Many years ago, when I used to go in a family owned lorry, sometimes even driving it, even though I did not have the requisite badge for driving commercial vehicles, I did get some rare understanding about the factor of perspective when viewing social phenomena. In the lorry, there would be a driver and a person known in local parlance as a cleaner. All three of us would be going to the same places, the same hotels, sharing the same space, seeing the same scenery, and our experiences would be almost the same.
Yet, as the lorry went through the long distance to Bombay, some 1000 kms away, we would be traversing through a number of small social scenarios, as we stopped at various places. I found that the three of us, in each place existed in three different levels of mental frame, in all the societies that we interacted with. The cleaner would go immediately to the lowest menial level, the driver would move at a higher adult level, yet still of a junior level, especially if he is of young age, and at another different level, but again of a subordinate level, if he is of elderly age. It was not just that they voluntarily went into these levels, but that the society where we went had readymade positions, to which the new entrants were to fit in.
Now all three of us, saw the local society in three different manner. For the cleaner, almost everybody was of highly respectful level, and he himself of discernable despicable level. For the driver, the cleaner's level was despicable, and his own level, that of subordination to so many other levels. Now, this situation may not be understood in any English level of understanding, for the different levels of indicant words used kept these positions in a sort of stringent regimentation and tangible distance. And the levels severely controlled the thought process, gestures, and poses. Moreover, each level had a different way of looking at society, and its different ingredients. For the lowest level, many of the ordinary levels were of striking superiority, and hence above his level of purview. Any attempt by him to assess that level of persons would be seen as pure impertinence. These levels of persons would generally have an indoctrinated sort of feeling, about the unapproachable holiness of many social institutions, including the bureaucracy.
The drivers level would also, have, more or less, the same feelings about many institutions, but to the lower levels, they were superior. The local dominant group of person would see them as servant class.
Now, it is seen that the whole feudal society does have these different levels of perception about the whole society. But, the modern society in India is a little more dynamic, compared to the old times and persons do change their levels, during the course of their life. Many of those, who have been in the lower levels, once they grow up, may in most of the times carry their old social fixations, with them as they move up.
Again, thinking about the driver-cleaner allegory, I have found that the lower persons, who are kept in lower levels by the language, tend to notice minor things, which are actually taken for granted by a mature group or are of a silly nature to them. It is not possible to give an example of this attitude, for mentioning some of the items that they do discuss, may bring in a lot of unwanted attention to this topic.
The lower levels in society in India, do view such professions as Government employment, doctor, engineers etc. as very superior, and that of unapproachable divinity. Again, I must insist that though similar feeling may be there in English nations also, the fact remain that the effect is different, for the lower levels in India is different from the lower levels in an English nation.
It is possible that the family of a nurse would always view the level of doctors as with a halo, a junior clerk's family would view a senior bureaucrat's level with holiness, a junior police official's family would be looking at senior official's level with reverence, and a schoolteacher may view many persons with some official title with awe. These might be universal truths, yet the understanding of this statement in a feudal language would be entirely different from that in an English language understanding.
Now, in the perspective of an Indian who lives in a junior social level, when discussing about any social progress, he would be thinking in terms of how many persons became doctors, how many are engineers, how many joined the government service etc. The capacity to see social progress as that of a total development of all the persons in a society would be lacking and it would be very difficult to insert this idea into the head of this person.
Many of these persons would get shocked when someone tells them that government employees are actually public servants, and not person in any superior social positions. These persons are more impressed by the red lights on a superior officials car, the police sepoys standing in a row to salute him or her, when he or she alights etc. They are more impressed by the power of these persons to make a man wait endlessly for getting an access to them. Actually if one points out that the real capacity of a senior bureaucrat is seen if an ordinary citizen can get his various official papers, licences, certificates etc. in a matter of moments, instead of having to wait for them, for days, and sometimes months; these persons can't understand it. The lower persons cannot understand how the society will function if proper and consistent feudal respect is not bestowed to the higher-ups in society, even if they are totally incapable of functioning according to the requirements.
And the growing tragedy of India is that such persons, with such feudal inferiority intonations ingrained in their brains are now increasingly occupying many positions, where they should never been given entrance to. Such positions include that of schoolteachers, from where they poison the minds of a whole generation.
Now it must be understood that when Indians move into English nations, they come actually in three forms; ie. the mentally senior guys, the medium level, and the cleaner levels, to use the allegory used in the example above. What they notice and react to, give importance, what makes them insecure etc. depends on which mental level they are in. Moreover, each group does react and behave to the same social stimuli, in different ways.
And also, bear in mind the categories of levels that I have used as samples, have no connection with a persons formal Indian academic qualifications. For, it is very much possible that a person with a Masters in some subject may really belong mentally to the Cleaner Class, of the allegory.
