, among rich kids, by my rich family members, as she mentally bore the brunt of a feudal degrading Malayalam language ambience, which was there, even though no one spoke to her in Malayalam. This was only an experiment and an observation of mine, and I should not say that there is anything personal in any of these things.

The British had no concern about the master class here. And they could directly deal with the lower classes here. Now, it must be admitted that the master class would feel the terror and the torment. It is like an ‘Indian’ master’s servant and family moving with the British, and talking to them in English. It may be mentioned here that most ‘Indians’ do not want their servants to speak in English. I have seen this very frankly been told to the servants by the ‘Indian’ masters and their wives. For instance, in many households in Bangalore, due to the fact that many people do speak English at home, it is quite easy for their servants to pick up English.

Something that cannot bear scrutiny

However, it is not a proposition that the Indian master class can allow. It is not an individual failing. It is only an understanding that if the servants speak in English, it is akin to the slaves of old time USA becoming equal citizens. The blacks over there do not acknowledge it.

The fact remains that they received the opportunity to speak in English, and that made the difference. They were lucky to be the slaves of the English speaking races. Most other lower classes all around the world do not get this opportunity. They do not get it, and so they remain loyal, obedient, complacent servants, even though their position is worse than that of the black slaves of the US in actuality. The blacks got the opportunity to learn English, claim for equality, claim for more than equality, right to question their benefactors who they call their enslavers (actually they were enslaved by slaver traders, many of whom were Arabs), and received their right to use profanity on them, and also to protect themselves from any scrutiny by simply bracketing any such deed as racism. It definitely is a strange world.

The travails of unintelligent uplifting

In many ways, the ‘Indian’ master class had to do something about it. It is not that they were bad and the lower classes were good. In many cases, the opposite would be correct. The master class would be more refined and softer, but then they would also see to it that the lower class never came up. The issue here is that the lower classes were more or less crude and rough, and ill-mannered. Simply allowing them to grow up would only atrophy the social system.

I have seen it happen at least through my observations. The ezhava caste of Travancore princely state. They were kept down and never given a right to take up government jobs other than at very low levels. With the formation of India in 1947, this princely state lost its independence and was forced to join India under the threat of military intervention, if it did not. The ezhavas were given the right to join the civil service. However, they did not bring in quality to the civil service. The civil service simply became a core of corruption, rude public behaviour and much more.

However, in British ruled Malabar, there was no such caste-based ban for joining the civil service. Many lower caste persons did get the opportunity to join even at very high levels. However, they were like a cream of the social system, quite good in English, well-read in English classics and incorruptible to the core. Selection process more or less filtered out others. Here what had happened was an intelligent social engineering done by the British ruling class, wherein they had the right and power to discriminate between what they deemed as quality and non-quality. (Meaning that they were not under democracy).

However, in a few years time after the formation of the nation of India, the lower castes in Malabar also received the right to reservation in public services. Now, the right to discriminate between quality and non-quality was removed. And the lower castes entered the civil services with no affinity for quality attitude to the public and no antipathy for corruption and bribes. The systems atrophied. The same people and same castes, but different selection and filtering codes; different social effects!

This type of discrimination was not enforced in the USA when the blacks were allowed to become equals. So the erstwhile master class was forced to exhibit repulsion for the members of the black races as the blacks started thrusting themselves into arenas of refinement that were definitely not their creation. This very expression of repulsion was to feature and design their own mind, mood and features.

Novels with skin-deep versus profound understandings

A slight digression. I remember reading To Kill a Mocking Bird some thirty years back. Even though the details are not clear in my mind now, and I did find the book quite boring, I do remember feeling that book is quite shallow in its various comprehensions, impressions and perceptions. A typical one-sided impression of realities. Yet, there was the usage White Thrash that was used by the Blacks to discriminate between what they perceived as good quality whites and low quality whites. They can do that. Or can they? On what basis do they discriminate?

There is a core hint pointing to some ‘respect’ versus ‘pejorative’ codes in this verbal phenomenon. The author of the book seems to have missed this code. Her perceptions are quite flimsy as well as simply skin-deep.

Some years later I did see the film ‘A Passage to India’. Did I smell some similarity in the core incident? Well, other things are different. Yet, that film also did reek of miserable shallowness of understanding of ‘India’.

