01. the power of proper introduction

02. A sly understanding

A second illustration: the power of proper introduction

There was another incident in my life. Many years ago, I used to come home to the village where my parents had built a house, during my school/college holidays. I think this incident happened after my graduation, which I had done in a city. The home village was not a home place for me, in the sense that I was not born or brought up there. I had no classmates there, nor was I connected to anyone there from a long-time association. Language-wise also, the local dialect felt like by a cranky way of speaking.

However, when people came home, they treated me with deference in indicant words. To some extent this was due to the social prominence of the house, a bit due to the deference lend to a new person and to some extent to my own outlandish stance.

There was a cow in the house, which was tied to a tree. It was quite obvious that it was not looked after nicely. The place was full of cow dung, and its body was also littered with it. Flies would pester it, and it mooed piteously throughout the daytime. Out of feeling bad about the scene (now it should be understood as a selfish stance in that I wanted to remove a disturbing scene from the vicinity), I used to take the cow to the local river to give it a bath and would even allow it to graze around the river bank.

From English, I don’t see too much of a problem that I couldn’t bear. However, in the local feudal language, what I was doing was the servants’ work or of a low-level-household man’s. Moreover, I was quite young. What I was doing was a heinous thing to myself. In fact, many persons who knew me used to feel that I was a bit mad to do this, living in a prominent house.

Not many people in the area knew me by sight, for the village was quite big and sparsely populated at that time. {Now it is teeming with people, with each household having multiplied exponentially in numbers}. Now the problem was that of association. There were other village boys doing this work as servants to some household, or for their own household. They had a social position that was commensurate to their family stature, their own age, and their professional position. However, I was not from that group. It is possible that all these things could be there in English. Yet, English does not have indicant word array.

Once, as I was going through the road, one man identified the cow. But he did not know me. He came near me, peered at me, as if in a slight mood of astonishment and said, in Malayalam: ‘You are the new boy servant working in that house?’ In English, only the word servant can be found objectionable. However in a feudal language, the word for You, is a very powerful content, the negative power of which cannot be understood in English. Again, it was a matter of association. If it was addressed to a servant, it was not a thing that anyone would have bothered.

The cow once ran into a house compound. I ran behind it. Well, it did not do any mischief. However, the householder came out and started using terrible expletives, for he thought I was the servant boy in the prominent household. For, it was inconceivable that a member of my household would do such a thing as taking the cow for grazing. It was again an issue of a mental elevation.

Most of the children of my age wouldn’t have minded the speech which was prompted by the lower indicant word categorisation of me. However, I did feel the pull down from a position of elevation that I couldn’t condone. The words Eda, Nee etc. had been used. Here again the context moves to the power of proper introduction that is there in feudal languages comes in. The easy security from all such evaluations and mental attack that pristine English could lend to a person is of a supernatural quality.

This much I digressed just to inform about the issues of ‘being identified with others’ in a feudal language situation. I had this issue with N & S parents also. Even though Ashwina’s and Varuna’s presence was improving the English of their parents and through that their general individuality, the reverse wouldn’t happen. I mean, their presence was not conducive to improving Varuna’s and Ashwina’s personality.

For, at their levels, it is sure that they would use only the lower indicant, pejorative form of indicant words. Since they couldn’t speak to them in Malayalam, the word Nee wouldn’t be used. However, they could speak about them, and I am sure they wouldn’t have any qualms about using the derogative form of She, Her, Hers etc. It would be impossible to prevent them in this regard. For one thing, unless the issue is properly explained to them, their attitude would be, ‘We use it to our own children. Why should we not use it on Varuna & Ashwina?’

DIGRESSION

In England, native-English kids moving in close companionship with feudal-language-speaking kids may not achieve any personality enhancement from this account. However the other side would really feel the pouring in of positive codes, that would literally fill them with effusive delightful mental and physical aura.

A sly understanding

This was perfectly one of the quandaries that the Colonial British officials in India faced. They had no means of using pejorative forms of words to the ‘Indians’. However, about them, and to them, the ‘Indians’ could use this form of attack for which there was no effective shield. The only partial protection that they could build up would be the lack of knowledge of ‘Indian’ languages. However, this is a protection that wears-off fast. It is a weapon which I think all the ‘Indian’ leaders who wanted to show off their prowess in comparison to that of the English natives, would and did use. Even MK Gandhi.

When speaking of Gandhi, I need to mention that his very going to England was part of the general swindle of the people of the place currently called ‘India, Pakistan, Bangladesh etc.’ Look at this issue. If one goes to such Middle-East nations like Dubai etc. one can see the powerful distance the English natives keep away from the other nationalities, such as India, Pakistan etc. The English natives maintain a superiority that cannot be erased away without defining themselves as nonentities. For, their systems are so soft that if any Asians, Africans or certain Europeans are allowed to breech and enter, they would have no means of protecting themselves.

For, it is impossible for them to mingle with most other nationalities, especially Asian. For, such mixing would simply mean the compromising of their own communication and social system. English systems allow a lot of dignity to individuals without connecting their right to dignity to such things as senior age, high jobs, senior professions, superior professional qualifications, family links to superior families and much, much more. For among them, there is no consequent change in a concept called ‘indicant words’. For, English has no ‘indicant words’.

However, the Asians, including the Indians do know the value of being on par with the English. It is like this: Most Indians cannot communicate with most senior levels of administration and social hierarchy of their own nations, from a position of equality and dignity, other than by exhibiting a pose of subservient obsequiousness. However, a simple entry into England would change all that. For, he or she then becomes a person who has been exposed to a system in which almost all persons in the social system can be addressed with their name with or without Mr., Mrs. etc. It is a powerful social climbing. Even when the British were ruling ‘India’, the rich ‘Indians’ were ready to spare any expense to get their children to study in England. For, the child then more or less becomes a part of the social scene in England.

SEE this quote from WIKIPEDIA on Aurobindo Ghosh:

Aurobindo Ghosh was born in a Bengali Hindu family in Calcutta, West Bengal, India on 15 August 1872. His father, Krishna Dhan Ghosh, was District Surgeon of Rangapur, Bengal. His mother, Swarnalata Devi, was the daughter of Brahmo religious and social reformer, Rajnarayan Basu. In 1877, Aurobindo and two elder siblings - Manmohan Ghose and Benoybhusan Ghose were send to the Loreto Convent school in Darjeeling. His father was posted at various positions at the Government hospitals in Bengal during this time. His father was believed to be an Atheist according to Aurobindo and wanted his son’s to study for Indian civil service in England.

In 1879, Aurobindo and his two elder brothers were taken to Manchester, England for a European {British) education. The brothers were placed in the care of W.H. Drewett and his wife in London. Drewett was an Anglican priest whom Ghose knew through his British friends at Rangapur. The Drewetts tutored the Ghose brothers privately; they were asked to keep the tuition completely secular, and to make no mention of India or its culture.

MY COMMENT: See the great ‘Indians’ sending their children to England to reap the rich benefits. It may be noted that Ghosh’s mother came from native religious loyalties.

I have seen many Indians working in the Gulf in menial jobs understanding this idea. If they have the financial means, they spare no expense to get their children to England or to any other English nation. However, usually, only the richer chaps can actually get this done. What the children then achieve is a great personality development.

However, the perspective of many natives in English nations is still stupid. Their own terrors and discomforts on being made to coexist on close proximity and social association with such outsiders are described as racial hatred. The fact is that the distaste is not really connected to skin colour. Rather, it is connected to the very codes that design the outsider. His or her each and every feature would go against so many fine elements of the English world.

However, why this is so cannot be understood by the English natives. For, whatever they get to understand is only an English translation version of realities. This version is still only an English item, and not the original item that is the reality in the feudal language communication code, in which each and every human being is powerfully jointed or disjointed, and regimented or dispersed by their native language codes. What these codes are and how they can affect human features and mind is not in the least understood by native-English speakers.

When we, that is, Varuna, Ashwina and I, used to the river for swimming, at times Ashwina would be a bit far from us. At that time, one or two servant class men would approach her and ask questions to her. It was quite well-known that she couldn’t understand Malayalam. However, they would use the words Nee, and Aval to her in the hope of piercing her armour of not-knowing Malayalam. She would be distressed with their intrusive questioning, for she was quite small and them quite big.

Yet, she would be spared of the real turmoil of understanding the real atrophying content in their words, due to not comprehending Malayalam. However, in the case of the English kids of the colonial times, unless their parents took a very staunch that they shouldn’t learn the local vernaculars, their secure stance of mental composure would be lost.

For, the vernacular words can literally swing them up and down, as per the whims and wishes of the others who speak it. In the US, currently the native-English speakers do react with acute violence to feudal language speakers, even if they don’t really understand the real inimical content in their speech. In India, anyone who transgresses the parameters in the use of indicant codes, can really get beaten up or burnt alive. Such is the horror it creates in the negatively affected higher-placed persons