What prompts me?

Why should I want to teach other’s English? People live and die. Immense of generations have lived in this geographical area, currently occupied by Pakistan, India and Bangladesh. Most of them were in terrible feudally suppressive conditions. Yet, they did not complain, at least in the modern sense of marches and protests. Well, then if this be so, why should there be an endeavour to change things?

Only the English rulers really tried to bring in a change here. However, they never got any gratitude from the persons who developed. The persons in British-India who developed simply arrived at superior positions and had no feeling of obligation to the system or people who gave them the liberation. They simply take it in their stride in the attitude that this was their predestined fate. Maybe that is so. But then what about the persons who took the steps to bring about this change in them.

DIGRESSION:

Look (above) at these natives of this geographical area at around late 1800s. Look at their indisputably dissipated personality. Is it due to starvation or poverty that makes them look thus? Well, if the answer is Yes, it is quite a naive answer. These people are struck in immutable social positions. When thus placed in a feudal language environment, they are like sitting ducks to hammering of the suppressive words and usages. It is this hammering that makes them look thus.

There is another side to this. When a person is thus hammered, he in his turn would seek to find someone to hammer down to provide some kind of respite for himself. This would mean his own wife, his children, and  his other kinfolk, who all come under him in familial stature. It is in their subordination and downslicing that he finds salvation.

How the hammering is done

Look at this picture of Thiyya females of the same period as those of the above seen persons (late 1800s). I think that Thiyyas were some small group of people who somehow came into social subordination in the areas of north Malabar. Once they learn the local vernacular, the local prominent persons would cooly use the pejorative part of the language to powerfully place them down and below. Once this is achieved, then more shackles fall into place. In many ways these shackles are tools of social command and regimentation.

One shackle is that of dressing. See the females were under social compulsion not to wear anything above their waist. With the breast hanging down quite visibly, there are limits to which a female can claim social stature, when she is addressed and referred to in the pejorative. Another means of shackling is through an indoctrination for wearing jewellery. Jewellery in many ways is just tangible shackles that are society forces upon a person through the method of means of certain kind of social communication subject. Incidently, there are other means of social regimentation. One is through the routes of religious superstitions. This was a method quite fantastically used by the Mappilla Muslims leaders in south Malabar areas to gather people to attack the British officialdom.

Another means of social suppression and regimentation was through person’s names. For example, my children’s names are Varuna and Ashwina. Both these names come in ancient Sanskrit mantras and Vedic hymns. Now, many Thiyya female names are such Ashwathi, Anamika, Gayathri, Theertha, Abhirami, Keerthana, Ashwarya, Samyuktha and such. All of them are more or less from that same antiquity.

However, some sixty years earlier, the common names of the Thiyya females were of a very different kind.  Cheeru, Nani, Chirutha, Chiruthai, Korumbi, Pokki, Manni, Matha, Paaru etc. Male names would include Poknan, Korumban, Pokkan, Chathu etc. Many of these names were contortions of names used by higher caste persons. For example, I have been told that the name Chiruthai is the contortion of Sree Devi.

The reason for the totally degraded mentality looks of these females is mainly due to the powerful impact of the lower indicant perjorative forms of addressing by a series of upper caste persons, and also by their own level caste folk. The caste just above them is the Nair (Sudra), which is also a lower caste compared to the Brahmins and Kshtriyas.  

Now, these contorted looking, intellectually enfeebled persons’ children are given access to English education, wherein they are not below anyone. They study English classics, learn English nursery rhymes, see the images of people like themselves, but with a very elevated personality and also get to know that they also can stretch their wings and fly above social fetters. What happens to their looks, personality and to their intellect? Well, everything expands, exponentially. This is what happened to a small section of Thiyyas in the small town of Tellicherry in north Malabar.  It was a wonderful change and development of social assertiveness, quite iriksome possibly in a lower caste. For, I had noticed that even when all around Tellicherry the unaffected Thiyyas still continued with their social inferiority complex, the Tellicherry based Thiyyas changed their names to higher levels. 

It may be noted that all these things are not what the black slaves in the US did suffer from. In fact, what they got freely was just the opposite. For, in dressing and everything else, what they received was the liberating themes, including that of dressing and even names. 

The small red portion is Malabar in this ancient map

DIGRESSION: See this quote from Castes and Tribes of Southern Indian by EDGAR THURSTON, Published 1906. 

The Tiyans are always styled Izhuvan in documents concerning land, in which the Zamorin, or some Brahman or Nayar grandee, appears as landlord. The Tiyans look down on the Izhuvans, and repudiate the relationship. Yet they cannot but submit to be called Izhuvan in their documents, for their Nayar or Brahman landlord will not let them have the land to cultivate, unless they do so. It is a custom of the country for a man of a superior caste to pretend complete ignorance of the caste of an individual lower in the social scale.

Thus, in the Wynad, where there are several jungle tribes, in one is accustomed to hear a man of superior caste pretending that he does not know a Paniyan from a Kurumba, and deliberately miscalling one or the other,saying "This Paniyan," when he knows perfectly well that he is a Kurumba. It is quite possible, therefore, that, though Tiyans are written down as Izhuvans, the two were not supposed to be identical. State regulations keep the Izhuvans of Cochin and Travancore in a position of marked social inferiority, and in Malabar they are altogether unlettered and uncultured. On the other hand, the Tiyans of Malabar provide Magistrates, Sub-Judges, and other officials to serve His Majesty's Government. It may be noted that, in 1907, a Tiya lady matriculate was entertained as a clerk in the Tellicherry post-office. 

 The lower castes who ‘provide Magistrates, Sub-Judges, and other officials to serve His Majesty's Government’ were not those who were cut and pasted into those positions, but those who imbibed the English social norms of social egalitarianism, through readings in English classics. My mother was a BA in English. However, a very detailed reading background in English classics had elevated her mentality to near English levels. Hers was not an isolated case. I have met some of her contemporary educated class persons, almost all of whom did have some level of connection to English classics. For a person in Europe and current day US, what I mention may seem quite ridiculous and immaterial here. However the fact is that to the people in the local society as quite candidly seen in the pictures given above, the connection to English literature was a lifeline to a fabulous social existence they couldn’t even imagine in their wildest dreams. That even the poor sections of the English society had a personal dignity not imaginable over here was quite a remarkable understanding.

It was these types of persons who went on to become doctors, engineers, railway engine drivers, government officers and much more. A reading capacity in English classics was literally making these persons stand on a Mount Everest of social perspective. Their other achievements like becoming a doctor, an engineer etc. were just a minor elevation from their towering position on the Mount Everest. However, after the formation of India in 1947, what happened was the negation of this Mount Everest. People from the local society still became government officers, doctors, engineers, and much more. But without the elevation on the Mount Everest. That is, with absolute no change in their mental standards with regard to social feudalism. Like, a person seen in the above given pictures becoming a government ‘officer’ or doctor or any other thing.

Now, this brings me directly to the question of demands for ‘Indian’ independence. The truth is that this so called ‘Indian’ independence movement was of very little popular support. If it had been so, how come 3 million British-Indian soldiers volunteered on the British side? Gandhi had declared his Quit India movement (as a direct means to divert attention to the various allegations of misdemeanours inside his ashram) in 1942. Yet, British war efforts in British-India went ahead with not much of a problem. In fact, 30 lakh (3 million) British-Indian soldiers fought with rare commitment on the English side. SEE the caricature of Gandhi which was among the numbers of negative items that came out in Delhi newspapers of those times, posted probably by persons who were ill-disposed to him. For, at that time, he was just another politician, struggling to keep himself above other competing entities of this place. No history book or film was there to promote him.

The next point is who was Gandhi to demand independence? There is nothing on record to show that he was the leader of the people here other than what he could manage to spread through a section of supportive media, including his own newspaper and magazine. There was a huge section of silent majority here who had no problem with British rule. For, since days of yore, the various places of this geographical area had been ruled by different rulers and groups. The people obeyed the different rulers just due to social obligation as well as due to fear of the royal wrath.  

My mother’s father was a person who joined the congress. My understanding of his behaviour was that he wanted to stand apart from the other Thiyyas of his place, by connecting to a distant leadership. He was more or less solitary in his position that some of his acquaintances gave him a Gandhi as a prefix to his name. He became Gandhi Govi, the Govi being part of his own name. His own father had been a great admirer of Queen Victoria, seeing her as the saviour of the lower castes.

As to the post war British leadership, way back in England, a new political party had come to power with a policy to demolish the British Empire. Before handing over the landscape to different native leaderships, at least a referendum or plebiscite could have been done to assure themselves that the people are happy to be under the new leadership. However, in many cases, most of the people in this geographical area wouldn’t even be aware of what was happening.

Image: Courtesy of Chris Beetles Gallery, St James's, London

Many persons have improved their English through me, and their personality enhancement is quite obvious in them. However, only very few people acknowledge my contribution in this regard. In many occasions, I have not perfunctorily made any efforts to change them or to teach them English. But my mere presence in their proximity did bring about a change in them. They do not at all feel any need to mention any gratitude to me. Even though there have been occasion when some persons had written to me later that my absence was keenly felt, in that there was no more any compulsion to speak in English and the whole social environment literally collapsed into the native language features, in which every person is variously acknowledged, depending on tangible stature.

There is also this issue. If all people speak English, the society would change for the better. The categorisation of a lower man, a lesser person, an idiot, a person to be dominated upon, a higher person, a superior man, a person to be shown feudal respect etc. will all cease to exist. Another man’s posture and manner of sitting or the position of his leg etc. will not cause distress. The dirt in the social system would disappear and the society would look good. However, the persons who took up the stance to introduce English would be soon forgotten. Look at the case of Macaulay. Most Indians, who know English, use this very language to shower despicable words on him. For, they are eager to parrot what their own suppressors have told them. That he was enslaving them by teaching the natives of British-India English.