How to improve the lower classes in India

Second, was how to improve the lower classes in ‘India’? It is not an easy issue. When the lower classes are improved, what is actually being done is removing the natural leadership over them that the traditional feudal landlord classes had over them for centuries. A definite amount of content is here on this page, wherein a development of a minor section of a lower caste is discussed.

Actually it is quite a complicated question. There are various hierarchies bearing down upon a lower caste/class person in a feudal language social system. Not only the various higher caste persons, but also so many other persons like mother, father, uncles, aunts, senior in age cousins, elder brother, elder sister, senior-in-age neighbours, persons who give work etc. have a particular kind of authority over a person, which is encoded in the words and usages used in communication. Each word that simply means You, He, His, She, Her, Hers, Them etc., words such as eda and edi, and the very using of name without any suffixes of respect, more or less positions a person tightly into a social slot. Added to this issue is the social, class or caste status of the parents and other family relatives. Being under the suppression of a lower class parent or uncle or aunt or cousin and others has its own negativity.

Improving a few persons from this social set-up, who are innately fixed into a particular lower positioned slot is not an easy thing as one can imagine in English. It is not simply an issue of asking the person to speak in English, stand straight (as against stand with an obsequious bent), sit on a chair (as against sit on the floor), sleep on the cot (as against sleeping on a mat on the floor) and so many other things. First of all, each on of these things mentioned has a code to it. For example, asking a servant to sleep on the cot is by itself changing the way the others view him in terms of indicant words.

It can be understood like this: A man and his servant go to a hotel room. Both are of the same age. There are two cots there. If the servant also is allowed to sleep in a cot, near to the master, the way the hotel staff would see the servant would be as more or less equal to the master. He would also be extended reverence, which they ought to show only to the master. The master would see the sudden rise in stature of the servant, as the others use ‘respectful’ words to the servant. It shall reposition the servant in the virtual code arena. When such virtual distances get lessened, the power of command goes down. For example, to a person who is addressed with reverential words by others, the master would find it awkward to ask clean his shoes or to carry his box. For, in feudal languages, words are encoded with a lot of meanings, as one would say that words used in computer programming do have extended meanings which may not fully fit within the parameters of the English word meaning.

Sample of the machinery-at-work

Now, imagine that the English persons are training this servant of a native ‘Indian man’. What they are doing is the undoing of all his innate social training, and making him an equal to a native ‘Indian’ master. Now, when understanding the so-called British Colonialism, this Indian master versus his servant system has to be borne in mind. The effects of British Colonialism on the two different entities in this system are two mutually opposite effects. And all interpretations of the total effect of British Colonialism should be viewed from this mutually opposing positions and perspectives.

However, it would be totally wrong to take a stand that the master is in the wrong and the servant is exploited and is in the right. For the reader should put on the shoes of both persons and see what is it one is against. The master would have to actively work to see that his servant remains in his despoiled state. Otherwise it would simply create a creepy eroding of his own positive features in the eyes of the society which contains not only his own superiors and equals, but persons subordinate to him. His stature among his subordinate folks has to be protected at all costs. This is part of his native ‘India’ social codes.

However, to the servant, actually even though he would be basking in the affectionate suppressing by his master, the cosiness of being at a social dignity equal to him would redress his own emotions, and more or less make him lesser fit for his job as a servant of an ‘Indian’ master.

The ‘Indian’ master would be comfortable if his servant sleeps on the floor, near to his cot. This would more or less reinforce the word and usage codes in the feudal language. For, the words such as Nee, Avan, Avattakal etc. can be used towards this position of the servant with more equanimity and power with this vertical distance between them. And the servant also would feel comfortable to use such words as Saar (Maadam/Medam), Thaangal, Ningal, Adheham, Avar etc. towards the upper direction when this vertical displacement is maintained. Here it needs to be mentioned that the words such as Nee etc. are used not just to servants but also to one’s son, daughter etc. However, the codes and the social processing will be different, and the same level of abominable grade as imposed on the servant wouldn’t be there. (Still some negative features will be there, but that part cannot be discussed here).

Now suppose into this very stable and secure social system, an Englishman enters. He starts speaking to both of them in English. Well, what is he doing? He is doing something that has never been attempted or experimented with, in ‘India’. Both the master as well as the servant is being placed in the same level. It is an event with grave evil possibilities. For the master, it is a cataclysmic event. For the servant also the event is quite unnerving. A failure to understand his inferiority in comparison to this master could set in. Now, even if this servant is getting a glow of mental liberation, it is not a thing that all his fellow servants would enjoy. For, whenever he is with the other servants, they would sense that some level of his inferiority has been erased, and there is something of the superior in him in comparison to themselves. It would trigger an antipathy for him. 

The initial terror in speaking English

Here I am forced to digress to another issue. English is actually a very simple and easy language, compared to so many other Asian and possibly African languages. However, many persons get the tremors when initiating to speak in English for the first time. This unnerving terror more or less makes them feel that English is quite difficult to learn.

There is a real reason behind this paradoxical experience. People who speak feudal languages suddenly experience a planar language. It is like suddenly compressing a 3-D space into a 2-D space.

In feudal languages, a younger man sees an elder or superior person as a higher You, higher He, Higher Him etc. At the same time, the senior person has to see the lower person as a lower You, lower He, lower Him etc. Now, when suddenly the communication is changed to English, the lower man can feel the powerful manner in which he is pulling the senior man to a standard level You, He and Him. He would feel himself pulling himself up to a higher social plane. He would feel the tremendous terror of acting out an impertinence.

At the same time, the senior person would see the lower person being pulled up to a standard You, He and Him. He would also feel himself pulling himself down to a lower plane. He would feel the powerful terror of the social depths.

This is the real reason that many persons become nervous when speaking English in the initial periods. However, when this initial terror wears off, then it is days of basking in the glorious freedom, with activities that can be on the edge of rascality. The same sort of emotions and feelings that feudal-language-speaking persons, who enter into the US, feel and act out.

Now, this is the second issue that the Colonial Englishmen faced in ‘India’. First was the issue of the stay-at-home Englishmen of not understanding ‘India’.

An illustration of the feudal language machinery

English is a planar language and not feudal like the ‘Indian’ languages. So, even if there was statutory feudalism in England, the ‘respect’ versus pejorative form of communication codes was not there in England. Feudalism in language has a very complicated effect on social communication as well human personality and right to dignity. It is not possible to discuss the complete effects here. However, just to make the point understood it may be described here to this extent:

A man goes to see a high official in ‘India’. He is accompanied by his man servant also. He addresses the official as Saar. The high official addresses him as Ningal. At the same time, he addresses the man’s servant as Nee. The man refers to the high official as Adheham or Avar. The high official refers to this man as Ayaal. At the same time he refers to the man’s servant as Avan.

Now when a native English speaker read the above paragraph, he would see a social system structured like a military arrangement. However, that is not a correct evaluation of the scene. What has to be borne in mind is that that the lower level words can actually be pejoratives that degrade a person’s individuality and has a comparative effect. This type of incessant comparison of human individuality and dignity is not a feature in English. Moreover it has a social effect of creating pyramids of leadership, which are exclusive of each other, and mutually competing. For more on this, read: MARCH of the EVIL EMPIRES; ENGLISH versus the FEUDAL LANGUAGES! and also CODES of REALITY! WHAT is LANGUAGE?