Robert Clive and Offshoring*

It is definitely a strange deduction, to suggest a connection between what Robert Clive said in the year 1772, and the present day happening of off shoring of economic activity.

Yet, I may be able to pick out a few relevant themes for debate, in connection to the diverse facets of off shoring and its future impacts. You see I am interested, here, to connect the whole theme to the conflict between the various software for communication called languages.

Let me quote from Robert Clive: The inhabitants, especially of Bengal, in inferior stations, are servile, mean, submissive, and humble. In superior stations, they are luxurious, effeminate, tyrannical, treacherous, venal, cruel.

Actually, when I saw these words, I was wonderstruck, for this was one of the premises from where I built up my contentions in my book, on the affect of languages. The observation was of unimaginable correctness. That is, in feudal languages, men exhibit sharply different mental and behavioural features, according to the station they occupy in the language structure. And what is stressed here is absolutely different from what one would understand, by reading these words, from an English worldly experience.

Other than that, so many other issues come up. One, the force of the language that induces a man to find pleasure in giving presents and other items of homage to those who come on the upper stations of the language.

Second, the fact that the Englishmen who arrived in India, existed above the soaking of the local languages, and hence were sitting on a sort of surface tension; here he is above the pressures that the language exerts on other beings in the same geographical area. If he learns the local language, instead of gaining more control over the society, he in many cases gets infected by the contagious social negativity, and loses his control over events, and persons. Most Englishmen invariably refrained from this dangerous endeavour.

Third, the fact that the superior in the feudal languages do not care for the welfare of the downtrodden. It is in the language program, for it works on the principles of advantage and disadvantage, and one has to play as per the rules of the game forced on the persons by the language. And one’s social existence is very much dependant on how much efficient one is in exacting mental and social destruction on one’s social subordinate. This is the reality. And this factor exists and runs in the society, regardless of whether the Englishman is there or not

Fourth: the Englishman cannot understand the social and mental stifling of the feudal languages, that work as per the many aspects of human personality, including family name, financial strength, looks, age, commanding personality etc. He has never experienced anything like this before, so his physical features do not reflect any of the negativity of having grown or lived through its afflictions. So, he remains insulated to the inflictions and hence exists in a sort of superhuman mental level. The local bigwigs used this feature to add on to their social power, by just keeping the Englishmen in formal social superiority. Yet, it is a fact that they existed outside the social system.

Fifth, comes the disconcerting fact that even though they lived above the social system, they themselves were used as the source of exploitation. Also, they themselves did get infected by the creeping feudal attitudes that ran through the heart of this geographical area’s social system. And on their return to Britain, they brought not only money, but also a intimidating, yet non-tangible, feudal aura, that really gave the creeps to the ordinary English genteel folks.

Now, what is the connection of all this to the present day, phenomena of off shoring of business processes? Well, it is only this: This process is arming economically the same virus, which make men be very polite, courteous, obsequious, humble, servile and submissive to persons who are perceived superiors; and at the same, make them arrogant, discourteous, tyrannical, treacherous, venal and cruel to those who go down in economic, positional and social levels.

The danger is not that whole lot of poor in the these nations would become rich, and more competent, no that won’t happen; but that persons with ambivalent attitude to interpersonal behaviour would come to hold positions of economic strength; and from there, extrude power over other persons in the society. Even in English nations