To continue on this theme, there is another manner by which sieving takes place. Look at the profession of taxi drivers in India. In many places, it is seen as a socially degrading job. Again it is a matter of perspective. For the higher placed persons, it is a low quality job. For persons, who are literally on the lower edge of social standards, it is a great job.
Look at the personality of a taxi driver. Any person, who becomes a taxi driver in India, has to mould his personality as per certain social communication requirements. In most cases, persons who already have this personality would go in for this job. In the case of others, others would more or less mould them into that personality, through a particular regimentation effected by the use of certain specific indicant level words and usages. However a generalisation is not possible, as the effect can depend on the language. For, certain languages have more stinging feudalism in them; other may not have such sting.
Consider the case in Malayalam. Once a person becomes a taxi driver, he is a driver. He has to wear a khaki uniform when he is doing his job. This more or less identifies his profession and also places him in a particular indicant word level. Policemen would mostly address him with the most lowest indicant level words such as Nee, Eda etc. and refer to him as Avan. This shall be sharp contrast with the way they address another person who is say, a college lecturer or a government employee.
In most small towns and villages, drivers are kept at the lowest indicant level by the local business community. The only thing that can save them from the abyss in the word level is age.
However it would be wrong to say that drivers themselves are not comfortable with this level of social placement. For, they would be persons who are quite comfortable at this level of social functioning. Moreover, they would have persons under them to whom they are respectable chettans (elder brothers).
So persons, who are intellectually and socially comfortable at this level, slowly sieve down the social net, and arrive at this profession. This is one affect of the sieving that feudal languages affect.
There is another kind of sieving also, that I may mention. It was observed by me over the years. In Malabar, where British direct administration was in place, bureaucracy was more or less quite honest at the higher level. Beyond that the stinging side of the vernacular feudal language was not apparent at the level of interaction with the bureaucracy for the businessman, like a Medical shop owner, an hotelier, a textile merchant etc. Successful businessmen were those who could exhibit pure business instincts and acumen. However, after long years had passed since Indian independence, the Malabar bureaucracy also became quite corrupt. Beyond that the higher level feudal content in Malayalam crept over from South Kerala to Malabar Malayalam. South Kerala had not experienced British rule, and the concept of social communication with the bureaucracy over there was quite filled with obsequious feudal content.
The officials could be addressed only as Sar, and the word Ningal (you) used in Malabar was not allowed. After around fifty years from the time of British departure, this feudal content came into Malabar also.
Now, in Malabar things changed. To become a good businessman, it was not good grade business capacity that was requisite. Instead only those who could exhibit acute servitude to the officialdom could survive.� To enforce their superiority, the officialdom also slowly started making more or more complicated rules and acts to complicate business licensing procedures. Actually these licensing processes were quite unintelligent and no honest business could survive if they were to function as per the rules. So that in a few years time, all businessmen who had functioned with integrity were wiped out, made to close down or simply made to bear the brunt of the official rules.� A new breed of businessmen came into the field, whose only attainment was their capacity to show exquisite obeisance to officials like the sales tax inspectors, industries department officials, revenue department officials, drugs inspectors, excise inspectors, revenue department officials, village officials, panchayat (local self govt) officials and immensity of other inspectors. These businessmen were quite good at giving gifts, paying money and giving any other help that the officials need. In no time, only those who were good at this survived. Others simply vanished from the scene or changed their attitude to adjust to the new social requirement.��
The feudal language had acted as a sieve.
Language and untouchables
Indian feudal languages carry the essential codes for making certain sections of the society untouchables. Not only touching, but also, the very proximity to them can be obnoxious, repulsive and of distressing effect. However it need not be an India-only phenomenon, for many other nations with feudally structured languages could have at least some element of this emotion. The repulsion felt for the blacks in South Africa need not be due to the colour black, but due to some other repulsive features in their communication codes. The colour black may only serve as a pointer tool to that section of the populace.
Look at the words in Malayalam Nee (lowest form of You) and Aval (lowest form of She). Now think of this scenario. The time is pre-British rule India. Brahmins are revered. When they come into the houses of lower castes, it is a time of revelry. Anything given with affection by the revered Brahmin is a thing to prize. It can carry a positive energy. It is like a gift from a senior police officer given to a household, signifying his association with them.
Now, think of this scenario: A young Brahmin boy of age 16 comes to a lower caste persons house. The lower caste house is honoured. The Brahmin boy is treated like royalty. Only higher indicant words like Thamburan, Thirumeni, Adheham, Avar, Ningal etc. are used to him and about him. Where he stands and sits, there is positive energy. His desires are royal commands. What he touches gets embedded with positive energy. When he looks at anyone with a benign mood, it is an enlightening experience.
The Brahmin boy is an intellectual. He is well learned in the various intellectual subjects of the times. He has taken acute interest in Vastu, the astrological science connected to building structures. Through this interest, he has got interested in the art of carpentry. He has seen the fantastic building structures that carpenters can build in wood. It is a fine art, and quite sophisticated. However, the carpenters as a caste are on the lower rung.
The Brahmin boy informs his father of his desire to learn the art of carpentry. Well, what he is desiring is social suicide.�� For, his father is quite aware as to what will happen to his divine attributes the moment he joins as an apprentice at a carpenters workshop. His attributes in the indicant words would change drastically. For the carpenter would be inclined to use the lower indicant words to this ward. Instead of Thamburan, Thirumeni, Adheham, Avar and Ningal, he would spontaneously become an Avan (oan), Nee (inhji) and even eda. There would no suffixes of respect to his name, which would turn into a solitary word. Now not only the carpenter, but his other lower-positioned (under the carpenter and his family members as well as socially low) apprentices and other workers there, would soon be using the lower words. In fact, they would come to feel a strange mental elation in demeaning him with the lower indicant words.
