Chapter 10

The social affects of a feudal language

The capacity to communicate is an important aspect of human personality and a person's ability to communicate freely adds to his confidence and mobility.  In any group, organisation, or conversation, a person's individuality rises directly as his communication rises.  And it allows him to feel that he is equal to the others in the group.  When he cannot communicate freely with others, a feeling of inferiority and mental dwarfing envelops him and his whole personality is stifled. He becomes mentally impotent. He cannot attain an attitude of equality with others. 

At this state, others also give him wide breath, as by moving to his level, they would belittle themselves, in the eyes of the others.  For, they fear, rightfully, that his negative social attributes would be catching. This situation can affect the behavioural attitude of these persons, to him.

In a feudal language environment, the senior should take pain to show that he is the senior. And he should definitely use such suitable lower indicant terms to an inferior so as to leave no doubt of his inferiority.  Too much informality with a junior is dangerous. For, he may think that the relation is too casual, to use terms of respect. This may make him mentally free to use terms devoid of respect in addressing or referring to the senior. This, if done, in the presence of others could put the senior/s in uncomfortable positions.

Illustration: If one deals with a younger person, naturally the younger person has to use the suffix of Chettan (for males) or Chechi (for females), when addressing the senior aged person by name, in Malayalam. Now if one senior aged person, does deal with a youngster in a very polite and highly interacting manner, also without much allusion to his senior age, the youngster would immediately address him without any suffix of respect, which when heard by others would signify to them that the senior man has not been able to extract any respect from the younger man. For example: A senior person by name Balan, if not addressed as Balettan, by a youngster, becomes a very significant pointer of social insignificance. Actually, social living would become absolutely impossible.

And any sensible person from the senior group would keep the youngster in his position or if that youngster tries to be more informal his own standing with others could be wrecked.

Also, the person below is continuously searching for companions to fit in his level or over whom he can lord. And at the first opportunity, any individual presents himself with any lesser attributes, he is forcefully brought to this level by the right use of the lower indicant words. So, the higher guy is also wary of being judged at a lesser level, and tries to exhibit his own more prominent positive points as much as possible and tries to see that he can maintain his position on the pedestal.

The hierarchy in the language has created the numerous castes in India. But in India, the historical experience was not as in Japan; here, it is a highly heterogeneous group of peoples, all competing in different levels and having different historical experiences. The same group or caste may have had different experience and different social levels in different areas.

It is not easy to go into the ancient periods to see the gradual formation of castes. But it would be easier to understand the same if one can examine a case that is happening in the immediate present. Before attempting this, the reader is reminded that feudal languages act on one's occupation, which is an immediate, easy and very tangible piece of social indication to measure a person, and his social levels.

The general character of this society is that the lesser person has no voice or is accepted as insignificant, and if he tries to be articulate, it is regarded as impertinence.  And that he is inferior, and hence should show his inferiority is inbred in the lesser person.  There is an unconscious mental dwarfing and instinctive subduing of the lesser person in the society.  And at the same time, it is impossible for the higher up to adopt informal behaviour to the lesser persons, for the latter are mentally programmed to consider such expressions as more casual than it is actually meant to be. In other words, persons who exists in lower category, like lesser age, lower social status, if allowed to exhibit an assertive demeanour, would exceed their limits, as they would naturally like to expand in areas where there is weak resistance. And the whole affect can be disturbing.

A driver's experience: Now in India, all drivers of commercial vehicles are required to wear Kakki* uniforms. If any taxi driver or lorry driver is found not wearing at least a Kakki shirt, he is penalised. This kakki helps the police, and other allied government departments, like the Motor Vehicle department, the State Excise department, The Central Excise department, The Sales Tax department and other innumerable departments in the regimentation of the commercial drivers.

Once a person wears a Kakki uniform of the commercial driver, then it is only natural that the police and other department personnel treat him with contempt. The words used to him and about him are both derogatory and of the lowest indicant level. In the case of drivers of senior age, some restraint may be exercised in this regard, but still the sting would remain. Now, only persons who are mentally prepared to bear this taunt, or only persons who circumstances have forced would go for this job. Yet, there are a lot of persons who desperately aim to get this profession. Persons from the lower income, uneducated groups etc., like this job,and many of the others would also like it, if the social inhibition weren't there.

Most of these persons do not mind the taunt of the Police and other officials, and take it in good spirit; and they exhibit a sort of cringing obedience to these officials, and in many cases, the lowest level police sepoys force them to give minor unofficial menial assistance.

Many drivers do not mind the insults from the officials that go with their profession, if they are from a lower, uneducated, spineless class. For, they would be happy that in their profession there can be no competition from the educated, English speaking, intelligent, highly mobile class. Others who have rectitude, may not be able to bear the taunts, and would quit the profession for better jobs. But it must be admitted that this is a profession that has a certain level of positive aspects in it. For, in India, most of the people travel very little from their home base. And many would very rarely have travelled more than 50 kilometres from their base. I do not include persons whose job is connected to travel, or of those who get transferred to other places, or about the bureaucrats, who are financially supported by the government to travel and enjoy their life at public expense. When one takes this aspect into account, the commercial drivers jobs do have a lot of charm to it, for along with the aspect of seeing distance places and diverse cultures, there is the lingering aspect of adventure to it.

Now, the commercial driver is seen as a person with a negative attribute about him in many social areas. At the same time, it may be mentioned in passing that he also does exist on the higher indicant level with so many others around him. But with the selective joining of persons who are mentally attuned to bearing the taunts and the capacity to behave obsequiously, this profession is slowly becoming a sort of caste of its own.

Actually, this problem is with every profession. People are at ease with professionals whose social level is clearly understood. And in many cases, one gets to know the clear social level of only one's own professional partners. Others come with varying attributes; which sometimes can be confusing. And as such, each profession tends to form a sort of caste or even a guild. 

So, the hierarchy in language was responsible for caste.  Wherever there is anything resembling caste, you may be sure that the language is graded .The feudal language assigns an inferior position to the lesser guys.  Once a person is branded by the language to be lesser, free interaction with him is impossible; at the same time the lesser guy seeks to find who he can address as an inferior.  This is his security.  The society becomes caste ridden.  This language keeps the higher-ups in a secure enclosure.  The person who sits and talks in superior.  The person who is physically skilled is inferior.  The culture degrades physical talents.  The Wild West eulogised the cowboys.  In Indian languages, they would have been menial guys.

Yet it may also be understood, that the superior class of persons are mortally afraid of any impertinent person from the lower class using the wrong indicant words to themselves or to their children. It is actually a factor of real terror or at least of enduring mental distress. Wide breadth is given to such characters, socially. If it not possible, then it is factor of ongoing torment.

India is not the ancient India, where people lived in isolated villages and town, with a monotonous social stagnation that stayed on for years. Now the people are inundated with all sorts of experiences, education, foreign travels, foreign jobs etc. that the castes formed now, may not be enduring.

But then, there are other evidences of the acknowledgement of this reality. For, in earlier times, one would be comfortable in marrying a person from the same caste. But in the modern times, it may not always be the case. For a lady doctor from one caste may not be comfortable with a tailor or a driver or a clerk in a private firm, unless that person is an exception to the usual persons who are in these professions, in his intellectual interests. At the same time, she may be more comfortable in marrying a person from another caste, who is a doctor, a college teacher, an engineer etc. if both of them do have the same intellectual passions. There have been many examples of many such marriages taking place. And the local sociologists have mistakenly taken these phenomena to mean a growing tendency to dispense with caste identities.

