The real quality effects of British Colonialism

SEE this quote by a commenter on Scientific American

By Eugene Sittampalam 07:26 PM 12/27/12 on

I was born and raised in the Island of Serendipity, or Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) during the British reign there; and I am very proud indeed of the educational system they firmly established for us there. With excellent teachers and UK-style education, it was little wonder that we excelled in education in the whole of South-East Asia. (Even Mr. Lee Kuan Yew, who was to later become the first Prime Minister of Singapore, had his early education in Ceylon; see: The Singapore Story)

Even if the Sun has set on the British Empire, you can safely bet it'll never set on the British language. It grows instead, with even the EU be adopting it as its official language (in preference to contending German for the honour)!

Long live Euro-English; and Happy New Year to you all! www.toe.tv

Film stars and others are not the persons who impart great training other than emphasising what is already there in the social system. They only add value to social conventions which could have been of quite dubious value. However, the grand appeal of media magnification can give these negative conventions a lot of glow and appeal. This is what the people fall for. For, in spite of giving such fantastic training to the people of ‘India’, no one really knows about the British trainers who had done much for the populace here, either with deliberate actions, or by allowing the local natives to view their social interactions and communication systems. In the ultimate analysis, what goes as fact in Indian films is quite a very unnatural promotion of individuals.

I have seen very interesting acting in Malayalam films in which the famous comedian acts out a very obsequious stances in front of the police officer. It is quite hilarious. However, it is a very negative visual training that is being given in an unconscious manner on how to be obsequious to the officialdom.

This point makes me move to another observation of mine. It is that Indian films are quite different from English films. The main point is that in Indian films, the hero is an individual who is quite differently dressed, looks quite grandiose compared to the others, and act out a supernatural individuality. At the same time, he is kept surrounded by a group of persons who in most cases are of low level of looks, unattractive dresses, and always acting out a pose of buffoonery, or idiotism, or intellectual dullness. In fact, it is this grand difference that makes the hero stand out of the crowd. The comparative elevation!

However when seeing English films, the difference between the hero and others in terms of physical stature, dressing standards, intellectual capacity and dullness and such things are more or less null. I remember the scene in the James Bond film The Golden Eye, in which James Bond is standing along with a lot of personnel in an oil drilling area. There is nothing to mark him out from the others in the scene. If such a scene was acted out in many Indian movies, it would a straight course to disaster for the person acting as the hero.

INSERT IMAGE FROM THE GOLDEN EYE

This much I have added here could be out of context. But then it popped out of my mind and I thought I would write it here itself, before it pops out of my mind.

Now, one can’t say that immigrants should not come to the US. However, it is like allowing unknown entities inside one’s residential premises. There is need to understand what is entering and what is its innate disposition. This is only a minimum intelligent stance.

What was given freely and what is now available only for the rich

This is the expense for teaching a child in the British School in New Delhi. During the times of the East India Company, academic standards more or less near to what is being dispensed in this school were available to the lower castes in many English schools. For example, in Tellichery the lower caste Thiyyas got a never-before in history chance to reach very near to British standards in academic excellence with more or less very meagre financial expenses. However, with the pulling down of the East India Company rule and the advent of the British Crown rule, the direct link between the lower classes and the British administration was lost. Instead, the age-old feudal lords and native kings came back to statutory powers and recognition. So, it was the lower castes that lost. Now, this level of British standards in education (which ultimately means an enhancement of personal attributes, and not necessarily knowledge in sultry academic subjects) is available only to the super rich. This change of affairs is denoted as ‘freedom’ by the cunning affluent classes of India.

Now speaking about the British School in New Delhi, I am sure that it cannot maintain the same social standards that are available back in England to be maintained here. For, this institution is full of Indian staff members including ministerial staff. That means, persons who have an ambivalent mental posture will be running the show, instead of pure English mind. At the very minimum, the age-old social fears of the lower man would be prevailing in the insides of this much revered institution. Yet, it might be sure that this school is much better than many other elite English schools, who all would have that and other negative features haunting them in a most subtle manner.

In the film, it is shown that this ‘great king’ is getting the help of the Tribal population, the Kurichiya/Kurumba people. Well, there is a terrible tragedy in this claim. The tribals were the people living on the fringe of the forest of Wynad and possibly the local forest areas. Their relationship with the ‘great king’ would at best be that of Indian feudal landlord versus Indian serfs. In the film, the great king is shown in exemplary physical standards. The tribals also in similar levels. It is these scenes that are getting cultivated in the people’s mind. But then the actual truth would be of a very truculent landlord who was very suppressive. His actions would go and collide head-on with the police personnel, who would give ‘respect’ only to their own leadership. Naturally the feudal landlords had a terrible time during the rule of the East India Company. For, the company was bent on directly taking over the improvement of the local lower classes. Another point that comes to my mind is that the majority serf population of Tellicherry were the Thiyyas, who could be much above the Kurichia/Kurumbas in caste stature. What was their experience under the ‘great’ king who ruled from a remote village? If this great history is true, these are things to be pondered upon.

My mother was from Tellicherry. Her father was a Congressman who was known to have ‘fought’ for freedom from the British. This in spite of the fact, that he and his caste men received mental and physical liberation for the first time in recorded history when the British came to rule the place. His male children, instead of learning English and studying in schools provided by the British, would go in for stone throwing and other acts of vandalism as a pastime.

See the actual looks of the Kurumbas (1800s) and compare it with their purported looks some 200 years back.  See the tribal females and how they are represented as in the film.

His father (my mother’s grandfather) had been a police head constable (Kannan Ead [Kannan Head Constable]) in Manantody Police Station of those times. There was never a mention of this ‘great King’ or of his great war against the British Empire at any time in my mother’s childhood or at anytime in her life. She came to know of this great king through the film. Well, this should go for the Gandhi film also, to a very great extent with regard to the myths.