01. Atrophying English and English social codes

02. Film stars as new social trainers

03. The real quality effects of British Colonialism

04. What was given freely

05. When films become false history records

06. Real experience of being inside Indian jails.

Atrophying English and English social codes

Now let me come back to the issue of the US of America. America does train people in English social systems. However, the entering people also would bring in their own systems, wherein they would be the trainers. They would bring in their version of social communication, which would embed itself inside English. The crude profanities and the swear words from the crude worlds would enter into English.

I remember that in my kid days, my reaction to unbelievable incidences and shocks were with such words as Goodness, My goodness, Goodness Gracious, Oh My God, Horrible, Oh Hell etc. Now, I have seen in similar situations, the word SHIT is used. Even though the word is English, it is really a usage that comes from the crudeness of feudal language social systems, and it is this that gives it legitimacy as a socially acceptable word.

Other trainings also enter. The very tragic one would be the sheer repulsion for jobs, especially those involving physical labour, that are seen as lower ones. Even though it is not visible in English, the fact is that the newcomers do degrade the jobs and the workers by translating them into their crude feudal tongues. Here they are literally near to stinking dirt.

When speaking about social training, there is one very pertinent point that comes to my mind. It is about the training that a very small section of people from a small place in Malabar received during the period of British rule. What the English educators imparted was not just English language, but also a lot of social triggers, responses as well as reflexes. The idea of giving prominence to precedence. This is one idea that cannot come forth from feudal language tongues. For, in such languages, precedence has to be given to people who are social seniors, social leaders and financially strong persons. The other people do not have a right to precedence. They have to stand back, each time a more prominent personage arrives near the counter or a pathway or an entrance which can allow only one person at a time.

The grand idea that any miscreant can act as a ruffian is what they lend. Any third rate mediocre individual can throw a bomb or a stone, can vandalise, can atrophy a quality convention, can by-pass rules and regulations, can opt for shortcuts which are illegal and such. However it requires persons of real quality to train the people to understand that it requires real mental quality and rectitude to stand by the rules and to say that he or she will abide by it. For example, any third rate guy can jump over a wall to use a short cut to a place. However, to stand by the firm stance that it is not correct to encroach upon another person’s property and to have the mental acumen to go round the wall, need real quality training.

That is what the British educators imparted to a small section of the population in North Malabar. However, it should be mentioned that in many cases, it had been just like that anecdotal theme of giving a garland of flowers to a group of uncouth monkeys. Some of the persons who improved really stood by the decorum. Most just threw it away the moment there was a change of political masters. The new masters had arrived on top using the technique of sly manoeuvring. Amongst them, there was no value for quality stances. What mattered in the newly formed India was just mean treachery and opportunism.

Film stars as new social trainers

Now, coming back to the theme of social training, it must be said that the people of India, the newly-formed nation, get their training from the gestures, gaits, agility, garments and other contrived bits of displays seen on popular Indian language movies. In fact, it is the film stars, the film directors and the script writers who teach the modern Indians, many things including social communication, anecdotes, popular phrases, dressing standards, history and much else. Many persons may not see anything amiss in all this. However, personally speaking, I find it quite odd and discomfiting that the fantastically and profoundly erudite English trainers have been replaced by vernacular film stars and others of their genre.

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

QUOTE: 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 http://www.sthomascollege.com/Excerpt.htm)

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 END OF QUOTE

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.

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 Tellicherry 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, which all would have that and other negative features haunting them in a most subtle manner.

Now this brings me to this quote I found on another Website [speaking about forming queues]: On the other hand, even in the US, one of the most orderly places in the universe (ok, I haven’t really checked other planets) people were wrestling each other at the grocery store before our hurricane last year when there was anticipation of shortages of items like milk.

MY Comment: This man (native Indian in USA) is obviously like the proverbial frog in the well. Social communication systems from England have diffused into the USA. What a few Thiyyas received way back in the 1800s was also received by the people in the USA directly through the native-English speakers. Yet, they do not have the courage to admit where this came their way.

There was this incident with regard to N & S. They became quite good in English. When they went to their native village, their father would be seen by the others as insisting to his children to speak in English. He once told me, ‘One man came to me yesterday, and told me thus: I have heard about you. You are the parent who insists that his children should speak only English’.

It was obvious that the reputation in this regard that was being pasted on him was really only a reflected one. Not innate. Similarly, whatever refinement that the USA does exhibit would ultimately have its roots in the egalitarian English language and its antiquity that this nation shares. It is not connected to Roman, Asian, African, Continental European, Christian, Vedic, Hindu or Islamic traditions. Even though in years to come, many persons would try to trace everything back to something to which they have affinity for.

When films become false history records

When speaking about films, two specific films come into my mind. Both Malayalam. One is the film about the internment of criminal elements in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands during the English rule period. See this scene from this film. An ‘Indian’ serf-class man is seen to be showing his back for the English man to step on. Well, this was a very powerful scene in the film that literally made the modern Indian glow with fury. The bloody English man is using a using an Indian’s back as his footboard.

Real experience of being inside Indian jails.

There is another thing. Look at the people in the film. They all look quite modern. The fact was that in those days, the majority population looked like in the images given here (a) Pariyans (b) Thiyya Woman: It was the British rule that gave females like these the right to demand dignity from their social seniors.

Well, the fact is that no one really looked beyond. If this scene is true, and it is near 100% untrue, it is a scene from the Indian social scene. That any honoured person coming to that area will be given the delight of stepping on a serf’s back. Well, it is a scene that really depicts the actual ‘Indian’ Janmi-Kudiyaan (feudal) social set up. The Kerala feudal social order, and not an English imposition. Those who can discern can very easily see the rich, English educated doctor, the feudal lords and much more, even in this scene. How the serf has to bend his back to the social seniors. The doctor is obviously perturbed that the serf has to decided to share his servitude to the English officer! However, this much idea wouldn’t enter into the ‘patriotic’ viewer’s mind.

The second film is of more terrible contents. It is about a King of Kottayam who fought a glorious war against the ‘British Empire’. Actually there is a big town called Kottayam near Trivandrum. Naturally the viewer gets the idea that this man was a king of Kottayam. However it is shown that he is getting the support of the tribal people of Wynad, a district some four hundred kilometres north of Kottayam. So, one viewer did mention this doubt to me, ‘How can he be in contact with the ‘tribals’ who are so far off?’

Now, the fact is that the ‘King’ is said to be from a small place near to Tellicherry in North Malabar. This Tellicherry itself is a small place. Near to this place, a very remote, miniscule village is this ‘Kottayam’. Now the whole of Kerala knows of this ‘great king’ who fought against the British Empire through this film! Actually the big Kings in this area were the Zamorins of Calicut, who were, I think, demolished by Sultan Tipu (Tipu Sulthaan).

In the film, it is shown that this ‘great king’ is getting the help of the Tribal population, the Kurichiya 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 Kurichiyyas 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.

Interested readers are requested to read my Commentary on Malabar Manual.

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 any time 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. See a sample of the actual looks of the tribal people in the local areas of those times and compare it with their purported looks some 200 years back.