2 The frill issues

Item 1: The first one is with regard to the use of the word ‘India’. The use of this word in colonial English writings has created a messy confusion in modern generations. The word ‘India’ was used internationally among the maritime people and the trading locations of yore to denote a location somewhere in the east, from where certain specific trade commodities were to be obtained.

At best, it could be like saying Africa or American continent, from afar. When one comes near to the subcontinent, even very near locations are disconnected to each other quite powerfully in this subcontinent.

Most Colonial English writings tend to use the word ‘India’ in a very desultory manner, that even colonial England was fooled about what was actually British-India. British India was not as big as to occupy the whole subcontinent as is generally understood.

The subcontinent was actually a collection of un-connected geographical pieces and of un-connectable populations living in different locations, or inside the same location. The only benign connecting force that appeared in the subcontinent was the English rule.

Item 2: The second item is the use of the term ‘European’. It is again a very powerful misnomer. The nation which actually built the nation of British-India was England. There might not be much wrong in mentioning it as ‘Britain’ also, even though British-India was following English systems, and not Irish, Welsh or Scottish systems. The language of administration was also English.

However, to mess up this information with ‘Europe’ was a terrible thing. Most of the nations or locations in Continental Europe are not English or synonymous with English or England. While English is a planar language, many of the Continental European nations were having at least a slight hue of feudal content. In fact, Continental Europe was the exact antonym of England in those days.

The tidy fact is that it is the presence of England quite near to Continental Europe that gives a glow to many nations (not all) in Continental Europe. In fact, if England had been near to any state in India, that state would also have displayed quite glowing attributes. In fact, a very brief stay in England by any person from any Asian or African nation would give a powerful lift to his or her personality features. A refinement that is not innate to that person’s nativity will be seen to have perched upon him or her. Why this is so, is not clearly known to native-English people. For, they do not know what the other side actually is.

Continental Europeans did make use of their skin-colour to pass off as of the same social quality as of the native-English, in the English colonial administered areas. Because the native-English did not understand the exact location of where they differed from Continental Europeans, they fell for this neat piece of deliberate deceit.

Many crimes and misdemeanours that can be attributed to Continental Europeans have been cunningly sprayed upon English history. At the same time, many fabulous content in English antiquity has quite shameless been claimed by Continental Europeans. It is like the people of India teaching children in the 1970s: ‘We human beings have landed on the moon’. The ‘we’ is just a cunning stance to get admission into a group which clearly did not include the people of India.

The author of this book, Edgar Thurston did not take any evasive action for this. He has mentioned the term ‘European’ many times, in the book. It only gives confusion as to whether the person is a Briton or some other person of ‘White’ skin.

Words such as European, English, British, American, Pakistani, Indian, Bangladeshi, Japanese, Sri Lankan, Chinese, African, South American, Red Indian &c. are quite defining. A wrong word would lend an erroneous input.

Third item: The third item is the general hint of a British-India conquered and ruled by England. Actually, this is not the correct understanding of history. What happened in the subcontinent was not a conquering by England. Instead, it was the creation of a new nation called British-India, in which the leadership was taken by some people from Britain, and enthusiastic participation was given by the huge number of populations in the subcontinent.

Apart from that, the actual British-India was centred around only three major Presidencies, viz. the Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras Presidencies. A general feeling is there that the whole of the subcontinent was British-India. Even the full geographical locations inside the new nation of India were not inside British-India.

Forth item: The fourth item is just a mention that even though the author mentions various locations in the southern parts of the Subcontinent in a very casual manner, the exact fact is that they were quite removed from each other. Even now, very few people have travelled or seen all these locations, unless they are in some profession that requires them to move to these distant locations.

In fact, the places might be the states of Maharashtra, Orissa, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Tamilnadu, Kerala and Laccadive Islands in the new nation of India. It is quite surprising that Edgar Thurston received the chance to visit and observe the various disconnected populations at close quarters and to interact with them. Maybe some of the contents are from the writings of other authors, who did the interaction and studies.

These are the frill elements. I have more or less summed them up.