In this, they are mistaken in that they have not kept in mind the fact that the most evident logic of caste is professional status; and the new marriages do stick to that rule; that means actually new caste-like feeling are the motivating factor for these marriages. Though it is certain that in the modern times new castes are being formed, no new caste can survive if there is enough social mobility in India.

The debate: The whole discussion on caste and its allied effects was to show the tenacity and grasp of the feudal language in the designing of the structure of a society. Once this factor is clearly understood, then it may be easier to debate on the finer aspect of this factor.

Let us take the case of the taxi drivers. In an English speaking country, there would be no understanding that they do belong to some lesser human elements. Now, let us say that this man marries into a family, which was maintaining a higher indicant level in society. In Indian society, each person comes with a non-tangible aspect to him. That is, even to initiate talk with him, it is comfortable to know a lot about him; like his family standards, financial capacity, whether he is an employee or an employer, what are his parents, does he live in a good house? etc. In busy cities like Bombay, it may not be so; for no one has time for all this, nor is anybody bothered to know about others. But in small towns, where everyone moves in fixed social positions, these information are important.

Actually to facilitate communication in its absence, the language has a character different from that of English; for example, in English, we ask: Where are you going? or What is your job? etc.  In Malayalam, the question can be effectively asked as: Going where? or Job what? There is nothing wrong in the grammar. The effective meaning is, more or less, the same. In this way, one can communicate formally with a person, whose antecedents aren't clear.

The Barber: With the coming of English many considered-inferior jobs have gained a lot of dignity. One is that of the haircutter or barber. In many Indian vernaculars, the words for these professionals were not very attractive. In fact, there was, in existence, a lower level caste, with the specific job of cutting hair, shaving and other allied services. Being a lower caste, in popular Hinduism, the members of this caste had a lot of social restrictions.

In many places, many lower caste Hindus did change their religion to join the Muslim and Christian religion to escape this tyranny. Now, imagine a case of two Hindu barbers. They are acquaintances. Then one fine morning one of them changes to Islam. The most remarkable change would be that now he can sit and interact with a lot of people of varying social status, among the Muslims. The Hindu social strictures do not bother him. Now, who gets hurt? The other barber, who was his acquaintance! Naturally, it grows into a grudge, starting with individuals, leading to grudge between religions.

Here it may be noted that though both the Hindus and the Muslims talk the same language in a place, it is generally found that the Muslim version of the language is more bereft of hierarchy, or at least, its hierarchies are different in structure, from that of the Hindu version of the language. But in modern times, this difference is narrowing, and the Muslim version is increasingly reflecting Hindu hierarchies.

We can understand the society as a giant computer. If each individual is a separate file, then it would have a separate file name for referring to, or connecting to, or hyperlink-ing to, or opening or categorising etc. that person.  An ordinary file may have the following address: C\My Documents\ved\languages\debate. Now this is the file address of the file. Any man who sees this, understands that this file is in the C drive and not in any other drive like D, E, F etc. The sub connections also give him an understanding as to what all folders are in association with this file in My Documents, the other sub associations in the folder in ved; the subsidiary associations in languages etc.

Consider another file with address: C\My Documents\ved
ange\debate. One can understand that though the name of the file is debate, it is not in the group under languages. At the same time, one knows that at a higher level, it has an association, as the rest of the address is same. One may mentally make an understanding of what type of things are in this file by the association it has with the other files. That is, at range, as different from language folder.

Now if one of the associated folder in My Documents or the files in the sub folders do have a virus in it, it is possible that when one tries to open the file debate, or tries to communicate with it, a possibility of getting infected with the virus in the folder is there.

In the same way in Indian society, every single individual is evaluated according to a particular address that comes along with him. If this is not clear, people go on monitoring and checking and asking questions to ascertain a person's credential or something beyond its ambit. In the case of a higher indicant family in India, in many places the term driver acts as a virus on the social scene. The person may be good or bad; may be of good character or of bad character; he may be intelligent or may lack it. All these don't come into the picture. And when the driver's wife's parents are introduced in unknown social circles, the file address would contain this virus, or an understanding of an association, which may be disastrous for the family or for the parents.

In India, when a girl falls in love with a lower caste person, and marry him, the results can be disastrous. In North India, in areas and in communities where people dread to have any association with persons whose social attributes are not acceptable, simply kill the girl. Or else, they abscond from their social circles.  The problem is basically related to language and the negative attributes that come as a virus program in it.

The same happens when in the same community, the son or daughter marries a person who is below them in social status and acceptability. This factor has been dealt within the context of marriages. But to just conclude the argument here, let it be understood that a negative attribute pulls a family's or a person's indicant words to the lower level. For example, in Malayalam where a man has to be addressed as Ningal, for You, the other man may just by hearing of a lower connection in the social address simply and without much ado use the word Nee. And the other words like He, She, Him, Her etc. would all come down just because of a negative factor in the social attributes.

Nobody can be blamed for this. For, the other man would only be using the term that comes naturally on measuring a person on the basis of his social measurement. It is not usual for one man to say that he does not belong to that level of persons, and the usage need to be changed. Usually the addressed person simply goes into a level of uneasy stupor. But there have been plenty of cases where the aggrieved person has protested and claimed his rightful level. But it is not easy. And if there is no one to introduce a man's rightful level, then if he claims to higher levels without obvious and adequate evidence, the effect could be ludicrous, if not painful. Since in this language, the third man has the power to judge and place a man socially, the power of the society is very high and in many occasions, unbearably so, as to forcefully persuade a man to do it's bidding.

Vulnerability of the Black Sheep*: Persons who move beyond the dictates of society and other such persons who try to move at their own logical levels would find the society's strength overwhelming. For, they have to have a level of respect to move among the many ingredient of society which may consist of tough men, simpletons, mean women, petty-minded persons, the taunting persons, the bullies, the children, the rich, the poor etc. Without something that fits the society's evaluation machinery to own or to exhibit, either money, good job, educational qualifications, good family connections and any such things, the person may, in spite of being a genius or a talented person or a person who has decided to live a life of renunciation, find that it is not easy to communicate with the world, other than from a low level of social existence. In which case, the existence would be intolerable compared to what a similar man would experience in an English world.

Yet it must be admitted that persons who have lived life at the bottom of the society, as a way of life, would not feel the sting, being used to it since birth. But they are not the type of persons I mention here. The person of rectitude would be more vulnerable to the sharp sting of the meaner elements of society.

In an environment of Indian languages, the society is strong.  The individual is weak.  For him to maintain his respectability and social standing, he should be careful in his behavioural code, dealings and actions, even if they do not bother others; for according to these, he is severely judged and the language, on this basis, assigns him a position in society.  The weak, the failed, the meek, the modest and the person whose personal virtues are not liked by others would find the society both political and social, too overpowering.  In English, the society cannot be so powerful. 

Here I may try to explain the concept of society's power. If any man gets an attribute, which is either of a higher or a lower indicant level, then this understanding goes as a sort of a computer file into the brain of all persons in the society who come to know about it. If the understanding is of the lower indicant level, the person's details are stored in a file, with a lesser indicant attributes and the contents are of relative negative implications.

These negative, lower indicant level attributes are automatically levied on to all aspects of communication about this man by the particular human brain. When a lot of persons in the same society start storing the same man's attributes with the same qualities, then these cumulative programs become a very overwhelming force. The concerned person understands that the society views him like this or that, and he can see the physical force of it, when he is addressed in the lower indicant words, when another person with him is extended the higher indicant words; when the other man is given a chair to sit, while he is denied it; when others are polite to the other man, while he is treated with disdain; when the other man's requests are taken care of fast while his request are sat upon.  The cumulative effect is very, very awesome, oppressive and frightening. And all sane men would strive to keep away from anybody, any event, or any institution that would reduce their indicant level.