The story is that of a young British girl being taken by a young ‘Indian’ doctor to show some caves. She alleges that he tried to molest her from inside one cave. The film depicts the stance of the local natives assembling in support of the young doctor, and questioning the English girl’s contentions. The fact is that these very natives wouldn’t trust this young doctor with their own daughter, sister or wife, if he were to take any one of them to even a crowded spot, let alone a cave.

The story has flaws, even if it is claimed to be based on true incidences. However, there is a point that is missed by most viewers for its gravity. The native doctor can sue her and claim compensation from her, for her ‘false’ charges. Well, this is essentially the best illustration of the ‘powers’ of an ‘occupying’ English Empire!

I did read the book ‘Gillian’ written by Frank Yerby a few years before reading To Kill a Mocking Bird. For many years, Frank Yerby had been a favourite author of mine. I was quite impressed by ‘Gillian’, in that a very special understanding of eerie codes in African languages was alluded to. I couldn’t then understand how an English author could write with so much insight. Recently I read that Frank Yerby has half-African blood, and possibly had family links to some African language and culture.

Routes and strings of obedience and obeisance

Now coming back to the East India Company, the ‘Indian’ master class had to do something about the fact that rank outsiders were uprooting the social system by allowing their serfs and servants and their children to imbibe English and understand modern social concepts which were quite alien to ‘Indian’ social understandings for centuries. Here one needs to understand the concept of social leadership and routes of command that flows downwards, and the fierce strings of obedience and obeisance that point upwards.

Here before going ahead I need to bring in an illustration from Varuna’s and Ashwina’s lack of formal education. The local school teachers could address almost everyone in the local society who were some twenty years younger than them as Nee, and refer to them as Avan or Aval, as a matter of right of domination. For most of them had necessarily been their formal students. These words, apart from being snubbing, suppressing and also regimenting, were also words that made them line up as subordinates to the leadership of individual teachers or group of teachers.

Now, in the case of Varuna and Ashwina, they were not in this group for there was no way to address them in Malayalam and make them understand this regimentation. Simply addressing them as Nee and referring to them as Aval would have no effect. It would be like the case of the White foreigners who used to folk to Kerala shores for tourism. At least some of the native population would, out of spite, use the pejorative words on them and about them, but to no avail. For, the effect comes more in making them understand the meaning, or in making a lot of others admit the usage and its meaning.

The White foreigners would simply smile and wave and move around, claiming, ‘What a sweet people’!

It is like making a jeering laughter at another person. The effect comes only if he can be made to hear it. Otherwise the laughter has no effect immediately. {However, it must be put in words here that negative words and also non-verbal codes do have some effects on the virtual code arena, but that item cannot be discussed here. {See my book: CODES of LANGUAGE; WHAT is LANGUAGE?}

The very fact that Varuna and Ashwina were not going to any school, but were in fact trainers by themselves at a very young age, did create a huge mental problem for the local teachers and social leadership. How to use the words Nee and Aval, which were their prerogatives over youngsters? Even the local shopkeepers did not use these words, which among other things would signify their domination over them. However after a lot of acrimonious complaints to the local police department, when Varuna and Ashwina were finally admitted to the local English medium school, I could discern an immediate change in the verbal codes. Some shopkeepers immediately took the liberty to use the lower indicant words.

{Beyond that a very clear lowering of personal quality was also evident in Varuna and Ashwina as they moved at the lower end of the indicant words, under teachers who themselves were placed at various levels of lower indicant words by their school owners’ household}.

The ambivalent codes of benevolent suppression

Actually these words and the right to use them in a social context did connect persons to individual or groups of social leaders. When the British East India Company was taking up local natives as their own staff members, it was a unique situation, the like of which had never before been seen in the same geographical location. When a man becomes a staff or a servant of another higher level ‘Indian’ man, there is not much of a social threat to other social leaders.

For, even though if certain social leaders may seem to be competing among themselves, to the extent of even physical fights, there is another powerful code at work, which really unite them at a higher level of cunningness. That is, the necessity to see that the socially lower class persons does not rise above their station. So that the boss of a person is actually not only his lovable benefactor, but also his constant enemy who wants to see that he does not improve. In this aim, all the social leaders are one group. So another man’s servant is also acknowledged as lower class man by others also, in verbal and non-verbal codes.