Actually this mental elation that they get would not be just a feeling, but a reality in the virtual codes, as they find themselves moving to a higher or equal position to that of the Brahmin boy. As to the Brahmin boy, he would soon be feeling a strange level of negativity encasing him, as his position in the virtual code arena shift to locations that are lower to that of the carpenter, and equal to his other apprentices and workers. His social capacities and divine aura is soon erased. No lower caste household would rejoice in his presence, and he is no more a higher mortal than any other low placed young boy.
Now no sane Brahmin boy of those times would go in for such a technical course, unless proper safe guards in terms of indicant word protection are not accorded.
Now actually, what happens to persons of social elevation when they are made to accost lower-indicant word persons without proper indicant word protection is an enwrapping of negativity. The higher persons fear this negativity. Herein lies the codes of untouchables. Untouchables are persons who if they are allowed to become equals erodes ones indicant word elevation and in consequence all other higher social and possibly intellectual capacities also.
It need not be connected to statutory castes alone, but to almost all professions that function in a feudal language setting. However, this untouchable issue is not there if there are proper indicant word protections in place. In fact, in feudal language communication systems, there is an avenue allowed for this protection. For, people when they are being introduced, specific mention is also lent about their social levels, like high class family, high class job, financial strength, political connections, family connections, bureaucratic connections etc. are also conveyed.� Actually this is considered a proper thing, and also quite necessary. No one takes it as an unnecessary bit of intrusive information. For, it helps heavily in the feudal language communication, as it helps in selecting the appropriate words.
If one requires to socially destroy another person, lower attributes are filtered out and introduced.
From this premises, I need to speak of the real attributes of an untouchable. It is a phenomenon that cannot be replicated in absolute British-English. However, abominable languages like Indian-English etc. can be made to replicate it. For Indian-English is a horrible attempt by uncouth instructors and institutions, including statutory ones, to despoil the essential goodness in British-English. Moreover Indian English is an attempt to encode the filth of Indian feudal language communication systems into pristine English.
Untouchables are persons who are believed to carry a sort of infectious negativity in themselves. Their very presence is considered to be inauspicious, their touch a contamination of negativity and their placing of vision on someone of refinement a demeaning incident.
Even though these attributes are generally connected to the very low castes in the Indian caste hierarchy, the fact is that the same feelings are generally felt at many levels of the social hierarchy. The only difference is that the lowest castes being at the lowest level of the social canyon, the effect they can create can be of the highest levels.
The question is how can any human being be considered as a repository of negativity? Moreover, what makes a man or group of individuals low, or low caste? Well, there is something in the social communication that arranges them at the lowest levels, attributes them with negative links, connects them to mean items, assigns lower level despoiling words to them and thus totally makes them negative. Otherwise, there is no means by which another human being, who gets born with all the common human features, can get thus defined.
It is the feudal hierarchical language that creates this negative entity. However, it may be required to assert that the hierarchy seen in feudal languages is quite different from the words seen in English meant for describing and addressing higher social positions. For, in languages like English, these words are not for use among the commoners to define the changing fortunes in some of them. These words are more or less fixed to certain social positions and do not come to define much about the members of the common public. For example, Lord, Lady, Your Majesty etc.
However in feudal languages, the words and groups of words that are meant for the lower groups are there, in a hierarchical manner. They do have a sting, and a demeaning quality. Moreover, some of the words, by their very sound, stress, and links are vulgar, demeaning and disparaging.
To make this point clear, let me say that the word You in English is a common word for use among all persons. However, in feudal Malayalam, the word Nee is quite different from Ningal, Thangal and Sar. Nee is connected to some codes that make it a word that signifies some level of freedom of intrusion into the private zone of the thus addressed person. If both persons address each other as Nee, then this right to intrusion is mutual, and to a limited extend can signify intimate friendship, endearment and intimacy.
However, if it is a one-sided communication, then the right to intrusion into the private zone is a one-sided right.
Now as one goes down the social hierarchy as enforced by the feudal language, there comes about an intrusive right to the persons who stand on the heights, over the persons who stand in the depths. I am speaking now about a communication structure, which can give feudal rights to the persons who stand on the higher side of this communication, even when there is no formal feudalism in the society. If there is formal feudalism in the society, the power given to the higher persons rises to the nth degree.
Now this is only a part of this fascinating phenomenon. The persons on the depths also garner a sort of negative power. In that they stand on the far depths of the social communication. So that they stand in a position to pull down anyone to their lower levels. This is a power no man on the heights has; that is, the right to pull down. The others only have the right to push down. In a way both powers are just the two sides of the same bi-polar coin.
Now it is this terrible power that comes to garner in them that makes the lower caste persons a sort of terror for the persons of refinement or higher caste persons. Standing on the depths, their words, their lower indicant words, their comments, their evaluations both verbal as well as visual, their touch and much else is embedded with grave negative powers.
If one could see the codes connected to the lower castes, these negative powers can be seen. However, since we are currently not in a position to see them, their existence can only be discerned by their effects on other human beings and other entities. By studying this one may be able to postulate about them and also measure its powers and other parameters.
Even though, I have not mentioned it yet, I will presently be coming to the point that just like words, mental evaluation, visual inputs, angle of perspective, touch and all such things can be converted into codes, which are intimately connected to the virtual software codes.�
