A dubious form of human development

There is another aspect of human improvement that I had discerned. It was in the Mappila population of Malabar (Malabar Muslim). In the early 60s and 70s, they went to the Middle East for doing menial jobs there. It was a not a huge deluge of people going there then. In the later years of the 70s, I did start seeing a particular kind of people. Totally uneducated and totally featuring the local tribal social communication and human relationship codes. Yet, carrying modern gadgetries like Cassette Players and such things. The local man even though employed in better jobs, couldn’t compete with them. It certainly was a physically tangible improvement. Yet, I couldn’t see a social refinement in them. For, they came with money, and more or less used the brutal power of the indicant codes on the impoverished locals. This impoverishment was also a relative thing. For this impoverishment was caused by the exponential expansion allowed for the earnings of the foreign-employed. Now, how would one compare this with the slow and steady, yet, persevering development that the British educator has given to the Thiyyas of Tellichery area?

In the present case, there was essentially no societal improvement for the others. They went down. Not only in wealth, but also in indicant word content. The Mappillas then went in for a baby boom. Every Mappilla wife would bear six to twelve children. It seemed as if they were on a demographic correction spree. There appeared on the social horizon a new wealthy class of persons. {For example, the district of Malappuaram, which had been a very sparsely populated place at that time, is now teeming with people}. However, the original people of the place who were not Mappillas remained not unaffected, but negatively affected.

I need to slightly digress here to narrate another thing. When the newly improved Mappillas started appearing on the economic scene loaded with cash, it was a very funny situation. People who inherently had the intellectual stance of the Indian lower classes in demeanour and information were moving around with cash. However, it would not be correct to say that they were uncultured or impolite, but they were different. The local society especially in South Kerala where the concept of going to the Middle East to do low quality jobs had not caught up, reacted in a very funny manner. Everywhere people were making fun of these new rich guys. I remember seeing many mimicry stage programmes wherein the ill-educated language quality of these persons was taken up for acting out buffoonery. The general refrain would be that these persons were quite idiotic. Well, actually they were not idiots.

Defining the lower classes as idiots

Now speaking about idiots, there is this experience of mine that in almost at all levels of Indian communication, there is a rabid mood to define many others, especially persons of relative lower social or position levels, as idiots. On close examination, I found that any man who is categorised in lower indicant words is quite easily described as an idiot. The spur for doing this is ignited mainly when the thus despoiled individual shows some calibre or capacity that is beyond the limits of the indicant words. The general refrain would be, ‘Avanenthariyaam? Verum vivaramillathavanalle! Avanenthinu kollum?’ ‘What does he know? He is just a nitwit! What is he fit for?’ (All ‘He’s are lowest indicant).

This is not something that only the higher groups say. Every social level of people does it on to persons who they visualise as below them. In many ways, it is a sign of insecurity that sets in when the so-presumed lower person starts sending signals of more than expected capacities.

Now speaking about higher technology improving a section of people, it is not an innate improvement. It is an improvement that can be loaded on to anyone. For example, a White English man of the colonial times is in the African jungles. He has a gun with him that assures his superiority above a group of mutually competing Negroes. One fine morning, a Negro gets hold on of the gun. He has managed to learn how to use it. Now who is the superior?

Well, improvement shown by any person based on having a technological gadgetry is not an innate personality refinement or improvement. For example, in the early 90s, I came across young men, reasonably un-educated, and with zero-English, driving modern commercial vehicles like the Mazda etc. That these huge commercial vehicles could be manned by such intellectually inferior persons was quite a remarkable information. At their levels, they also put on a show of being the masters of great mechanical devices which ordinary human cannot deal with.

This was associated with another Indian official misdemeanour. Only persons who had commercial driving licences could drive these contraptions. Now, getting a commercial vehicle driving licence is not the issue. The real issue was that they needed to wear a khaki uniform. Once this is worn, the local policemen starting from the lowest constable would interact with them using only lower indicant words. So, in a powerful way only persons who can bear this level of demeaning taunts could drive these vehicles. So, it existed as a reserved profession for such persons, and they were not unduly bothered about the pejorative words kept for them. For, it was these words that assured that the profession was not invaded by higher quality persons.

When our family had a Mazda, I drove it. It was quite a remarkable understanding that it was quite easy to drive one. Actually even a youngster could drive it. So easy were the controls. Not like the lorries of my childhood days. INSERT IMAGE OF COMMERICIAL VEHICLE DRIVING BY YOUNGSTERS