However, when the lower persons start working for the native-English speakers, they would get filled up by a powerful feel of being unfettered. In fact, they would seem to be having a mental aura that is higher than the local leaders. Moreover, they do not belong to the regimentation of the local social leadership.

Strings of command and obedience

This much is the theoretical effect. However, this is not fully a practical effect. For, everyone in the local society is still powerfully connected to each other by the feudal language words. Each word has a powerful direction component, which pulls and pushes persons towards certain locations or away from them.

Even when a native ‘Indian’ person is occupying a higher level profession inside the East India Company, he can still be dislodged from this position by a simple use of indicant word by another person who can stand in a higher social position. However, what really happens is not a dislodging, but rather a pulling into a command route by a powerful command link propped on to that person. He then is liable to obey commands which come in soft words, which do not seem to be like commands. Like a uncle of very low social stature coming near a person who is occupying a high post and addressing him with a Nee and referring to him as Avan.

This is actually a very dangerous communication set up, which even now the English world doesn’t seem to be aware of. To explain it fully, I would say that even if an ‘Indian’ is occupying a very high government job in India, or in any English nations, he can still be under the command string of anyone who has received the right to address him with a Nee, and refer to him as an Avan, without being deliberately insulting.

I need to explain the ‘insult’. The pejorative words when used by acknowledged seniors is not seen as a deliberate attempt at insult, for it is a snubbing that is allowed and condoned, and more or less, what the person is conditioned to. However, another person using this as a means of snubbing is an insult.

An uncle, aunt, father, mother, elder sister, elder brother, elder cousin, and many others including friends can do have this right to use the lower level indicant word, which here adjusts itself to the definition of endearments and affection. However, when they say something like, ‘You do this’, the word for YOU is Nee. It has a power inside it that cannot be brushed aside. No professional etiquette, training, decorum etc. can withstand this powerful request, and the person is obliged to do what the other person has asked for. He would set aside professional codes of conduct to do this.

Now, there are several areas that these things can be mentioned as affecting including the professionalism of the civil services in English nations. However, I would mention only one here. It is the habit of UK and US to train the local natives of such nations as Afghanistan etc. into quality troops. It is expected that after they leave these nations, these trained personnel can fend for themselves and defend the nation. Even though the training is quite good, it is seen that the trained personnel do use their guns on their own trainers. The English trainers cannot really understand how such good training gets overtaken by commands of rank outsiders.

The reality is that the same Afghanistan troopers, when they go home or receive a mobile call from their own social leaders, actually get powerful commands which do not have any semblance of a command in English. The exact power of this command lies embedded in seemingly small words like Nee (Thu), Avan (Uss) etc. Just the usage of the word Him as Avan (Uss) about an English officer is enough to dislodge him from his position of a trainer to that of mere non-entity. These things are known to everyone in the feudal language world, but the current day native-English-speaking world has not the least bit of idea about all this.

Another effect of this can be mentioned, which is really of very serious consequence. It is that an ‘Indian’ posted as a government official is differently related to various persons, who come to bear differing connections to him, starting from that of command to subservience. The parents, uncles, aunts, teachers, elder kinfolk all occupy positions of command over him. His friends occupy positions from where they can communicate to his level of government position, and influence his decisions, conduct and also make him bent rules to suit their own purposes.

However, the others, the common man, for whose sake he is really given this job, occupy a position of subservience, fear and terror in connection to him. All these things cannot be understood by an English social researcher by simply going for a superficial transit through the Indian social landscape. And most ‘Indian’ social researchers would simply hide these facts if at all they do understand them. For, they are also stand in the position of benevolence that these codes lend.

I am sorry that I have gone off-course so much. This shall happen again, for I cannot control my thought streams to fit completely into the thin and narrow path towards the subject matter.

Now let me come back to the East India Company. They had ‘Indian’ staff under them, to whom they had given English communication abilities to a limited extend. Their personality would go up, compared to what they had under the ‘Indian’ social feudal bosses. However, they still would be under the command in the indicant codes connecting them to their social bosses, religious leaders, familial leaders, clan leaders etc. Here, I would mention again that in ‘Indian’ feudal languages, one lends respect to those who position him or her in pejorative subordination.

Indicant code switch

I remember one instance in my own life. There was a servant maid in my own household, who was possibly of around 30 plus years age, even though her poverty ridden looks and also the lower indicant word position, had erased her features much. Everyone addressed her as Nee, and referred to her as Oal (Aval). She addressed the others in my household, and my household’s neighbours and friends as Ningal, and as Chettan and Chechi, if they were adults. And she would even use the words Avar for them. However, I did not use the pejorative form of addressing on her.

So, in effect she did not feel any subordination to me. So naturally she was not under any compulsion to use any term of ‘respect’ in connection to referring me. Even though this was not known to me, one day one of my associates came and told me in very effective terms that I should address her in very powerfully crippling pejoratives. Then only would ‘you get respect from her’.

What I was trying to emphasise and make clear is that the local social, religious and familial leadership would have a powerful hold on to the same ‘Indian’ staff of the East India Company. Their opinions, comments, refrains, cautions and the various limitations that they create for them using verbal codes, will powerfully override the various trainings and teachings that the East India Company would have given them. Even though they do actually get more breathing space and individuality under the native-English speakers, they would feel the deep pull of obligation and loyalty to their own native leadership who hold them in the claws of pejorative lower indicant verbal links.

A curve is the shortest route of direct command in feudal languages

This might be the right place to delineate the exact routes of relationship and command in a feudal language system. Look at the link this relationship: Sleeman’s son is Henry. Henry’s daughter is Kate. Kate has a daughter Catherine. Catherine’s daughter is Caroline. Caroline has a son, whose name is Andrew.

How are all these persons related to each other as per indicant words? In English, Sleeman addresses Henry as You. Henry addresses Kate as You. Kate addresses Catherine as You. Catherine addresses Caroline as You. Caroline addresses Andrew as You. In fact, the same word You goes backward also.

Sleeman....... YOU .... Henry .... YOU .... Kate .... YOU .... Catherine .... YOU .... Caroline .... YOU ... Andrew

Now, look at a similar relationship in a feudal language. Let us take the case of Malayalam. Kumaran has a son Raghavan. Raghavan has a daughter Sudha. Sudha has a daughter Remya. Remya’s daughter is Rani. Rani has a son, whose name is Santhosh.

Now, see how Kumaran addresses his son. There are three words to choose from Thangal, Ningal and Nee. In fact, these three words point to three levels of elevation. The Thangal points upwards. Ningal is pointing towards the same height. And Nee is pointing downwards.

Of these three, Kumaran chooses only the one that is pointing downwards. Now, in this situation, Raghavan is in a lower platform. From this lower platform, Raghavan has to address his daughter Sudha. In this situation also, the father has to select the lowest directing word Nee towards his daughter. Now, when taken in a comprehensive context, Sudha is positioned below a platform which already below another platform.

Now when Sudha addresses her daughter Remya as Nee, the lowest of the three indicant words. The same word goes down below to the next platform and then to the next, who is Santhosh.

If one can visualise the scene, in the virtual arena, it can be seen that each person is successively in the dwarfed platform. From Kumaran who is the top most platform, each person goes into a platform that is lower to the preceding one. So that when a link route between Kumaran and Santhosh is visualised, if would be seen going through the family hierarchy, in an arched or curved route.

However, in each platform there are other routes of communication possible, which is not used or taken up. Now, if the same persons are to be connected outside of the family hierarchy or without reference to it, a totally different shape would be seen in the link that connects them.

Now, what has to be mentioned is that the arching of the link has huge power encoded in it. It is like the bending of a stick to form a bow. A power comes into formation that can send forth a piercing arrow, in the form of a stick. In a similar manner, when communication routes gets bend through the presence of indicant words, then a supernatural power comes into the communication.

Now bear in mind that the relationship in the opposite direction is also an arch like formation.

Now, Kumaran can directly connect to Santhosh and Santhosh can connect to Kumaran, without following this route. In which case, it is a route of communication quite detached from the family hierarchy. In which case, both can be on a level of equality dignity, and can be as per the claims that each one would put forward to define superiority or inferiority.

I have had various occasions to feel the difference this makes. Or a simple change from Malayalam to English can make the straightening of the curve in the route. For, in English the route is through a You in both direction. Both sides are just a simple He or She.

Here again, there is this thing to be mentioned. In the feudal language communication, the reverse communication direction is totally different. It is like looking down a road. Then going to the other end and looking back. The perspective is quite different. The picture is different. The arrangement of things is different.

The reverse route is through the H link. A totally different route. Quite different from English. This is the greatest difference between English and feudal languages, in terms of all kinds of social and professional interpersonal communication.

AN INCIDENT

I can mention one such incident that should be in my mind. My daughter Varuna (then around five years) and I visited Bangalore for buying a second-hand computer many years ago. It transpired that I stayed outside on the second day, I might be short of Rs. 100, to buy an Inject Printer. So, I was informed from my family that I could stay in the house of a relative. He was an elderly man who had worked in the Gulf in some Arab’s family. He had arrived at a reasonably sound financial condition. He was good in English. When I arrived there in the night time, he was waiting for me. He lived alone, his wife and children being abroad.

We spoke in English. The relationship route was quite straight, with no curve inside it. However, I could understand that he was not very comfortable with this straight route communication with a young man, who through the family hierarchy route would exist quite below. However, there was no way for him to change the standard of communication. And my daughter did not know any Indian vernaculars.

I knew that he was desperately seeking an external invention to rectify the ambience to suit his low level mental impulse. He started calling my mother on the phone. He said that I can talk to her. However, I told him to refrain from bringing in my mother into the ambience. Yet, he persisted.

When my mother answered, he spoke in Malayalam. He informed that I had arrived. Actually there is no crime in what he did. However, the situation here was that he was desperate to bring in the arch in the communication, and I was not conceding to that. He mentioned about me as ‘Avan’.

Again it is not a thing worthy of mention in ordinary situations. However, I knew what was prodding him. The moment he mentioned ‘Avan’ (lowest indicant word for He, Him), there was a very visible change in the ambience. It was quite feel-able, with him elevating and me going down. My daughter, who couldn’t understand the words, could sense it.

What had taken place is actually an example of Code Switching, about which I have mentioned in this book.

Once the phone call was over, there was a very rapid shift of ambience. He changed his communication to me to a mix of English with Malayalam. Whenever the word You had to be used, he would insert the lowest indicant word for You, that is Nee in a proper mixed-up grammar. It is not an extraordinary thing to do in many family communication setups. However, I generally keep away from a communication network, wherein I feel a fetter on my power of articulation.

My tone also changed. I mentioned that I had asked him to refrain from calling my mother. However, since he had shifted me to the lowest indicant level, there was nothing to restrain him from speaking any nonsense that he wanted. The whole atmosphere was that of a young subordinate with no right to any personal dignity staying in his house. He simply mentioned the words, ‘Ninte Nut loose aano!’ (Is your nut gone loose?). (Here the 'Your' word used was of the lowest indicant level, naturally).

The time was around 12 in the night. The place was Bangalore, which is a city that I am not quite familiar with. I told my daughter that we couldn’t stay in that house. She had also understood the phrase ‘nut loose’. We came out and went ahead to find an auto rickshaw to find a hotel to stay.

I mentioned this incident just to give an illustration of the communication that moves through the powerful arch and that which moves independently.

There have been other incidences of a similar nature. The issue is that I do not practise this curved route communication with anyone including those who can come beneath me as a family member. I am sure that many persons wouldn’t mind it even if I were to use it.

Redefining the Sepoy Mutiny

This was the most powerful reason for the so-called Sepoy Mutiny, which has been erroneously defined as the First Indian Independence Movement. Actually, there was nothing ‘Indian’ about it. It was just a local mutiny by a section of ‘native’ army of the East India Company at Meerut, near Delhi. Even the local populace of Meerut did not collaborate with this section of the armed forces which had run amok and were indulging in arson and rioting. An Asian army running amok is a most terrorising thing for any population.

QUOTE FROM WIKIPEDIA: In 1856, a new Enlistment Act was introduced by the Company, which in theory made every unit in the Bengal Army liable to service overseas. Although it was intended to apply to new recruits only, the sepoys feared that the Act might be applied retroactively to them as well. It was argued that a high-caste Hindu who travelled in the cramped, squalid conditions of a troop ship would find it impossible to avoid losing caste through ritual pollution.

MY COMMENT: If this is taken as a serious contention, among the lot of varied items that are listed as the cause of the Sepoy Mutiny, it is amply seen that as a high-caste repulsion to be with other ‘Indians’. There naturally were other sepoys who stood with their officers.

SEE this quote from WIKIPEDIA:

When on March 29, Sepoy Mangal Pandey of the same regiment revolted and attacked his British officers, it was Shaikh Paltu who saved the life of the adjutant by attacking Mangal Pandey.

By that time an English sergeant-major had arrived at the scene and attacked Pandey. He was however overpowered by Pandey. While other sepoys looked on, Shaikh Paltu continued to defend the two British officers, calling upon other sepoys to join him. The sepoys, with obvious sympathy for Pandey, chose to remain inactive. Some are reported to have attacked their officers with the butts of their muskets. The sepoys however threatened Shaikh Paltu asking him to let go of Mangal Pandey. Paltu however “continued to cling to him” until the British officers had time to rise.

How traditional leadership would react

The native leadership would watch with consternation at the rising calibre and individuality of the lower classes, the same way as a person holding for dear life and hanging on a tree top would view the rising flood waters. What their immediate preoccupation would be to see that the lower classes turn against their own benefactors. This would be their crowning glory of achievement, wherein the improving lower classes would kill the very people who had improved them, and then revert back to their traditional roles of servitude. Beyond that, subordination will induce a feeling of gratitude, obligation, loyalty, love and affection. A breaking out from subordination will erase all this.

A quote from Native life in Travancore by Rev. SAMUEL MATEER, F.L.S. of the London Missionary Society published in 1883

Before going into the next chapter, the reader is requested to read about the terror that spread throughout the kingdom of Travancore when it participated in a census enumeration conducted by the British-Indian government. The way the traditional leadership could misguide the people and fool them, on all matters of English enterprise. Even though this book is written by an English priest, his mental disposition will not be the same as an Indian feudal language speaking Christian priest. That issue is discussed elsewhere in this book.

QUOTE:

The report on the Census of Travancore, taken on May 18, 1875, supplies valuable details respecting the population of the State, and their social and religious condition. The enumeration itself caused considerable commotion amongst the people, especially the lower castes. For some months previously the rural populations were in a state of complete ferment, dreading that advantage would be taken of the occasion to impose some new tax or to exercise some bitter oppression, as was often done on various occasions in the old times of cruelty and injustice.

This opportunity was seized by some Muhammadans and others, to despoil the poor slave-castes of their fowls and other domestic animals, by telling them that the Sirkar was about to seize everything of the kind, and to exact a similar amount annually, so that they had better sell them off at once at any price than lose them altogether.

The Sudras also sought to frighten them by the report that the Christians were to be carried off in ships to foreign parts, in which the missionaries and their native helpers would assist. When numbers were stamped upon all the houses, people thought that soon they themselves would be branded and seized by the Sirkar. Absurd reports were raised. Some said the Maharajah had promised to supply inhabitants for a country which had been desolated by famine. Others said that a certain number were to be shipped off on the 18th May. Till that date the people were whispering “Today or tomorrow we shall be caught.”

For example, an old woman having shut up her grandson in her house for safety, went to call her son, weeping all the way and beating her breast. One who met her comforted her and went back with her to the house, where the child was found half-dead with fright. Many of the people left their gardens uncultivated during the panic, ate up the seed corn, sold their cattle and sheep.

One man had ten fowls, and, taking them to a river, he cut off their heads, and threw them away. So dreadful is the ignorance of the people through want of education. It was even reported that the missionaries had prepared a building on the sea-coast, where a great meeting was to be held, immediately after which the people would be caught and shipped off. Many of the uneducated Sudras also in distant localities were much afraid.

The Native Government did all that was possible at the moment by issuing re-assuring proclamations to satisfy the minds of the people, but this was so far rendered nugatory by the wiles of the former slave-owners, who still hold most Government appointments, and by the amazing ignorance of the Pariahs and Pulayars, who can neither read proclamations themselves, nor ordinarily approach the places of public resort where Government notices are proclaimed.

Handbills were also prepared and published by the mission in Tamil and Malayalam; and the catechists went round with the enumerators to assist them. After the final day, the excitement speedily quieted down, and the people learned a lesson as to the folly of regarding false reports of sinister designs on the part of the Government or the Christian missionaries. The foolish alarm illustrates the evils arising from caste divisions, popular ignorance, and the absence of the simplest elements of education amongst the lowest classes.